Locations on the Internet with a lot of CC0 Books?

[Quoth]

Once you have published something and includes "This is placed in the Public Domain" or Released CC0, then it's gone. Just as much as if you are dead 100 years and the max term is 90.

You can only get back rights you assigned to someone else (difficulty varies). You can't get back Public Domain (or CC0 which is just the same thing).

Lawrence Lessig and Eric Eldred designed the Creative Commons License (CCL) in 2001 because they saw a need for a license between the existing modes of copyright and public domain status.

Just yet another template giving up rights under Copyright
BSD Free Licences from 1988. FreeBSD is the OS. BSD Free is licence.
GPL started with Richard Stallman in 1989. Now at version 3
Apache Software Foundation Apachce Licence 1995 (based on BSD)
CCL original version 2002

Richard Stallman & Lawrence Lessig have very political agendas. It's not just about reforming copyright or freedom.

One aim of some is to abolish all copyright, patents. trademarks, registered designs, basically destroy the concept of Intellectual property.

Certainly Copyright need reformed. It needs to go back to life +50. The exceptions for derivative, satire, reviews, education, copying extracts need to be clearly defined by international treaty and not by Disney.

Patents even more need reformed, especially the USPTO, where the default is to issue and have competing prior art or invalid decided in USA courts (which vary by State!).

Simply propaganda of CC isn't the solution. If you are a creator, then © date <your name, can be pen name> all rights reserved. You can relax the rights later or give to Public domain, what's relaxed or given away as Public Domain can't be recovered. Only transferred rights can be recovered (like to a Publisher for a term).

[Quoth]

And I pointed out to my Granddaughter that if she won the Competition, the people organising it would own all rights to her story till the rights expired to Public Domain (can be 90 years).
A recent Amazon competition has the fine print that ANY entrant they want to publish (that doesn't win at all) that they get full copyright forever.

[calibrejunkie]

Originally Posted by salty-horse

Which also makes the original question confusing.

Are they asking for works that are specifically licensed under CC0 (I don't know of any), or any public domain works?

re "legal mechanism" - is there such a thing? I assume that unless a claim is repeatedly defended in court, you can't really be sure if it works.
I assume it's more robust than simple amateur statements along the lines of "I hereby waive all rights", but maybe these are fine too.

Hi,

Sorry to be confusing. I was specifically looking for Creative Commons Zero books that have been released. I assumed there would be a site somewhere with tons of them, but I've only found a handful of them from disparate sources, two of which are also about the subject of Creative Commons itself.

Thank you

[calibrejunkie]

Originally Posted by svenlind

Just to be sure that you haven't missed it. Here at MR there is very large collection of public domain books you may start here. Those I have looked at are very nicely formatted.

Thanks! I will check that out!

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by calibrejunkie

Hi,

Sorry to be confusing. I was specifically looking for Creative Commons Zero books that have been released.

Waste of time. Public Domain is the feature you want and "online" since 1972 with Project Gutenberg, and their website from when websites started, about 1992-1993.
https://www.gutenberg.org/
Has over 60,000 public domain ebooks / magazines. All proof read by humans unlike the wayback machine / Archive org / New Library of Alexandria which only has OCRs of scans and often material that's actually copyright.

Also the library here is good.

fadedpage in Canada is good if you live anywhere with life + 50 copyright restrictions.

Creative Commons Zero is just a recent modern attempt to rebrand "Public Domain". Public Domain is legal concept of Intellectual Property since Copyright existed. It means the creator or publisher has ZERO rights. You can copy, edit, upload give it free or charge or do what you like. It's regarded as immoral, but not illegal to pass off Public Domain (CC0) as your own work.

[calibrejunkie]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Waste of time. Public Domain is the feature you want and "online" since 1972 with Project Gutenberg, and their website from when websites started, about 1992-1993.
https://www.gutenberg.org/
Has over 60,000 public domain ebooks / magazines. All proof read by humans unlike the wayback machine / Archive org / New Library of Alexandria which only has OCRs of scans and often material that's actually copyright.

Also the library here is good.

fadedpage in Canada is good if you live anywhere with life + 50 copyright restrictions.

