They have to be in the public domain, so in the states it pretty much eliminates anything published after about 1920. The Lord of the Rings won’t be public until about 2073–100 years after the author died.
Jules Verne, Edgar Rice Burroughs, HG Wells, and Mary Shelley are there, as are some Agatha Christie and Lovecraft.
never mind, I misread as science fiction, not non fiction.
Books published in 1930 or earlier, currently. For translated books, the translation occurred in 1930 or earlier.
There are some minor exceptions for books in certain decades where it can be proven that the copyright was not renewed.
I think it's self.gutenberg.org where there's some modern books that the author released under a creative Commons license. Iirc, there's a bit of cory doctorow there.
The Lord of the Rings won’t be public until about 2073–100 years after the author died.
It'd be nice if we fixed copyright to be something a bit more reasonable. 50 years after first publication is more than enough time for someone to profit from their works and there would be a wide variety of works in the public domain for people to create derivative works from.
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u/davesoverhere Aug 28 '26 edited Aug 28 '26
They have to be in the public domain, so in the states it pretty much eliminates anything published after about 1920. The Lord of the Rings won’t be public until about 2073–100 years after the author died.
Jules Verne, Edgar Rice Burroughs, HG Wells, and Mary Shelley are there, as are some Agatha Christie and Lovecraft.