
Millions of Books Are Secretly in the Public Domain - walterbell
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/kz4e3e/millions-of-books-are-secretly-in-the-public-domain-you-can-download-them-free
======
crazygringo
Previous discussion from 4 days ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20591071](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20591071)

(Although this one is a proper news article, and that was a blog post.)

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jawns
This is huge, especially because of the 20-year freeze that just thawed.

On Jan. 1, 2019, all books, movies, and music published in 1923 entered the
public domain. It was the first time since the 1990s that anything new entered
the public domain, because Congress had extended the length of copyright
protection.

If, as the article says, about 80 percent of books published between 1923 and
1964 are also in the public domain, then it's as if 40 years of creative works
just came crashing through like a tidal wave to wipe out that 20-year draught!

And perhaps even more important than free access to the works themselves is
the ability to adapt and transform these works without restriction. Think
about all of the characters from those books that can now become the stars of
new stories!

One thing worth pointing out, however, is that the 80 percent of books that
did not have their copyright terms renewed are likely to be books that were
not commercially successful, so their authors or designees had no strong
financial interest in keeping the copyright protected. So don't expect to find
many of the most famous works published during this period in the list.
Nevertheless, I would not be surprised if there are some true gems that, for
whatever reason, did not have their copyright terms renewed, and I'm excited
to try to find them!

~~~
jcranmer
Those books would have been in the public domain even before 2000.

One of the good things about the 1976 copyright reform is that the copyright
was simplified so that figuring out the copyright status merely requires you
to know the death date of the author instead of trying to track down if
various procedures were formally followed (I'd have preferred that it be a
fixed term to make it even simpler, but it's still a simplification). To give
you an idea of how complicated the older status can be, the copyright
flowcharts that you see are basically a manifestation of "was this work
copyrighted as of the copyright act taking effect?" (e.g.,
[https://copyright.cornell.edu/publicdomain](https://copyright.cornell.edu/publicdomain)).
Eventually, when the copyright clock ticks down on the intermediate period
(and assuming no other copyright acts get passed to retroactively lengthen
those periods), the determination will boil down to "death of author plus 70
years, or 95 years from publishing, or 120 years from creation."

~~~
benj111
"merely requires you to know the death date of the author"

That's a pretty big merely!

I can't tell you whether some obscure book is PD just by looking at the book.
At worst you're basically working out when and if someone died just based on
their name. Quick is Joe Blogs alive or dead?

Then there's the question of who the author is. I believe theres been a court
case over Anne Franks diaries and whether her father was an author.

Edit: Maybe not a court case [https://solargeneral.org/anne-frank-diary-co-
authored-by-her...](https://solargeneral.org/anne-frank-diary-co-authored-by-
her-father/)

~~~
jcranmer
As I said, I'm not a fan of the "life plus N years" copyright term, but that's
what the world has settled on (see Berne copyright convention--note that the
life+50 is present at least as early as 1908, maybe as far back as 1886).

In the US, the law essentially requires that copyright owners need to
explicitly inform the Copyright Office of the author's death date, or at least
of evidence that the author was alive at a given point of time. Without that
evidence, there is a complete defense that the 95/120 term is in effect. (See
[https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/302](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/302)).

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blihp
It is sad that Copyright, working closer to how it was originally intended,
gets spun as 'a quirk'. Copyright is _supposed_ to expire after a period of
time rather than exist in perpetuity for the sole benefit of Copyright
holders.

~~~
lukifer
> for the sole benefit of Copyright holders

One can debate the moral and philosophical issues of property rights until the
cows come home, but in the case of copyrights, the legal construct is
unambiguously not intended exclusively to protect natural rights or incomes
for creators, but instead "To promote the progress of science and useful
arts".

The real challenge is that there's no inherent bright line or Schelling
focus[0] that defines where that balance lies, between fair compensation to
creators, and unlocking that artificial monopoly for We The People. Death of
the author comes closest, but that could also leave families stranded after an
untimely passing of a creative breadwinner. Death of the author + 18-25
(protecting income for dependents), might be the least worst. I'd be
interested in hearing arguments for other durations; I don't see an obvious
answer.

(It's also curious that copyrights use the language of rights, which are
typically thought to be inalienable, yet are transferrable as economic assets
in ways that most other rights are not. Not saying that's good or bad, just
noteworthy.)

