When an item is in the Public Domain, it is by definition no longer protected by copyright law so you can legally do anything you want with it including repackaging it and selling it on ebay.

I would add however that if you are taking some Public Domain item that you downloaded from another site and placing it for sale on ebay (which is what I think you are actually asking), then by all means do it but make sure you remove any identifying traits first. In other words, either extraxt the Public Domain content out of the document and use it to prepare a new document or at least remove any evidence of the site in question first before reselling.

I know that’s kind of vague ~ if you have a specific Public Domain item or items you are looking at, let me know what they are and I can give you a clearer explanation of what you would have to do with them to prepare them for sale.

Thanks Holly!

It’s great to hear from you.

We have never recommended reselling books that you have downloaded from Google or the Internet Archive exactly as downloaded however, there is certainly nothing stopping you from doing so. You asked if they could be sold without modification ~ at a bare minimum, you need to remove any pre-pages that have been added (like the first page of any google book that has the legalese mumbo jumbo) and then remove the water mark from every page in the document (the digitized by…part).

This way, by the time you’re done, you’ll have an exact mechanical reproduction of your public domain book without any of the junk that Google (or Microsoft) ads to it. Then you free to gather them into themed collections and sell as you want.

Hope that helps…

Thanks Fred!
Logan

I’m a subscriber of Public Domain Treasure Hunter. there’s a wealth of info buried here which i haven’t had time to thoroughly cover just yet.

I’m wondering if you can point me to a section that explains (or just tell me) whether scanned public domain books from Google, Archive.org, etc can be published as a themed collections to CD or DVD without modification to the scanned PDFs?

Thanks in advance for your help. Keep up the great work.

You’re welcome, more to come soon.

“I know there are many other things to be done with these public domain books than just reprinting them but have you ever had something reprinted even though someone else has done the same thing?”

We very rarely reprint a Public Domain book exactly as is. We feel that’s a BIG mistake. Instead, we use Public Domain content as the basis of ALL NEW products. Mix Public Domain content with your own creativity, style, personality, and imagination and you’ll produce great, unique products that virtually have no competition at least in terms of competing with other marketer’s selling the exact same thing.

Quite frankly, when I see someone reprinting a Public Domain book in it’s original format it makes me want to hurl ~ that’s about the laziest thing a person can do. That’s one reason Amazon’s Kindle store got overrun by Public Domain books and they had to put their foot down, everybody and their sister was uploading the exact same book!

The key is to take existing Public Domain content and spin it into something wonderful and unique – reposition it and put your own spin on it.

“Anyway, great stuff and am spending A LOT of time looking at all the possibilities… need sleep, need sleep!”

As my great grandpa (as well as Conan the Barbarian) always said, “There’s plenty of time for rest in the grave”.

Right here, right now, it’s time to hustle! ; )

“My next step is to figure out how to transfer all this great stuff into products that will sell but not spend a fortune doing so!”

And it’s our job to help you along the way ~ stay tuned!

Sounds like the Google disclaimer you’re talking about….

Many big repositories of Public Domain books and other items slap disclaimers or “terms of use” on their stuff like that. We get questions all time from subscribers that are unsure or uneasy about using this material as their own usually because even though there is no doubt that a certain piece of material on a website is no longer protected by copyright and is this thus in the public domain, there is some sort of disclaimer, terms of use statement, “license agreement” or even a notice of copyright that seems to dictate otherwise.

Some even go so far as to attempt to establish a false copyright…

Mechanical Reproductions of Public Domain works Are NOT Copyrightable – Simply taking a work that is in the public domain and creating an exact “mechanical reproduction” of it (scanning it into a computer, copying it on a copy machine, etc.) does not meet the “minimal creativity” requirements needed to be able to copyright the work as dictated by U.S. Copyright Law and this has been enforced time and time again in courts throughout the country.

No creativity is required to simply produce an exact facsimile of a public domain work by scanning it into a computer therefore no one can claim copyright ownership of exact reproductions of public domain material.

For any one that’s sqeamish about violating these “terms of use” or “disclaimers” there are two ways that you can make yourself feel better. Remember, we’re talking about stuff that is Public Domain here, not legitimately copyrighted works…

1) Go back to the source. Use this site as a research tool, do your homework, research the origin of the material, and go find the original work from the Public Domain that’s not bound up with a click-wrap agreement, terms of use or disclaimer statement and make what use you want of it without worrying that someone is going to challenge you. In other words, go find the original Public Domain book and scan your own copy.

2) NEVER use the actual file provided but rather extract the public domain content from it. For instance, if you’re dealing with a pdf scan of a public domain book – no matter what anyone says, once a book is in the Public Domain, it’s ours, it belongs to the public at large. If the content is confined within a pdf that someone is trying to control by slapping a notice on it or by binding with a click-wrap agreement or disclaimer, fine – LIBERATE IT! Free the content from the PDF. It’s much happier that way anyway! Ok, I’m verging on the metaphysical now but I think you get my point – even if the PDF’s use is supposedly restricted, the Public Domain content is NOT. Pay someone to retype it, use a software utility to extract the text out of it, whatever – just release the content and then reuse it as you see fit.

That’s how we operate our business and we recommend you do the same.

For anyone interested, I would also like to invite you to download and read a special report we released a while back on this very subject…

http://pdthmagdl.s3.amazonaws.com/CopyWRONG.pdf

Thanks Anita!

I know there are many other things to be done with these public domain books than just reprinting them but have you ever had something reprinted even though someone else has done the same thing? I would imagine so… think of all the fairy tale stories that come in every size, shape and color and people obviously buy them. I guess the packaging/presentation is what is important.

Anyway, great stuff and am spending A LOT of time looking at all the possibilities… need sleep, need sleep!

My next step is to figure out how to transfer all this great stuff into products that will sell but not spend a fortune doing so!

thanks again!

As you know anything published in the U.S. before 1923 is in the Public Domain in the U.S. by default.

Anything published in the U.S. between 1923 and 1963 is in the Public Domain in the U.S. provided that it’s copyright protection was NOT renewed 28 years after publication.

With that said, any books here published in the U.S. between 1923 and 1963 that are “full view” accessible SHOULD be in the Public Domain. I would love to give you a loud and clear “YES” but that would be incredibly irresponsible of me because I don’t know exactly what facilities they have in place over there to check these things.

I wouldn’t assume anything published between 1923-1963 is in the Public Domain without checking the copyright status myself first. Every book I have double-checked thus far has been in the Public Domain but that doesn’t mean there aren’t some in there that are there by mistake.

Don’t trust anyone’s copyright status assessment of a book until you’ve either checked it out yourself thoroughly or have hired a qualified copyright attorney to do it for you.

It’s also possible that there are some legitimately copyrighted books with “full-view” that are there by copyright holder permission as well.

Bottom line ~ when you find something you would like to repurpose, take a few extra minutes to verify the copyright status yourself first using the procedures you learned in the Public Domain Treasure Hunter’s Kit.

How’s that for a CYA answer? ; )

Well, you’re right. I originally wrote this article back in August of last year for our private member’s site. Looks like they’ve changed it to one page at a time now.

Hathitrust is mostly serving books digitized by Google at this point although that should change over time. If you find a pre-1923 book you’d like to download in PDF form, it may pay off to go search for that same title on http://books.google.com. You’ll probably find it there as well and you can download the entire PDF.

Public Domain books published in the U.S. between 1923 – 1963 won’t show up in Google Books though even if they have been digitized by Google so you’d have to do what you can here or go source the book yourself at a used book site like http://www.abebooks.com and have it scanned.