Comments on: Public Domain Day 2011: Will the tide be turned?

By: Debrah

Debrah — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 02:15:38 +0000

This free sharing of inrfomatoin seems too good to be true. Like communism.

By: TomoK

TomoK — Sun, 13 Mar 2011 01:19:20 +0000

Thanks for valuable information for me as author (of texts) and user (of texts and pictures). Looking forward for your next posts.

By: John Mark Ockerbloom

John Mark Ockerbloom — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 14:57:53 +0000

I’ve had a lot going on lately in my personal life, which has led to some breaks in updates for The Online Books Page (and this blog). You posted in one of those breaks; right now we’re in another.

You can expect to see new Online Books listings resume sometime around the start of March. I hope you’ll also see new posts here not long after.

By: John Mark Ockerbloom

John Mark Ockerbloom — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 14:49:07 +0000

The gifts I'm referring to in the post are dedications to the public domain. There are various ways you can do this; the CC0 website describes one common way of doing it.

By: ebook library

ebook library — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 00:10:22 +0000

Could you provide a link or some info as to where we could give gifts? I’d be interested in donating, but I’m not sure where to start. Thank you,

Brian

By: dudeman5685

dudeman5685 — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 04:33:23 +0000

Hey, when are we gonna get another update. The last time new books were added, Egypt was a stable American and Israeli ally;)

By: David Starner

David Starner — Sun, 09 Jan 2011 05:38:42 +0000

Opt-in copyright is probably more work than it’s worth. As a reuser, it’s a pain to handle any but the most simple material. Novels are pretty easy to check. For a non-fiction book, you have to check every picture; was this copyrighted separately, or first published elsewhere? (That’s not trivial in a life+x system, either.) Movies seem to be hard enough that few get them right; if the movie company wants it bad enough, it seems like there’s always music or screenplay or story they can assert copyright in.

On the flip side, it seems unfair in a naturalistic commercial way. There doesn’t seem to be much difference between the science fiction authors who renewed everything, and those who didn’t, except for careful record keeping. Asimov apparently missed one, just because it slipped through the cracks, and other authors missed more, despite an apparent intent to preserve their copyrights. The sets of books that end up in the PD due to non-renewal seem almost random. The Night of the Living Dead was never meant to be PD.

I think the recent Greg Bear / Project Gutenberg spat is notable here. Greg Bear is married to the daughter of Poul Anderson, and Project Gutenberg has posted several of Poul Anderson’s works. Greg Bear managed to get PG to take one down; the novel version of the short story was printed the same year and was renewed, and PG had missed it because there was no note in the copyright records that there was any connection between the two. Other files by Poul Anderson are going to continue to be on PG, much to Bear’s frustration. If instead of an opt-in copyright system, short but fair copyright durations were used across the board, we wouldn’t have this problem, and we would have a coherent set of works going into the PD each year.

By: Jodi Schneider

Jodi Schneider — Sun, 02 Jan 2011 21:49:47 +0000

“I’ve been practicing a self-imposed system of “formalities” myself over the last few years. On every Public Domain Day, I’ve been freeing published works of mine more than 14 years old, except for works where I explicitly opt to reserve copyright.” – Kudos, John!