I recently wanted to look something up related to Mesopotamia. Well into the weeds of scholarship. The only transcription of the text I wanted as far as I cou

I recently wanted to look something up related to Mesopotamia. Well into the weeds of scholarship. The only transcription of the text I wanted as far as I could determine was in a book written in the 1930s of which there are only a handful of copies. A local university library had it thankfully. The author died half a century ago. While it would technically be legal here for a library to copy one of their copies for archival purposes should it finally disintegrate, the knowledge is on the precipice of being lost. There's absolutely no justification whatsoever for that book still being under copyright. I doubt harms like that were even considered at all by my own government here in Canada when the copyright term was recently extended 20 years. For some reason when people think copyright they think pulp trash of the last few years. Maybe copyright should only be a few years then?