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Project Gutenberg Permissions, Licensing and other Common Requests

1. Overview
2. Most permissions not needed
3. Terms of Use
4. Trademark Permission to "Trade On" the Project Gutenberg name
5. Crediting
6. Linking
7. Project Gutenberg as Publisher
8. Quotes and extracts from Project Gutenberg items
9. Copyright page and trademarks from Source
10. Citing Project Gutenberg
11. No paperwork
12. US only
13. No "sweat of the brow"
14. For copyrighted content
15. Commercial use of Project Gutenberg trademark
16. Higher resolution images
17. More details on items
18. Reporting errata

Overview

Project Gutenberg receives many requests for permissions to use eBooks, images from eBooks, or extracts. Most such requests do not need a custom response, since permission is included in the items themselves (even for commercial use), or in the narrative below.

This How-To provides responses to the most common inquiries. If your inquiry is not addressed, please email Prof. Newby with your permission requests. Responses are typically received within a day or so (or, re-send your request!).

Most permissions not needed

Most permission requests we receive do not require a custom response. The vast majority of Project Gutenberg eBooks are in the public domain in the US. This means that nobody can grant, or withhold, permission to do with this item as you please.

"As you please" includes any commercial use, republishing in any format, making derivative works or performances, etc. Read more about the public domain in Wikipedia.

Terms of Use

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Trademark Permission to "Trade On" the Project Gutenberg name

The name "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. The [/license Small Print License] guides terms of use. Basically, you need to pay royalties for commercial use (mentioned below). This restriction is mainly to prevent you selling things that might be mis-perceived as being sold and/or supported by Project Gutenberg, when Project Gutenberg has no involvement. It is intended to recognize the value of the Project Gutenberg name.

No permission is needed for non-commercial use. So, for example, you can freely redistribute any eBook, anywhere, any time, with or without the "Project Gutenberg" trademark included. The Small Print has more details. Note that if you are not in the US, you must confirm yourself whether an item is free to redistribute where you are.

Crediting

No permission is needed to credit Project Gutenberg as the source of something you use. This applies even for commercial use.

Linking

No permission is needed to link to www.gutenberg.org or to any page or address within it.

To link to a specific eBook, link to the landing page for that eBook, not to specific files. So, for example, you would link to www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/19033 rather than "deep linking" to the specific HTML, plain text, etc. www.gutenberg.org prohibits deep links automatically (based on the HTTP referrer), because from time to time the underlying structure of an eBook might change.

More detail, mostly for webmasters, is in our linking document.

Project Gutenberg as Publisher

Project Gutenberg does not promise or enforce adherence to any particular source item. We typically make each eBook from a single print book, but sometimes multiple print books are used. Even with a single print book, we make many changes: spelling modernization, dehyphenation, conversion to HTML or other formats, etc. Therefore, we are the publisher of our eBooks, even if print sources were used from prior publishers.

Sometimes an eBook will include mention of its source, and even then, this is not intended in any way that our eBooks are identical to that source print book.

Quotes and extracts from Project Gutenberg items

No permission is needed to use quotes from Project Gutenberg items (in the US, this would be "fair use"). This applies for all use, including commercial use. In other words, no royalties are due for quotes even if they are used for commercial products.

It is always OK to cite Project Gutenberg as the publication source (see below for how to cite), and it is also OK to not cite Project Gutenberg: your choice.

Copyright page and trademarks from Source

Sometimes an eBook will include a transcription or image of the original title page, verso (obverse) or other pages from a source print book used for the eBook. This may include a copyright statement, which will usually be before 1964 (see our "copyright how-to" for details). This does not mean that item is still copyrighted. The header/footer in the eBook from Project Gutenberg will mention that such items are in the public domain in the US.

Similarly, eBooks might include images or text that are (or were) trademarks in the US or elsewhere. This might include print publisher names or marks, publication associations, or marks depicted as images or words within the eBooks. Project Gutenberg is providing such items "as is," with no representation of ownership, or whether any such marks are still active.

It is permitted, but not required, for our volunteer eBook producers to include front matter from print books they use.

Citing Project Gutenberg

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Carroll, Lewis. (2006). Alice in Wonderland. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved February 21, 2016, from www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/19033.

To cite the entire collection or Web site:

Project Gutenberg. (n.d.). Retrieved February 21, 2016, from www.gutenberg.org.

Of course, you should insert the actual year/date you accessed the item, and the actual year of your visit to the site.

No paperwork

Project Gutenberg does not fill out permission forms or otherwise grant permission for public domain items. That's what "public domain" means: nobody can grant permission.

We also do not process forms that somehow confirm non-copyright status. If you don't trust the statement in an eBook that an item is in the public domain in the US, then some sort of form from the same place (PG) that made the public domain determination would be meaningless! If you need further assurances or research that an item is in the public domain, we recommend you arrange for the research yourself, to your own specifications.

US only

PG is entirely based in the US, and we follow the United States laws for copyright. Not all items that are public domain in the US are public domain in other countries, and vice versa. If you are operating outside of the US, you should get professional guidance on how to proceed for things like redistributing Project Gutenberg's content. For basic information about copyright elsewhere, try this link to the Online books page.

No "sweat of the brow"

Project Gutenberg claims no copyright for markup, formatting, spelling modernization, etc., and neither can you (at least in the United States). See our No Sweat of the Brow How-To

For copyrighted content

There are thousands of items in the Project Gutenberg collection which are still under copyright protection. Each copyrighted item is clearly indicated as copyrighted in the eBook's header. Unless there is an included license with the copyrighted item (such as a creative commons license), you will need to contact the copyright holder for any needed permission. Project Gutenberg cannot do this on your behalf, and does not have any ability to sublicense copyrighted works.

Commercial use of Project Gutenberg trademark

If you use the Project Gutenberg name, which is a registered trademark, you need to pay royalties for any commercial use (i.e., where you are trading on the Project Gutenberg trademarked name). Terms are spelled out clearly in the license included with each eBook, or read it here: License How-To

If your commercial project has only a minor use of the Project Gutenberg trademark (for example, one PG eBook, and 9 from another source), then royalties are proportional. In this example of one in ten items from PG, you would pay only 1/10th of the royalties that would normally be due.

In particular, this means that any attempt to claim copyright on a Project Gutenberg item that's in the public domain, even after you "add value," will be invalid.

Commercial use of Project Gutenberg trademark

If you use the Project Gutenberg name, which is a registered trademark, you need to pay royalties for any commercial use (i.e., where you are trading on the Project Gutenberg trademarked name). Terms are spelled out clearly in the license included with each eBook, or read it here: License How-To.

If your commercial project has only a minor use of the Project Gutenberg trademark (for example, one PG eBook, and 9 from another source), then royalties are proportional. In this example of one in ten items from PG, you would pay only 1/10th of the royalties that would normally be due.

Higher resolution images

If you're looking for higher resolution versions of our scans, you will probably need to find your own original and make your own scan. Many Project Gutenberg volunteers produce our scans, and we have no good way to track them down in order to help you. The Distributed Proofreaders PGDP has some online forums (free registration required) where you can inquire after items that came from that source. Each eBook that DP contributes has a credit to them at the start.

More details on items

Each eBook is complete and self-contained. If you want more information about an author, a publisher, the printed source(s) used, etc. and it's not in the eBook, we probably don't know either. Try another resource, such as your local librarian. Project Gutenberg does not enforce adherence of its eBooks to any particular print source.

Reporting errata

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