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focal_point_(game_theory)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focal_point_\(game_theory\))

~~~
dredmorbius
You're arguing rationale, blihp is arguing effect.

You're both correct, FWIW.

The bright line has been researched by economists, based on present-value
theory, and _at time of publication_ there's little reason for duration to
exceed the 14-28 years under original US copyright law.

The problem is for popular works in the catalogue, a minuscule fraction of the
total, for which copyright perpetuities are highly lucrative. As well as the
general publishing industry incentive for creating a vast and potentially
legally catastrophic level of FUD around virtually all stale works, regardless
of actual copyright status.

------
mcguire
I may be desperately confused, but as far as I can tell, the Hathi Trust does
not make any of the books publicly available.

One example from the Secretly Public Domain list
([https://botsin.space/@SecretlyPublicDomain](https://botsin.space/@SecretlyPublicDomain)):
"The course of Europe since Waterloo [by] Walter Phelps Hall [and] William
Stearns Davis."
([https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/008232465](https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/008232465))
The catalog page only allows search

" _This item is not available online ( Limited - search only) due to copyright
restrictions._

" _You can try to find this item in a library or search in this text to find
the frequency and page number of specific words and phrases. This can be
especially useful to help you decide if the book is worth buying, checking out
from a library, etc._ "
([https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.$b740539](https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.$b740539))

Even things which are currently acknowledged to be in the public domain are
not downloadable without a "partner login" (although they can be viewed):
[https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015031485447&vi...](https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015031485447&view=1up&seq=5)

So this is great news and would be better if there were a usable interface to
the copyright registration information, it doesn't materially improve the
situation.

~~~
ilaksh
Partner login? Makes me think we should just bypass Haithi and use scribd or
some pirate site.

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dalbasal
Such a long copyright protection period seems insane to me. The added economic
incentive for creating stuff today, given the current length of copyright and
the risk that the law will change between then and now... it rounds to 0.

~~~
sandworm101
Copyright term has nothing to do with incentive for creativity. It isn't about
new works. Copyright gets extended so that _past_ works don't fall out of
copyright. Google the "mickey mouse copyright extension" graph. The last thing
Disney will ever accept is allowing any version of Mickey to become public
domain. Next on the list are things like the early Elvis/Beatles recordings.
Copyright is extended not to protect future works in the hands of creators,
but to allow past works to be monetized by the descendants of those creators.

~~~
jcranmer
The Steamboat Willie shorts will go public domain on January 1, 2024 under
current law--if they are not already in public domain due to Disney failing to
observe all the proper copyright steps (this is alleged, but has never been
argued, successfully or otherwise, in a court). If Disney desires to extend
copyright to keep Mickey Mouse from slipping to the pubic domain, they are
rapidly running out of time to do so.

I strongly suspect that next decade will see Mickey Mouse fall into the public
domain.

~~~
mgbennet
One oddity regarding characters is that the only thing that becomes public
domain is the character as portrayed in that public domain material. In the
case of Mickey, that means only his appearance in Steamboat Willie would
become public domain in 2024, with more material being released to the public
domain each year. What that entails is... sort of confusing, I think, and will
come down to individual cases. Depending on how it is used, a post-2024
portrayal of Mickey might be a copyright violation or might not be.

Additionally, Mickey is also trademarked, which lasts forever as long as it is
used commercially by the owner. So the mouse's likeness is not likely to be
public domain as long as the Disney company exists and continues to use it.

------
lmkg
I wonder what the economic ramifications of this will be. While the article
mentions free volunteer sources, I expect that in short order we're going to
see a large number of these books available from commercial vendors for cheap
or free. In fact, I fully expect there to be a cottage industry of publishers
trawling the new public domain for hidden gems, and churning them out as cheap
paperbacks for physical stores. And e-book stores will be giving away public-
domain books as incentives to sign up for their services.

I wonder if we'll start seeing an explosion of film or TV series based on
newly-free IP.

~~~
maxerickson
There's already way more ideas than funds for television, in part because
there's not really that many people that can reliably take an idea and turn it
into good entertainment.

I am fully aware that demand from on demand services has created somewhat of a
golden age of series television. It's still limited by funding, not ideas.

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dvduval
I'm excited to see that it is not only English. There is a large trove of
books in Chinese which I have been studying daily for The last 5 years. This
is my favorite story on Ycombinator in quite some time.

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billfruit
Does this mean for the whole world or just for citizens of the USA?

~~~
lmkg
The United States has bilateral copyright agreements with a number of nations.
So... probably most of the whole world, but the actual reality is complicated.
So complicated, in fact, that the number in "a number of nations" is not
currently determined.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilateral_copyright_agreements...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilateral_copyright_agreements_of_the_United_States)

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ilaksh
[http://gen.lib.rus.ec/](http://gen.lib.rus.ec/) In case something is public
domain but you can't find a download. That seems to have a huge mount of PDFs.
Including public domain and not public domain. But there seems to be a lot of
public domain now that is hard to find on 'legit' sites.

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ilaksh
I searched for science fiction in subject on Haithi after 1955 and it said
only 3 were available for full view because the others were copyrighted.
Except many of them weren't copyrighted, they just wrote that inaccurately.

~~~
ilaksh
[http://gen.lib.rus.ec/](http://gen.lib.rus.ec/) Found a ton on here -- would
need to cross reference with public domain

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_zachs
Any recommendation for books to read?

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faissaloo
Does anyone have any recommendations?

~~~
ss2003
The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester.

