Copyright, public-domain assessment & takedown

How we decide a text is public domain

A work is published here only if it passes an automated check applying all of these rules:

• Life + 70 — every author died at least 70 full calendar years ago.
• US 95-year rule — the work was first published at least 95 years ago. (Both rules must pass: a work can be public domain in one country but not another, so we require both.)
• Edition rights — we transcribe from an original or early edition, excluding any modern critical apparatus, commentary, or new typesetting that could carry its own copyright.
• Translation source — our translations are made only from our own transcription of the public-domain original, never from an existing modern translation.

The facts behind each decision (death dates, first-publication date, edition) are sourced and recorded with every work, and the assessment is recomputed automatically on every change.

This is a good-faith engineering process, not legal advice. Public-domain status varies by country; we aim to be conservative.

Licensing of our content

Our transcriptions, translations, and metadata are dedicated to the public domain under CC0 1.0. The site code is MIT-licensed.

Takedown & complaints

If you believe a work here is not in the public domain (for example, an edition still under protection, a late first publication, or moral/personality rights), please contact us — see Contact. On a credible claim we will unpublish the work promptly while we reassess, and we log the outcome. Because the corpus is version-controlled, removal is immediate and, where required, purged from history.