[cc-community] Finding PD content on Gutenberg

drew Roberts zotz at 100jamz.com
Mon Feb 11 08:59:40 EST 2008


On Monday 11 February 2008 09:01:27 Terry Hancock wrote:
> Chris Watkins wrote:
> > I've discovered that Gutenberg.org includes material marked as
> > copyrighted. So, as part of Appropedia's Public Domain
> > Search<http://www.appropedia.org/Appropedia%27s_Public_Domain_Search>,
> > I need a filtered search of Gutenberg.org.
>
> What you might be running into is the fact that Gutenberg.org website
> content is under a standard "all rights reserved" license and the file
> header information is under a "verbatim copies only" license.  Only the
> contained public domain work is actually public domain material.
>
> So, Gutenberg contains George MacDonald's "Princess and Curdie", which
> is PD. But the header data at the top of the file that says "This is a
> Project Gutenberg e-text... [blah blah blah]" is copyright Project
> Gutenberg and therefore NOT PD (and therefore so is the entire file if
> left as-is).  In order to get the PD work, you have to strip out all of
> the Project Gutenberg stuff at the beginning.

There is perhaps that, but I feel certain there is more to it that that as 
well. They do have some copyright works.

 http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:No_Cost_or_Freedom%3F

"Fortunately almost all Project Gutenberg ebooks are free of charge and free 
as in freedom."

"A few Project Gutenberg ebooks are copyrighted. You can tell by reading the 
license inside the book. You may download a copyrighted book and give copies 
away, but might be limited in commercial uses and derivative works."

also...

"Copyright for most of these books has expired in the United States. (They may 
still be copyrighted in other countries). So anybody may make verbatim or 
non-verbatim copies of those works."

So people not in the US need to be aware of this.
>
> Cheers,
> Terry

all the best,

drew


More information about the cc-community mailing list