A huge number of books secretly made into the public domain have become electronic books and can be downloaded for free


by

Min An

Public domain refers to the state in which intellectual property rights related to copyrighted works and inventions have disappeared. People can freely obtain and use public domain creations. In the United States, there is a history that the copyright protection period has been extended one after another by Disney's lobbying activities that feared Mickey Mouse's public domain, but `` a large number of books were secretly made public domain secretly '' Reported by American media Vice .

Where to Download the Millions of Free eBooks that Secretly Entered the Public Domain
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/kz4e3e/millions-of-books-are-secretly-in-the-public-domain-you-can-download-them-free

The copyright protection period in the United States at the time of writing is basically the life of the author and up to 70 years after death. Therefore, it is necessary to use libraries etc. to read works published so far for free, but in fact, in the United States `` many books published before 1964 '' do not wait 70 years after the author's death It has become public domain.

The copyright protection period for books published before 1963 is 28 years from publication, and in order to apply the extension of the protection period following the revision of the Copyright Act, the author or publisher must I had to apply for an extension. However, many authors and publishers did not follow this procedure, and some books were silently expired during the period until 1991, 28 years after the publication of the 1963 book. It seems to have become. Books published after 1964 are subject to the extension of the copyright protection period from 1992, and the protection period is automatically extended.

It is difficult to find out which books are actually excluded from copyright protection by extension application, and the existence of books that have been secretly made public domain for many years has been overlooked. Therefore, the New York Public Library converted the catalog information subject to copyright protection into data, analyzed it, and collated it with actual books to determine which books published before 1963 were out of copyright. .


by Thomas Hawk

Due to the large-scale efforts, the New York Public Library was excluded from 1923 and 1963, except for books before 1922, all in the public domain, and books after 1964 that are definitely subject to copyright protection. Analyzes the copyright status of books published during the period. As a result, it was found that 80% of the books surveyed were in the public domain, and more books were quietly available for free than people thought.

Digital libraries such as ' The Hathi Trust ' and ' Standard Ebooks ' have already begun to publish electronic versions of books that are newly found to be public domain. Also, Los Angeles blogger and programmer Leonard Richardson has created a secretly public domain mastodon ( miniblog ) account that sends information on public domain books uploaded online.

Secretly Public Domain (@ SecretlyPublicDomain @ botsin.space)-botsin.space



Richardson says, “Public domain is for everyone” “Public domain creation is really important in a world where most of the popular culture is owned by a small number of companies. You free public domain books And can be used without permission for their own creations, and if someone publishes an electronic copy of a public domain work, it could be lost from the world rather than a copyrighted work 'It will be lower.'

Researchers have pointed out the fact that “the copyright protection period that is too long promotes the“ disappearance ”of old books”. Copyright protection hinders the free publishing of books, leading to the forgotten old books that have not gained public popularity. Like this time, as public domain books are released on the web one after another, old books that have not been looked after may come into the spotlight from a modern perspective.

Protection by copyright does not spread books but conversely `` disappears ''-gigazine



A 20-year extension of the copyright protection period is almost confirmed with the establishment of the TPP-related bill, while enormous data showing that the extension is bad is released-GIGAZINE



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