Your best bet to resolve the issue(s) you are asking would be to ask the 
lawyers at Electronic Frontier Foundation: 
https://www.eff.org/pages/legal-assistance

     My take is even though (c) happens as soon as some content is 
produced and made public with an end date for public domain, yet if it 
is a licensed product with no end date (as copyright has,) and no first 
sale, then it really can't be a copyright entity because there is no 
chance for it to become public domain. It's a conflict of the law of 
copyright.
     If the owner of the copyright is giving it away, then it is 
basically free of copyright restrictions/limitations.
     I've told both EFF and my Congressional folks that copyright has 
become so complicated that most people (and google) are doing what they 
want, and unless they are making lots of money on plagiarism, or openly 
apparent, their work is under the radar and are generally left alone. An 
example is all the libraries digitizing their collection, making them 
available online...most of that is public domain, but my guess is some 
(c) material is structured under the section of preservation.

     Long before any licensing was available, many churches often copied 
copyrighted songs and hymns (sometimes for extra copies of something 
they purchased; illegal;) some still do without license, assuming there 
is a license to do so. Orchestras, Libraries, and Concert bands, and 
soloists, continue to copy parts lost, or a copy for the pianist, for 
one another (illegally), yet feel this is perfectly normal and 
authorized...mostly and likely because there hasn't been a court case 
against such copying.

There may be some (c) help here: https://is.gd/bPRaXX  Lesley Ellen 
Harris has been writing on copyright for many years.

On 7/10/2019 6:26 AM, David MacFadyen wrote:
> Hi Paul
> Could you please explain this phrase: “...there would be no copyright in the work as it does not have any limit; therefore not part of copyright law.”?
> I’m encountering so many different opinions when it comes to the donation of substantial material that is/was:
> - produced in Russia prior to their international copyright laws of the mid-1990s
> - never sold in the first place and distributed today online by Russian artists for free consumption (Piracy means that much music is given away, merely to fuel concert ticket sales. Same situation in China)
> - perhaps irrelevant to copyright law, since the material is being donated for academic use — but needs an independent monetary evaluation anyway (which it has). The question in this final instance is what may *I* do with that evaluation, be it high or low?
> Thanks!
> D
>
> ---
> This email has been checked for viruses by AVG.
> https://www.avg.com
>