Some Books that Aren't in the Public Domain (and why)

[mightyfelix]

EDIT: I'm not a library but is it possible to become an associate of HatiTrust?

I'm not sure I understand what you're asking. Do you mean on a personal basis? I think you'd have to be associated with some university or other similar organization. Or do you mean... Glorious thought! That we could try to get them to recognize LV as an associate organization? That would certainly be worth while, but I wouldn't know how to set about it.

[philchenevert]

EDIT: I'm not a library but is it possible to become an associate of HatiTrust?

I'm not sure I understand what you're asking. Do you mean on a personal basis? I think you'd have to be associated with some university or other similar organization. Or do you mean... Glorious thought! That we could try to get them to recognize LV as an associate organization? That would certainly be worth while, but I wouldn't know how to set about it.

I meant on a personal basis, like I just joined Distributed Proofreaders as a lurker. Obviously that is not possible for Hathitrust. Perhaps they might recognize LV as a library of sorts but reading their rules for joining, it is not promising.

[czandra]

I'd like to do the "Doctrine of Discovery" in English. Papal bull in Latin from 1493 (in the news now). Does anyone know if this is public domain:
https://www.gilderlehrman.org/sites/default/files/inline-pdfs/T-04093.pdf

Czandra

[barleyguy]

I'd like to do the "Doctrine of Discovery" in English. Papal bull in Latin from 1493 (in the news now). Does anyone know if this is public domain:
https://www.gilderlehrman.org/sites/default/files/inline-pdfs/T-04093.pdf

Czandra

The translation would need to be clearly marked as having a date of 1926 or earlier. When a work is translated the translation gets a new copyright.

If you can find a scan with a copyright date of 1926 or earlier it would be considered PD.

[barleyguy]

I'd like to do the "Doctrine of Discovery" in English. Papal bull in Latin from 1493 (in the news now). Does anyone know if this is public domain:
https://www.gilderlehrman.org/sites/default/files/inline-pdfs/T-04093.pdf

Czandra

The translation would need to be clearly marked as having a date of 1926 or earlier. When a work is translated the translation gets a new copyright.

If you can find a scan with a copyright date of 1926 or earlier it would be considered PD.

So, it appears that there was a translation done in 1917 by Carnegie as part of the book "European Treaties...". There is a Wikisource page for it that clearly marks it as public domain.

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/European_Treaties_bearing_on_the_History_of_the_United_States_and_its_Dependencies_to_1648

The "Doctrine of Discovery" is "Bull Inter Caetera", and is Chapter 7 of that book.

An admin should probably confirm, but I believe if you read from that source, it is legitimately public domain.

Cheers,

Harley.

[TriciaG]

Going off what you posted, I found this on Archive: https://archive.org/details/europeantreaties01daveuoft/page/70/mode/2up

Copyright 1917 and translators died in 1944 or earlier, so PD in the USA and in Canada/Europe/Australia.

[czandra]

thanks Tricia. I did record 3 papal bulls for non-fiction collection.

Cz

[slinkywrench]

https://theeggandtherock.substack.com/p/i-wrote-a-story-for-a-friend

The End Narrative from Minecraft is declared to be in the public domain via CC0. Now I will have to wait and see if Microsoft/Mojang will challenge him on copyright. Hopefully we can do a recording for here.

[TriciaG]

https://theeggandtherock.substack.com/p/i-wrote-a-story-for-a-friend

The End Narrative from Minecraft is declared to be in the public domain via CC0. Now I will have to wait and see if Microsoft/Mojang will challenge him on copyright. Hopefully we can do a recording for here.

Has it been "traditionally published" (i.e. not just online, or self-publishing)? That's the other criterion.

[NicoleJLeBoeuf]

https://theeggandtherock.substack.com/p/i-wrote-a-story-for-a-friend

The End Narrative from Minecraft is declared to be in the public domain via CC0. Now I will have to wait and see if Microsoft/Mojang will challenge him on copyright. Hopefully we can do a recording for here.

