There are vast quantities of public domain books freely available online, Gutenberg.org, Archive.org, standardebooks.org to name three. The latter in particular emphasizes careful production and proper editing, in effect republishing old books in modern editions, but not on paper.
I guess I can see how a person might want to promote some old book whose present-day relevance is being overlooked, but the utility of actually printing hardcopy seems minimal.
> This can’t be true, I thought again. How can one limit me from singing a song at the park I heard earlier?
When we talk about policies for things like copyright we must always acknowledge this problem. Copyright is a way to fund art and in some ways it's been remarkably successful at that. But it was conceived as an intentional abridgement of our natural freedom to share, in order to reward creators. If we can keep it like that, it doesn't need to be ludicrously long term like it is today. And infringement absolutely should not be a criminal act like it is in some countries or trade pacts.
This is my friend Theo (https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=sirodoht)! He always does cool stuff like this. He even gifted me a copy of the book on that page, you should buy a copy to support him, like I didn't.
I like public domain books and how the net makes them more accessible.
I have recently come across an annoying and somewhat genuine issue
when it comes to translated books.
For example, "Nietzsche Beyond Good and Evil."
I picked up a PD version and started reading.
After 4 pages I gave up.
I could not figure out how anyone could find this tolerable,
or even a well written book, and for some a classic.
Turns out that there are several translations of the book
and not all of them are public domain and for no reason
I can think of the PD version is usually the worst translation.
There is a quite a bit older translation (so also PD) that is
a fairly decent one. (But the English used in it is old fashioned).
Then you have the problem with a lot of books, do you translate it
word for word to try and keep the translation as close to the original
as possible (good for some studies),
or do you write what the translator thinks the author meant.(much more readable)
After spending far too much time reading reviews of translations online,
I went to a large bookstore and sampled what they had (far from all).
Given that I am fluent in Norwegian and now live in Norway I tried a
Norwegian translation and in my opinion it was the best.
Norwegian is much closer to German than English which helps the translator.
Still billions speak English so one would think the best translation would
be in English.
Still some of the magic is missing.
Nietzsche when read in German has a certain rhythm to it.
I speak a tiny bit of German and reading (with assistance) the first few
pages allowed me to see it.
Reading the whole thing in German would take me years.
I stick with the Norwegian one.
I want to read some of the great Russian authors next and I am not
looking forward to trying to learn what the best translations are
and if its better in English or Norwegian.
When I was learning Spanish, I read LOTR in translation. That was some of the worst prose I've ever read. Tolkien wasn't a great writer, but that really took the life out of the books.
Look at Bible translations: there's a new one for every generation, even though it looses the (IMO) very important aspect of tradition. Translations age, some quite badly. Chances are, your Nietschze translation was written for an audience with a rather different language use. That might be the reason why the PD translations are so stiff.
There are also literary choices: do you want to stay as close to the original text as possible, or do you want to convey to a modern audience the impression the text might have made on its audience 150 years ago?
I've read tens of thousands of books, and probably that length more in short stories and prose. I can't make it past page 150 of the two towers.
As a rational human being, I feel like 45 pages of "they walked past a tree. They walked past another tree. They ate food. They walked past a tree. This tree was interesting because it was 3.4 centimeters taller than the last 46 trees they passed by. Let's sit and eat lunch and talk about this tree. The tree is a tree. Yep. Just like that tree over there. And if you look past that tree, a little to the left, down the rolling glade and just over the tree topped hill, you will see another tree, and next to that tree is a tree that one time a treant leaned against in the middle of his 45 hour long conversation with the tree that I mentioned to look past to see the tree that the treeant leaned against, and the contents of that 45 hour conversation was basically the treeant saying his full name to the tree, not hearing a response, and then saying it again, only this time, he didn't hear a response, but then he realized that he was just talking to a tree and not a treeant, which made him sad, so he told the first second tree, the tree he was leaning on, that we are talking about now, that the fact that the second first tree was not a treant made him sad, before he realized, oh, silly goose, I've done it again! I'm talking to trees like a looney. I had better stop talking to trees before the other treants lock me away."
His themes are great, but Tolkien is not exactly a riveting writer. It's so bad that the only way I was able to make it through the the movie of the two towers was by making out with my girlfriend for the boring parts, which, let's face it, was the middle 2 hours.
The two towers gave me narcolepsy and genital friction burn.
I don't believe it is possible under US law to "relinquish all copyrights". Merely asserting something is in the public domain does not make it so.
