This page is a ‘plain English’ explanation of the copyright issues at this site. This can be
considered a continuation of the Terms of Service page.
Copyrights
Since almost all of the works which are presented in this site (either those which are currently available or other works that are still in progress) are produced mainly on the basis of the Public Domain texts from the Sacred-Texts.com website, so most of the Copyright issues of this website are valid and wholly applicable in here too, therefore the copyright issues of this site have been arranges on the account of the Copyrights page of the Internet Sacred Text Archive (‘ISTA’), Sacred-Texts.com, but in order to obtain a more detailed treatise of these issues we reccomend that you read the Copyrights page of Sacred-Texts.com website too.
There are also some exclusive copyright issues which are only specific to this site. The following is the ‘plain english’ explanation of the Copyright issues of this site, and can be considered a continuation of the Terms of Service page.
Using public domain files at this site
Most of the files at this site are in the public domain in the United States. This is because they were originally printed in the US and:
- Their copyright has expired normally (they were published in or prior to 1922), or
- They were published between 1923 and 1964 (inclusive) and the copyright was
not renewed, or - They were published by the US Government.
In addition, books printed outside the US in or before 1922 are in the public domain in the US.
Books and other content become public domain in different ways in different countries. So if you reside outside the US, you will have to use different criteria to determine if a text is in the public domain. In some countries, this is determined by the date of death of the author. For instance, in the United Kindom or European Union books become public domain 70 years after the death of the author. This means that some books are in the public domain in the US but not the UK. For instance, the book ‘The Tarot Unveiled’ was published in 1910 in England. This means that it is in the public domain in the US (it was published prior to 1922). However, the author, E.A. Waite, died in 1942. For this reason this book will not enter the public domain in the UK or the EU until 2012.
All materials on Moksha-Gita.com, unless otherwise indicated, are copyrighted © 2005-2007 by Kaveh Saffari or their respective authors, providers & etc. All rights are reserved, but fair and good faith use with attribution may be made of all contents for any non-commercial, educational, scholarly and personal purposes only. It is not necessary to obtain copyright release for such uses, but the editor would be grateful to be voluntarily informed, for informational purposes only, of the use of these materials. You should also pay attention that, for using any of the books provided hereby, it must be distributed in entirety and intact, including any copyright and usage messages.
Public domain files from this site can be used for any purposes. You may:
- Download, print and make copies of them for personal purposes
- Email them to a friend
- Use them for your class or study group
- Link your website to them
- Use them in a paper for school
- Quote them in part or entirety in print: in a book, magazine, etc.
- Create derivative works: edited versions, anthologies, software products
which use quotes from them, etc. - Translate them into other languages
- etc. etc. etc.
without asking anyone (including Moksha-Gita) for permission. In fact, we encourage these activities, but please don’t attempt to use any of the books for commercial uses in any way. It is also considered good netiquette (but not absolutely required) to identify us (Moksha-Gita) and the Sacred-Texts as the primary and head source provider of these files. Therefore we request that you leave any notices of attribution in the file intact, and add a link to Sacred-Texts / Moksha-Gita if possible.
The public domain files at this site have been prepared for free distribution at great labor and expense. Public domain files prepared at Moksha-Gita website may not be licensed for commercial use in any way. Some other public domain files at this site may also have some trivial commercial-use restrictions, particularly files from Project Gutenberg.
Copyrighted files at this site
Some texts are copyrighted but released by their copyright holders for non-commercial use. Most of these files also have stipulations that the file must be distributed in entirety and intact, including any copyright and usage messages.
In other cases if any file, graphics or images that are used in the books are copyrighted and are posted in error, and you are the copyright holder, please inform and contact us and we will promptly remove it.
Some texts which are copyrighted or have unknown copyright status have the following icon next to their index listing:
When this icon is present on a page, or added after a given file, it indicates that the file has copyright issues which you need to consider before using it (particularly for commercial purposes). The absence of this icon indicates that we believe that the file is in the public domain.
Files marked [External Site] may be copyrighted and have other restrictions on their use. Consult the particular sites’ policy before using these files.
How do you determine if a file is in the public domain in the United States?
Since my site is located in the United States, I follow US Copyright law.
This is my criteria for determining whether a work is in the public domain or not. First of all:
1. Anything prior to 1922 inclusive (i.e. published in 1922 or prior to 1922) is in the public domain.
2. Anything published in the US between 1923 (inclusive) and 1963 (inclusive) is in the public domain if it was not renewed at the US copyright office 28 years after the date of publication.
Anything else is not in the public domain, particularly books published outside the US after 1922.
So first you need to do some research. You need to answer two questions: 1) was it published first in the United States? 2) What year was it published? This is not always apparent from the copyright page of a book, particularly if you are looking at a modern reprint of an older work.
First I go to the MELVYL catalog (the University of California library catalog, which has practically every book ever published–even the Dee Necronomicon!). Their web address is http://melvyl.cdlib.org/.
I fill in the form and get the earliest publication for the book I’m trying to locate.
If it’s not there (or I don’t see an early entry for it) I also check the Library of Congress (http://catalog.loc.gov/).
If it’s not there I check Alibris (www.alibris.com) and ABEbooks (www.abebooks.com) for information about used copies.
If it was first published in the US in or before 1922, it’s in the public domain. If it was first published in the US after 1922, but in or before 1963, then I go to the Catalog of Copyright Renewals;
(http://www.kingkong.demon.co.uk/ccer/ccer.htm).
This has a table with each year that something could be renewed (the year of publication plus 28 years) between 1922 and 1963.
You pick a year (say 1931) go to that page and find the particular pages with the authors’ name organized alphabetically. Works from 1931 could be renewed in 1958 and 1959. There are two pages for each alphabetic range. So there are four pages total to download (they are in TIF format, so you can’t view them in your browser, you need to download them to your hard drive and use a image editor to view them). These TIFs have been now been converted into searchable text by Distributed Proofing and Project Gutenberg. This is broken down into files for each six-month period which can be downloaded via links at the CCR site. However, it’s still a good idea to check the page images as well.
If you find the book listed as renewed in one of these TIFs, then it’s not in the public domain.
If you don’t find it in the TIFs for that particular renewal year, it is in the public domain.
If there are no TIFs for that particular year at the Catalog of Copyright Renewals, then there is one last stop, the US Copyright Office search form (http://www.copyright.gov/records/). This only has renewals after 1978, so it is only conclusive for books published after 1950 or so (since the book needed to be renewed in the 28th year after publication). There are some entries that go back further. So consulting this database can be inconclusive.
If it was published mid-50s to 1963 and not listed here at all then it’s probably public domain.
If there is a listing at the copyright office, you have to scrutinize it a bit.
In some cases a book has an entry in the database because some overzealous publisher filed a claim on some new material on an older public domain book, in that case the record will state that the application only applies to NEW MATERIAL. If you omit that from the etext, you’re probably in good shape. This is why I check for the earliest date of publication first. It’s usually apparent what is ‘New Material’.
However, if it was first published between 1923 and 1964 inclusive, and renewed in a timely fashion, it’s locked up for a good 95 years by current copyright law. Forget about it appearing on the Internet unless you can track down the author and their heirs and get permission; obviously this could be expensive and time consuming.