Has it been "traditionally published" (i.e. not just online, or self-publishing)? That's the other criterion.

A lot of "traditional publishing" is "just online" - many of the big names in science fiction and fantasy publishing are online-only publications, for instance. (It's gonna be fun when online-only stuff ages into the public domain, won't it? Totally new frontier. I wonder what the internet will look like in 95 years?)

The poem that slinkywrench is talking about was incorporated into a very popular video game published by Mojang and then bought by Microsoft, so it's definitely not self-published. At the same time, according to the author, they never signed over the rights to the work to Mojang, who just... used the text anyway, I guess, trusting they'd get away with it? So the author retained the rights and was able to declare it a gift to the public domain late last year. (Seriously, check out the link that slinkywrench provided. It's a wild ride. And then this happened, which didn't change anything about the poem's public domain status but definitely demonstrates the power of big corporations.)

It's a very powerful piece, emotionally. I salute anyone who can manage to narrate it without choking up at the end. That aside, it would make a lovely DR with a cast of two.

[czandra]

Sounds like things are shifting. I understood that an author cannot give to public domain for LV purposes. Not definitive enough, author has to be 70 years dead or 95 years since published.

Small note: William Blake might be one of the most notoriously self-published authors, but there were many more who are now part of "the canon" who at least started that way and were not published "traditionally" by a publisher at arm's length until after death. Poets suffer this fate as an occupational hazard.

Cz

[flavo5000]

Sounds like things are shifting. I understood that an author cannot give to public domain for LV purposes. Not definitive enough, author has to be 70 years dead or 95 years since published.

Small note: William Blake might be one of the most notoriously self-published authors, but there were many more who are now part of "the canon" who at least started that way and were not published "traditionally" by a publisher at arm's length until after death. Poets suffer this fate as an occupational hazard.

Cz

I don't know all the history of what has or has not been allowed on here, but it should all be tied to which Creative Commons license is granted. Often when an author declares their work to be in the public domain, they are invoking the non-commercial Creative Commons license which prevents users of the work from leveraging it for commercial purposes (selling it for instance). In this particular case, the Minecraft End Poem is granted in the CC0 1.0 Universal license which waives all rights to commercial use, effectively granting it the same status as if the work were 95 years old, meaning it is completely in the public domain with no strings attached.

Also as far as whether this is a published work, I would say being the ending of one of the most successful video games of all time qualifies as being "published", maybe not in the traditional sense of having a physical book released but I would wager far more people have read this ending than 90% of the books that have been recorded on Librivox.

Also just FYI, I have zero interest in recording this myself, but I have gotten very interested in copyright law in recent months, so this sort of thing just fascinates me.

[redrun]

Another question along these same lines of "publication" is what license the community podcast uses.

Listening to beginning and end of a few of the more recent episodes, I don't hear the public domain disclaimer.
The planning thread calls for contributions of readings of PD text, and gives PD music and other resources, but also asks for opinions and other speeches by the "correspondents" themselves.

Lack of a disclaimer might suggest that the podcast itself is under copyright protection, though of course the readings of PD texts can be separately released to PD by their readers...

But returning to the topic, if there's a sister project that could handle Creative Commons or "not published with an ISBN" works, that would be interesting to know. The same way there's Legamus for recording works that are PD in Euorope and elsewhere, but not in the US. Or perhaps such works could be done as "special" projects in a similar way to the podcast, and released under the most permissive license the text allows for.

[mightyfelix]

But returning to the topic, if there's a sister project that could handle Creative Commons or "not published with an ISBN" works, that would be interesting to know.

There is Internet Archive. You would be on your own there, rather than there being a community already existing like we have here, but you can record and upload something like this directly to IA using a Creative Commons license.

[annise]

If you register at Internet Archive and read their instructions you do anything they will let you do - it will not however be part of LibriVox in any way.
There have been other sites that accepted self-published works but I have never used them.

Anne