The Online Books Page

COPYRIGHTS AND LICENSES

This page specifies the copyrights, licenses, and public domain dedications of The Online Books Page. The statements here are subject to the scope details at the bottom of the page.

Copyrights

This site is edited by John Mark Ockerbloom, who began the site in 1993. Versions of this site from 1995 through the present are copyright by John Mark Ockerbloom.

Licenses

Our catalog of freely readable online books, to the extent that it is copyrightable, is licensed for others to use under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license. (Note that facts in themselves are not copyrightable, but original selections, expressions, and arrangements of facts can be covered by "compilation copyright". Our catalog taken as a whole, as well as the original selections of subjects and other original metadata associated with our listings, may be subject to this kind of copyright, and are licensed under the linked Creative Commons terms.) For more information on obtaining our data, see this page.

Other rights to copyrighted content of The Online Books Page are currently reserved. Contact the editor for permissions and questions.

Public Domain

The copyrights for versions of this site from 1993 and 1994 are dedicated to the public domain, as of January 1, 2009. This is a complete, and irrevocable, dedication of those copyrights.

This dedication is in honor of the founders of the United States government, who originally specified a copyright term of 14 years, optionally renewable for another 14. As I am an advocate of shorter terms of copyright than exist today, I am happy to use those original terms for this site (and forgo the "renewal term" in this case). I intend to keep dedicating an additional year's worth of copyrights of versions of this site to the public domain at the start of every new year.

While I do not currently have close at hand complete copies of this site from 1994, I am happy to compile copies (which I think may exist in some places) for folks who are interested, and would be happy to receive copies for redistribution from anyone who has retained such copies. Here, for instance, is an ASCII dump of the Banned Books Online Page, shortly after it was created in 1994.

Scope details

The statements here apply to the pages and files of The Online Books Page (as located at onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu, digital.library.upenn.edu, and www.cs.cmu.edu) that are marked as edited or copyrighted by John Ockerbloom or John Mark Ockerbloom, and that have a link (or whose current versions have a link) to this page labeled "OBP copyrights and licenses".

They do not apply to the books linked to from this site, which are on other sites not under our control. The online books we list may be copyrighted or in the public domain, and may have their own licenses and terms of use. If you have any questions about the status and permitted uses of any book we list, ask the maintainers of the site that hosts the book, or consult the book's own copyright statements or holders.

Also, the statements above do not apply to A Celebration of Women Writers, which is edited and copyrighted separately by Mary Mark Ockerbloom.

Licenses and public domain dedications above apply only to the copyrights to this site. They do not apply to the names, service marks, or other rights of attribution that are not included in copyright. Which is basically a long-winded way of saying that, while you're free to copy and modify this site as permitted by the statements above, you're not free to call a modified version of The Online Books Page "The Online Books Page", or use the site's logos, unless it's clear that you've altered it from its original form and content (and are otherwise abiding by the licenses above). Or, even more concisely, don't make it look like we're responsible for content we're not actually responsible for, or have endorsed things that we have not endorsed.

Thanks for reading, and enjoy using and reusing the site!

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Edited by John Mark Ockerbloom (onlinebooks@pobox.upenn.edu).
OBP copyrights and licenses