Starting at midnight on January 1, tens of thousands of books (as well as movies, songs, and cartoons) entered the public domain, meaning that people can download, share, or repurpose these works for free and without retribution under US copyright law.
Per the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998, “corporate” creations (like Mickey Mouse) can be restricted under copyright law for 120 years. But per an amendment to the act, works published between 1923 and 1977 can enter the public domain 95 years after their creation. This means that this is the first year since 1998 that a large number of works have entered the public domain.
Basically, 2019 marks the first time a huge quantity of books published in 1923 — including works by Virginia Woolf, Agatha Christie, and Robert Frost — have become legally downloadable since digital books became a thing. It’s a big deal — the Internet Archive had a party in San Francisco to celebrate. Next year, works from 1924 will enter the public domain, and so-on.
So, how do you actually download these books?
It largely depends on what site you go to, and if you can’t find a book on one site, you can probably find it on another. For instance, ReadPrint.com, as well as The Literature Network (mostly major authors), and Librivox (audio books), Authorama (all in the public domain), and over a dozen other sites all have vast selections of free ebooks.
There’s also a handful of archiving projects that are doing extensive work to digitize books, journals, music, and other forms of media. A blog post from Duke University’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain listed some of the most recognizable works published in 1923, as well as links to download these books on digital archiving projects Internet Archive, HathiTrust, and the Gutenberg Project. The books include:
In total HathiTrust, a massive digital archiving project, has also uploaded more than 53,000 works published in 1923 that just entered the public domain. Over 17,650 of them are books written in English. Similarly, Internet Archive has already uploaded over 15,000 works written in English that year.
If you’re interested in academic papers, Reddit user nemobis also uploaded over 1.5 million PDF files of works published in academic journals before 1923. Your best bet for actually finding something you want to read in there is to know which academic paper you’re looking for beforehand and check the paper’s DOI number. Then, search for the DOI in one of nemobis’s lists of works — one list includes works published until 1909, the other includes works published until 1923.
It’s worth noting that projects like Internet Archive and Project Gutenberg rely on volunteer efforts, so there’s going to be disparities in the number of books available for download depending on where you go. But over the next several days and weeks, it’s safe to expect many more books will become available legally and for free across the web.
The documentaries and science and nature programs. The nice educational kid’s shows. Just all of it. Enjoying the gentle ribbing of his friends about being Mister Rogers.
Then finding out that the government wants to defund PBS.
Deciding to take up another sacred mantle.
Steve Rogers appearing before the Senate wearing a sweater, looking at the Senators with disappointment.
“Years ago another Mister Rogers stood here. I think it’s a shame I have to stand here now.”
Headcanon utterly and completely accepted!
“You are not living up to the potential Mister Rogers sees in you,” Rogers said, sitting down. The room sat quiet, aghast, as that sunk in to everyone involved.
This is a summary of college only using two pictures; expensive as hell.
That’s my Sociology “book”. In fact what it is is a piece of paper with codes written on it to allow me to access an electronic version of a book. I was told by my professor that I could not buy any other paperback version, or use another code, so I was left with no option other than buying a piece of paper for over $200. Best part about all this is my professor wrote the books; there’s something hilariously sadistic about that. So I pretty much doled out $200 for a current edition of an online textbook that is no different than an older, paperback edition of the same book for $5; yeah, I checked. My mistake for listening to my professor.
Hozier and Florence Welch are just pseudonyms Hades and Persephone have taken on after haven taken music lessons from Orpheus for a couple thousand years and deciding going into the music industry and gaining “fans” would be a modern equivalent form of the worship that previously sustained them thanks for coming to my ted talk