For instance, I could write a book today and do so... and people are probably safe to do what they want with it. Then tomorrow, when I croak, my family still retains copyright for the next 95 years. They might decide that this is their golden ticket, and everyone who continues to publish it would be in trouble (past actions shouldn't be sanctionable... while alive, I essentially gave license to do so).
Even if something is legitimately within the public domain, the courts (in the US) have at times decided to yank works out back out and give them as gifts to the various big licensing regimes (ASCAP, if I remember correctly).
Nope, you're incorrect. It is certainly possible in the United States to put something in the public domain by dedication. It may not be possible in some other countries, but in the US, case law supports the right to dedicate something to the public domain.
The CC-Zero waiver is a dedication to the public domain combined with a fallback provision.
> For instance, I could write a book today and do so... and people are probably safe to do what they want with it. Then tomorrow, when I croak, my family still retains copyright for the next 95 years. They might decide that this is their golden ticket, and everyone who continues to publish it would be in trouble (past actions shouldn't be sanctionable... while alive, I essentially gave license to do so).
If you did not grant an actual license with specific terms, then your reusers are SOL. If you did grant a license with specific terms, then your heirs still have to honor those terms. If you dedicated the work to the public domain, then the work is not copyrighted and your heirs can't do anything about it.
Also, copyrights for works created in 1978 or later are not publication+95 (except for works for hire), but life+70.
> Even if something is legitimately within the public domain, the courts (in the US) have at times decided to yank works out back out and give them as gifts to the various big licensing regimes (ASCAP, if I remember correctly).
The only instance of this happening in the US was the URAA (which was not tied to licensing regimes, but to international pressure to "restore" copyright in works published outside the US which had not complied with the pre-1989 notice requirement). It took an act of Congress, by the way.
Contrast this with the EU's early-1990s 20-year retroactive extension of copyrights.
The Sqlite team has absolutely retained lawyers to advise on how to achieve this.
Stanford has a clear page on fair use and the public domain, and specifically cited 'dedication' as one of the four most common ways for a work to arrive in public domain.
I'm just a random internet guy, but I've studied copyright for 25 years since it's a hobby of mine, and I'm not aware of any basis for your statements in this thread to the effect that works in the U.S. can't be put in the public domain. I'm aware of a lot of counterexamples, however, and I thought it was worth citing one here.
Their page lists the 4 ways for a work to go into the public domain:
1. The copyright expires.
2. The copyright expires because it wasn't renewed.
3. They dedicate it to the public domain, and then wait for the copyright to expire.
4. Was never eligible for copyright.
So, SQLite's almost got it done... they just have to wait the better part of a century, and their quest to put it into the public domain will have succeeded.
> They dedicate it to the public domain, and then wait for the copyright to expire.
That's not what it says. You've fabricated the part about letting the copyright expire.
From that page:
> If, upon viewing a work, you see words such as, “This work is dedicated to the public domain,” then it is free for you to use. Sometimes an author deliberately chooses not to protect a work and dedicates the work to the public.
It may be free to use... that's not the same as "in the public domain".
And I did not fabricate it. It was directly from your link, without so much as scrolling. They have a 4 point list of ways for things to be in the public domain (and it's bad... like "wasn't renewed" is identical to "letting copyright expire", just because the law previously allowed renewal doesn't make that a special category).
> Sometimes an author deliberately chooses not to protect a work
Which isn't public domain. It's something else entirely.
When a work is in the public domain, the author can't choose to protect it. Only the government can do this, and they made no provision for authors to choose to put works in the public domain.
If the author can change his mind (or his descendants), then it is not and never was in the public domain. It is an important distinction, one which failure to understand it has the potential to cause grief.
An author dedicating the work to the public domain, which is the same as giving up their copyright rights, absolutely puts the work into the public domain, regardless of whether the copyright term has expired.
This time from Cornell Law:
> Once that period of time expires, or if the creator failed to comply with any legal formalities required at the time of creation or thereafter, the work enters the public domain - meaning it belongs to everyone, without restriction. The creator may also decide before the expiration of copyright to dedicate the work to the public domain, giving that new creation to the public to use.
The author cannot 'change their mind' in this case: the rights, once given up, cannot be reinstated.
There is a sharp edge here with collections of public domain works being copyrightable, but that's a separate issue, and does not affect the public domain status of the contituent works.
I guess I can see how a person might want to promote some old book whose present-day relevance is being overlooked, but the utility of actually printing hardcopy seems minimal.