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Copyright FAQ (old)

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Contents

1. Copyright
   1. What is copyright?
   2. Does copyright differ from country to country? From state to state?
   3. What are the copyright laws outside the U.S.?
   4. Why does Project Gutenberg advise only on U.S. copyright issues?
   5. I don't live in the U.S. Do these rules apply to me?
   6. What is the public domain?
   7. What can I do with a text that is in the public domain?
   8. How does a book enter the public domain?
   9. How does a copyright lapse?
   10. What books are in the public domain?
   11. My book says that it's "Copyright 1894". Is it in the public domain?
   12. How can a copyright owner release a work into the public domain?
   13. When is an author not the owner of a copyright on his or her works?
   14. What does Project Gutenberg mean by "eligible"?
   15. I have a manuscript from 1900. Is it eligible?
   16. How come my paper book of Shakespeare says it's "Copyright 1988"?
   17. What makes a "new copyright"?
   18. I have a 1990 book that I know was originally written in 1840, but the publisher is claiming a new copyright. What should I do?
   19. C.19. I have a 1990 reprint of an 1831 original. Is it eligible?
   20. I have a text that I know was based on a book older than 95 years, but I don't have the title page. Can I submit it to PG?
   21. How does Project Gutenberg "clear" books for copyright?
   22. I want to produce a particular book. Will it be copyright cleared?
   23. I have some extra material (images, introduction, preface, missing chapter) that should go into an existing PG text. Do I have to copyright-clear my edition before submitting it?
   24. I see some Project Gutenberg eBooks that are copyrighted. What's up with that?
   25. What are "non-renewed" books?
   26. How can I get Project Gutenberg to clear a non-renewed book?

Copyright

What is copyright?

Copyright is a limited monopoly granted to the author of a work. It gives the author the exclusive right, among other things, to make copies of the work, hence the name.

Does copyright differ from country to country? From state to state?

Copyright laws are constantly changing all over the world. Each country has its own copyright laws, some within the framework of international treaties, some not. Within the U.S., copyright laws are federal, and do not vary from state to state.

What are the copyright laws outside the U.S.?

Sorry, we can't advise on copyright law outside the U.S. We can point you to resources like http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/okbooks.html which tries to summarize the various copyright regimes, but we can't guarantee that these are accurate. Even when they are accurate, it is very hard to express some of the subtleties of copyright law in a summary — for example, the question of what constitutes "publication" for copyright purposes is sometimes unclear.

Why does Project Gutenberg advise only on U.S. copyright issues?

The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is registered in the U.S. as a 501(c)(3) organization, and our two posting servers are situated in the U.S., so we are subject to U.S. copyright law, and only to U.S. copyright law.

Because copyright laws are so tangled and different between countries, not only in the broad sweep but also in the detail, and because Project Gutenberg is subject only to U.S. copyright law, we just don't have the expertise, time or resources to research and advise on the law in other countries.

I don't live in the U.S. Do these rules apply to me?

Your country's copyright laws are different from those in the U.S., and understanding and dealing with them is up to you. If you have a book that is in the public domain in your country, but not in the U.S., it is perfectly legal for you to publish it personally there, but we can't.

Similarly, it may be legal for us to publish it here, but not for you to publish it, or perhaps even copy it, where you are.

There are organizations in other countries operating in more liberal copyright regimes that may be able to publish texts that we cannot. For example, Project Gutenberg of Australia can accept some works not eligible in the U.S.

What is the public domain?

The public domain is the set of cultural works that are free of copyright, and belong to everyone equally.

What can I do with a text that is in the public domain?

Anything you want! You can copy it, publish it, change its format, distribute it for free or for money. You can translate it to other languages (and claim a copyright on your translation), write a play based on it (if it's a novel), or a novelization (if it's a play). You can take one of the characters from the novel and write a comic strip about him or her, or write a screenplay and sell that to make a movie.

You don't need to ask permission from anyone to do any of this. When a text is in the public domain, it belongs as much to you as to anyone.

(However, when some character or part of the work is also trademarked, as in the case of Tarzan, it may not be possible to release new works with that trademark, since trademark does not expire in the same way as copyright. If you propose to base new works on public domain material, you should investigate possible trademark issues first.)

How does a book enter the public domain?

A book, or other copyrightable work, enters the public domain when its copyright lapses or when the copyright owner releases it to the public domain.

U.S. Government documents can never be copyrighted in the first place; they are "born" into the public domain.

