You may wonder why the free e-books that Distributed Proofreaders provides to Project Gutenberg are primarily older ones. That's because they can make only public domain books available to the public. "Public domain" means that anyone can legally use the work for any purpose without having to get a copyright holder's permission or to pay royalties. Karyn A. Temple, former United States Register of Copyrights, described the public domain as "part of copyright's lifecycle, the next stage of life for that creative work. The public domain is an inherent and integral part of the copyright system. . . . It provides authors the inspiration and raw material to create something new."
In the United States, copyright protection generally lasts for a period of 95 years for books published prior to 1978. This means that works published in 1927 and earlier are, as of this writing, automatically in the public domain. For works published in the United States before January 1, 1964, however, copyright renewal - a legal process that extends copyright protection for an additional 28 years - was required. Works published before that date whose copyrights were not renewed by the end of their 28th year entered the public domain.
As an example, if a work was published on December 1, 1963, a copyright extension could be granted to November 30, 1991. If the extension was not renewed, the work would enter the public domain on December 1, 1991.
There are a few exceptions to the copyright renewal requirement. For example, works published by the United States Government are not subject to copyright, so renewal is unnecessary. Additionally, works published by authors who died before the end of the 28th year from the work's publication date are automatically renewed from the date of their death for 28 years, for the benefit of their heirs. And copyright renewal does not affect the automatic public domain status of works published more than 95 years ago.
For works published before January 1, 1964, but after the current 95-year public domain date, the Copyright Renewal summaries produced by Distributed Proofreaders and posted to Project Gutenberg can help determine whether a work's copyright was not renewed, placing the work in the public domain. That enables Distributed Proofreaders and Project Gutenberg to make the work freely available to the public, like Margaret Sanger: An Autobiography, by Margaret Sanger, published in 1938, and All in the Day's Work: An Autobiography, by Ida M. Tarbell, published in 1939, whose copyrights were not renewed.
Copyright renewal summaries have also proven valuable to other important cultural repositories. HathiTrust, a large nonprofit digital library, recently asked Distributed Proofreaders to prepare a series of artwork copyright renewals from 1965 to 1977. Their team started the process by providing an initial round of proofreading and were extremely grateful for Distributed Proofreaders' help in preparing these renewal summaries for posting to Project Gutenberg. Among the lovely works that HathiTrust was able to release based on that renewal information are Four Seasons in Your Garden, by John C. Wister, illustrated by Natalie Harlan Davis (1938), and Flipper: A Sea-Lion, by Irma S. Black, illustrated by Glen Rounds (1940).
As with all copyright issues, there are complexities to copyright renewals. In order to make certain that a work is in the public domain, Project Gutenberg has established requirements for copyright clearances based on non-renewal, termed "Rule 6 clearances." Volunteers seeking clearance under this rule must thoroughly research several things:
- the author's nationality, pen name, date of death if applicable, and other biographical information;
- the date and location the work was first published and other details such as serialization, alternate titles, inclusion in collections, etc.;
- whether and when there were any copyright renewals.
Complete information about this and all of Project Gutenberg's copyright rules can be found on their Copyright How-To page.
All the U.S. copyright renewal volumes that Distributed Proofreaders volunteers have created, proofread, and posted to Project Gutenberg can be found here.
This post was contributed by Richard Tonsing, a Distributed Proofreaders volunteer.
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