Creative Commons Zero is just a recent modern attempt to rebrand "Public Domain". Public Domain is legal concept of Intellectual Property since Copyright existed. It means the creator or publisher has ZERO rights. You can copy, edit, upload give it free or charge or do what you like. It's regarded as immoral, but not illegal to pass off Public Domain (CC0) as your own work.

Thanks for the info! Sounds like it made sense I had no luck if it is just a rebrand, lol

[salty-horse]

Do you have an example of any CC0 books that you consider worthwhile?
I only know of "non-zero" CC-licensed books where the authors retain some rights.

[calibrejunkie]

Originally Posted by salty-horse

Do you have an example of any CC0 books that you consider worthwhile?
I only know of "non-zero" CC-licensed books where the authors retain some rights.

Well, I realize now I wasn't asking for what I really wanted. I was looking for books that could be legally distributed anywhere in the world without fear of violating a particular country's copyright laws. From what I read on Wikipedia, this would require books that are over 200+ years old if the public domain was strictly due to the work's age, but after reading Quoth's comments, I realize now what I was looking for are public domain books where the authors themselves announced they were putting the books into the public domain, instead of their public domain status being due to them "aging out" so to speak.

[calibrejunkie]

Originally Posted by salty-horse

"CC0" is a Creative Commons synonym for Public Domain.

The main source is Project Gutenberg.

There are several projects that turn these into nicer ebooks:
Standard Ebooks makes handcrafted books, and they also fix typos and such.
And there's also Feedbooks.

BTW, thanks for these links! I did not know about Standard Ebooks or Feedbooks.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Public Domain is the feature you want and "online" since 1972 with Project Gutenberg, and their website from when websites started, about 1992-1993.
https://www.gutenberg.org/

I appreciate Gutenberg. But I think of their books as the rough draft for public domain books. I'd start with Standard eBooks or somewhere like that first and if you can't find it there, then try Gutenberg.

[Quoth]

Auto converting a Mobi to a decent plain epub from Gutenberg is simple with Calibre. The Standard eBooks seem at times to be a complicated mess that take ages to clean up.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Waste of time. Public Domain is the feature you want and "online" since 1972 with Project Gutenberg, and their website from when websites started, about 1992-1993.
https://www.gutenberg.org/
Has over 60,000 public domain ebooks / magazines. All proof read by humans unlike the wayback machine / Archive org / New Library of Alexandria which only has OCRs of scans and often material that's actually copyright.

Also the library here is good.

fadedpage in Canada is good if you live anywhere with life + 50 copyright restrictions.

If you’re going to be scrupulous about copyright, then Gutenberg.org, as it reflects US copyright law, includes books that are still in copyright in life+50 and life+70 regions and which shouldn’t be downloaded. Similarly, if you’re in the US, the MR library has books not yet in the public domain.

On the other hand, there’s no reason why anyone couldn’t use Faded Page to access books in PD in their own region, even if it’s not Life+50.

[Quoth]

The main issue of copyright is the DISTRIBUTOR, publisher. Not the consumer. Rights holders may go after websites, shops, uploaders. In most countries they'd be idiots to go after the consumers because they might only get $1 per book damages and might even fail because if you are told it's public domain, or you buy pirated material in a legitimate physical shop, the onus is on the website or the shopkeeper, not the consumer.

Laws (criminal vs civil) and copyright terms vary by country. The USA magazine orphaned works in Public domain (some authors not dead or less than 50 years) rules wouldn't apply in other countries.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by issybird

If you’re going to be scrupulous about copyright, then Gutenberg.org, as it reflects US copyright law,

There are also Australian and Canadian Gutenberg sites that follow the local rules.

If a site wants your email address, don't use it. Real Public Domain content sites don't require a log in or email or money.

If a site is selling, verify it's a real company paying tax somewhere (though some don't pay much tax anywhere).

[issybird]

Why say Faded Page is only for those in Life+50 regions while at the same time promoting for general use other public domain sites with similar though different restrictions? In other words, if someone in Life+70 is going to use Gutenberg at will for authors who were alive into the 1970s (P.G. Wodehouse :cough: ), why should they wrinkle up their noses at the possibility of Faded Page and say, “Oh, no, I couldn’t do that?”

I’m not the morality arbiter nor would I claim anyone’s at risk by downloading at will from any of these. I just like to see consistency.