Quote:
Originally Posted by Ellean
by the way,,,how can we check the copyright problem of the book that we wanna download..in order to make we can safely download? Because there are so many laws for copyright//  |
In this case, it's easy; Doctorow releases all his novels online under Creative Commons. Anyone can re-distribute them.
For other books, it's complicated, and it involves research.
If you're in the US:
Anything published before 1923 is freely available,
Anything published before 1963 *and not re-registered* is available (how to check that is a mess; the
Stanford database is a good place to start).
Anything the author gave permission to distribute is available. This includes Creative Commons releases, less-formal statements of "okay to archive elsewhere," and specific permissions to individuals. And that part's pretty much impossible to check, so it helps if the uploader mentions if they have permission to share.