Sri Lankan folklore:Perpetual copyright. Permission to make any work derived from folklore must be sought from the Minister in charge of the subject of Culture. This right is claimed worldwide. Works falling in this category are considered unfree on Commons and are not allowed.
Official text of a legislative, administrative or legal nature:No copyright.
Audiovisual work:70 years from the date on which the work was first published, or, if unpublished, 70 years from the making of the work.
Anonymous works:70 years from the date on which the work was first published.
Applied art:25 years from the date of the making of the work.
Any other type of work:70 years after death of author, or in the case of works of joint authorship, 70 years after the death of the last surviving author.
The author died in 1923, so this work is in the public domain in its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 100 years or fewer.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it meets three requirements:
it was first published outside the United States (and not published in the U.S. within 30 days),
it was first published before 1 March 1989 without copyright notice or before 1964 without copyright renewal or before the source country established copyright relations with the United States,
it was in the public domain in its home country (Sri Lanka) on the URAA date (1 January 1996).
For background information, see the explanations on Non-U.S. copyrights. The Sri Lanka copyright on John Penry Lewis' work's expired at the end of 1973, since Sri Lanka had a copyright term of 50 years p.m.a. until 2003. Even with the extension to 70 years p.m.a. made in 2003, the copyright still expired before the URAA restoration date.