There are certain other exceptional cases: for example, if a substantial number of copies were printed and distributed in the U.S. before March, 1989 without a copyright notice, and the work is of entirely American authorship, or was first published in the United States, the work is in the public domain in the U.S.

How does a copyright lapse?

Copyrights are issued for limited periods. When that period is up, the book enters the public domain.

Copyrights can lapse in other ways. Some books published without a copyright notice, for example, have fallen into the public domain.

What books are in the public domain?

Any book published anywhere before longer than 95 years ago is in the public domain in the U.S. This is the rule we use most.

U.S. Government publications are in the public domain. This is the rule under which we have published, for example, presidential inauguration speeches.

Books can be released into the public domain by the owners of their copyrights.

Some books published without a copyright notice in the U.S. prior to March 1st, 1989 are in the public domain.

Some books published before 1964, and whose copyright was not renewed, are in the public domain.

If you want to rely on anything except the 95-year rule, things can get complicated, and the rules do change with time. Please refer to our Public Domain and Copyright How-To for more detailed information.

My book says that it's "Copyright 1894". Is it in the public domain?

Yes.

Its copyright date is 1894, which is longer than 95 years ago, so its copyright has lapsed, in the U.S.A., at least — other countries have other rules.

How can a copyright owner release a work into the public domain?

A simple written statement, which may be placed into the work as released, is sufficient. When a copyright holder places a book into the public domain and wants PG to publish it, all we need is a letter or in-book statement saying that they are or were the holder of the copyright, and that they have released it into the public domain.

When is an author not the owner of a copyright on his or her works?

An author may sell, assign, license, bequeath or otherwise transfer his or her copyright to another party, such as a publisher or heir.

What does Project Gutenberg mean by "eligible"?

A book is eligible for inclusion in the archives if we can legally publish it.

We can legally publish any material that is in the public domain in the U.S. (C.10 ), or for which we have the permission of the copyright holder.

I have a manuscript from 1900. Is it eligible?

Maybe not.

Works that were created but not "published" before 1978 will not enter the public domain before the end of 2002. This gets complicated, and it's not too common. If you have such a case, ask about it.

A borderline example is the classic "Seven Pillars of Wisdom" by T. E. Lawrence, which was actually printed and privately distributed, but not "published", in 1922. It's not in the public domain until publication+95 years, as long as it was published prior to 1977. For Project Gutenberg, we have experts to help make these assessments, to ensure due diligence is applied to all public domain determination.

How come my paper book of Shakespeare says it's "Copyright 1988"?

Shakespeare was published long enough ago to be indisputably in the public domain everywhere, so how can a Shakespeare text be copyrighted? There are two possibilities:

1. The author or publisher has changed or edited the text enough to qualify as a "new edition", which gets a "new copyright".
2. The publisher has added extra material, such as an introduction, critical essays, footnotes, or an index. This extra material is new, and the publisher owns the copyright on it.

The problem with these practices is that a publisher, having added this copyrighted material, or edited the text even in a minor way, may simply put a copyright notice on the whole book, even though the main part of it — the text itself — is in the public domain! And as time goes on, the number of original surviving books that can be proved to be in the public domain grows smaller and smaller; and meanwhile publishers are cranking out more and more editions that have copyright notices. Eventually it becomes harder and harder to prove that a particular book is in the public domain, since there are few 95+-year copies available as evidence.

Among the most important things PG does is preventing this creeping perpetuation of copyright by proving, once and for all, that a particular edition of a particular book is in the public domain, so that it can never be locked up again as the private property of some publisher. We do this by filing a copy of the TP&V, the title page where the copyright notice must be placed, so that if anyone ever challenges the work's public domain status, we can point to a proven public domain copy.

What makes a "new copyright"?

1. New edition When a text is in the public domain, anyone--from you to the world's biggest publisher--can edit it and republish the edited version. When the edits are substantial enough, the edited work is deemed a "new edition", and gets a new copyright, dating from the time the new edition was created.

How substantial must the edits be to qualify as a "new edition"? That is for a court to decide in any particular case. Changing some punctuation or Americanizing British spelling would not qualify a work for a new edition. Theorizing something about Shakespeare and rewriting lots of lines in "Hamlet" to emphasize your point would make a new edition. In between those extremes is a grey area, where each new edition would have to be considered on a case-by-case basis.

