Data-mining reveals that 80% of books published 1924-63 never had their copyrights renewed and are n

[morgandawn]

"PRE-’64 IN PUBLIC DOMAIN.

Boing Boing’s Cory Doctorow says “Data-mining reveals that 80% of books published 1924-63 never had their copyrights renewed and are now in the public domain”.

…But there’s another source of public domain works: until the 1976 Copyright Act, US works were not copyrighted unless they were registered, and then they quickly became public domain unless that registration was renewed….

…Now, Leonard Richardson (previously) has done the magic data-mining work to affirmatively determine which of the 1924-63 books are in the public domain, which turns out to be 80% of those books; what’s more, many of these books have already been scanned by the Hathi Trust (which uses a limitation in copyright to scan university library holdings for use by educational institutions, regardless of copyright status).

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To which I will add: up until March 1, 1989, items published without the requisite copyright notices are also in the public domain.*

What was required?

*the word “copyright”
*a “c” in a circle (©)
*the date of publication, and
*the name of either the author or the owner of all the copyright rights in the published work.

(c) or "All Rights Reserved (on its own)" do not meet the statutory requirements. "Copyr." does

*There was a grace period allowing publishers to fix any errors
**All the above applies to US law

Comments

[annezo]

I wonder if the online sites like Gutenberg are going to take advantage of this to release more books for download?

[morgandawn]

I think Gutenberg is. The Haithi Trust is not.

[tabaqui]

Wow, that is really interesting! And, frankly, yay! :D

I love 'Hathi' Trust. Hathi is the old bull elephant from The Jungle Books who never forgets anything.... :D