If I came across an old book that Google has indexed and wanted to put it online word for word is that legal since the copyright expired? Or are some other rules protecting it?
*I have no interest in this other that a question I thought about when I was reading a scanned book in Googles book archives. How much nicer it would be in text format of some kind.
You may want to check out Project Gutenberg and see what you can find out. They have about 18,000 public-domain books online in plain text format, free for the downloading. They have a whole FAQ concerning copyright clearances and if they don’t have that book already, you can volunteer to submit it.
Assuming it is in the public domain (which it is if the copyright has expired), this is fine. Nobody owns it, so nobody can prevent anyone else from doing anything with that content.
Are you sure that the copyright has expired? For most practical purposes that would put the book from 1922 or earlier.
If it is that old, then as everyone says it’s in the public domain and you’re free to reprint it as you wish.
Yes it was from 1911, and as far as I know Google only allows “full” indexing of the books if it is not under copyright.
Jet Jaguar, thanks that’s very interesting I didn’t know that. This just crossed my mind as I was reading a copy of a book in scanned (JPG?) version, very hard on my eyes.
Derleth That’s shocking, I assumed that they would still have some sort of protection as to stop someone from retyping the whole thing. But thanks to Jet, I won’t have to strain the eyes to read some oldies.
Yeah, PG is great. You can goof off at work and everyone will think you’re busy. (shh, don’t tell…)
Why is it shocking? Nowadays you get the better part of a century (and sometimes more) to make money off your creation. That sounds long enough for me.
–Cliffy
But not to people like Rep. Bono, who is oft-quoted as (reputedly) saying:
If this is accurate, then :rolleyes: , otherwise :smack:
From the U.S. Copyright Office:
So, it’s possible that a work published as late as 1963 is now in the public domain. If it was published 1950-1963, the work’s renewal should be in the Copyright Office’s online database of registrations and renewals.
Who do you think should own the plays of Shakespeare? How about Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales? Those are rhetorical questions, of course: Those works belong to all of us, as a culture, not to anyone in specific. The public domain forms the foundation of our culture, and our culture forms the foundation of our very civilization. It is shocking that someone should have the temerity to try and keep works out of the public domain for longer than the lifespan of the author.
But here we get into GD territory, or possibly The BBQ Pit.
The author’s spouse should not be able to get any royalty after the author’s death? You’re a mean one, Mr. Grinch!
I actually figured it was kept as long as the family kept an interest in it. I was wrong. That’s what the SD is all about and it fought my ignorance of the law’s.