A special case, that isn't quite a new edition, is when someone "marks up" a public domain text in, for example, HTML. Where this happens, the text is in the public domain, but the markup is copyrighted. We've already seen that when an editor adds footnotes to a public domain text, he owns copyright on the footnotes but not on the text: similarly, when he adds markup to the text, he owns copyright on the markup.

2. Translation Translation is a common and justified special case of a new edition. When someone translates a public domain work from one language to another, they get a new copyright on the translation (but not on the original, of course, which stays in the public domain so that lots more people can use it.)

I have a 1990 book that I know was originally written in 1840, but the publisher is claiming a new copyright. What should I do?

From a practical point of view, there's not much you can do about it. It's a Catch-22 situation: in order to prove that the new printing should be in the public domain, you need a provably public domain copy to compare against the allegedly copyrighted edition, and if you have that, you don't need the modern edition anyway.

I have a 1990 reprint of an 1831 original. Is it eligible?

Yes, as long as we can show that it is a reprint, which usually means that it has to say that it's a reprint somewhere on the TP&V.

However, we need to be very careful in a case like this. Commonly, the book itself is eligible, but introductions, indexes, footnotes, glossaries, commentaries and other such extras may have been added by the modern publisher, so you should not include them except where you can prove that they are part of the reprinted material.

I have a text that I know was based on a book older than 95 years, but I don't have the title page. Can I submit it to PG?

Unfortunately, no.

What you "know" isn't proof that we could take into court if we were challenged about it in 20 years, and the whole problem of "new copyright" (C.17) makes it effectively impossible to tell for sure what is and isn't copyrighted anyway, without reliable evidence like the title page.

You need to find a matching paper edition for proof. See [this FAQ entry](/wiki/Gutenberg:Volunteers%27_FAQ#V.62._I.27ve_found_an_eligible_text_elsewhere_on_the_Net.2C_but_it.27s_not_in_the_PG_archives._Can_I_just_submit_it_to_PG.3F" title="Gutenberg:Volunteers' FAQ).

How does Project Gutenberg "clear" books for copyright?

Usually, we just look at the TP&V. If it was published more than 95 years ago, or says it is a reprint of a edition from more than 95 years ago, that's all we have to do.

In other cases, we may look up library publication data to prove, say, that a book published in the U.S. without a copyright notice was indeed published in the years when a copyright notice was required. Or we may simply see that a particular text was published by the U.S. Government.

The bottom line is the question: if someone comes to us claiming to hold the copyright on a text, do we have proof to show that they're wrong?

Whatever proof or search we have to do, we then file it, either on paper or electronically, so that the proof will be available in 20 or 50 years' time, or whenever the challenge is made.

I want to produce a particular book. Will it be copyright cleared?

If it was published before 95 years ago, you will have no problem with its clearance. If you're relying on one of the other rules, it may just be too much work to try and prove its public domain status.

I have some extra material (images, introduction, preface, missing chapter) that should go into an existing PG text. Do I have to copyright-clear my edition before submitting it?

Yes.

Otherwise we would have no proof that the extra material you're adding isn't copyrighted by someone. It's quite common for modern publishers to add introductions or illustrations to a public-domain novel, and we need the same standard of proof for these additions that we do for the main text.

This doesn't apply to an occasional word or two that was omitted by mistake when the text was first typed. For example, you don't need to clear another edition just to restore the words "thus perfected the" and "eliminating all" to the sentence:

And while we Country, we were also sorts of tediums, disputable possibilities, and deadlocks from the game.

while fixing typos.

I see some Project Gutenberg eBooks that are copyrighted. What's up with that?

Authors or publishers may grant Project Gutenberg an unlimited license to republish their works. In this kind of case, the copyright holders still retain their rights, but grant permission for us to share these eBooks with the world. These copyrighted PG publications can still be copied, but the permissions granted are spelled out in their headers, and usually forbid anyone to republish them commercially.

What are "non-renewed" books?

Works published before 1964 needed to have their copyrights renewed in their 28th year, or they'd enter into the public domain. Some books originally published outside of the US by non-Americans are exempt from this requirement, under GATT. Some works from before 1964 were automatically renewed.

How can I get Project Gutenberg to clear a non-renewed book?

As of early 2004, you probably can't. Because of all of the checks we need to do to ensure that the book wasn't renewed, or wasn't one of the exceptions that was automatically renewed, we just don't have the time to do it. But we're working on it. In April 2004, with the help of hundreds of volunteers at Distributed Proofreaders, we finally posted all Copyright Renewal records for books from 1950 through 1977, and this will be a big help for checking non-renewals in future.