[tor-talk] Project Gutenberg

antispam06 at sent.at antispam06 at sent.at
Thu Oct 31 21:39:09 UTC 2013


On 31.10.2013 19:38, Lars Noodén wrote:
> On 10/31/2013 09:07 PM, antispam06 at sent.at wrote:
>> AFAIK you don't need permission for creating a mirror. After all,
>> the works are in the Public Domain.
> The original works are in the public domain, but the new, electronic
> editions may not be.  But either way, their issue is with spidering
> and the load it puts on their net.  They might be amenable to a
> hidden mirror, but someone would have to contact them and work that
> out, if there is someone able and willing to try hosting it.

I did the work for you.

Quoting from an epub:

> This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
> almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
> re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
> with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

I don't know how new is that. But it sure is downloaded the day I
discovered the piece of advice given by the project regarding Tor.

The Terms of Use[1] says nothing incompatible with VPN, anonymizers, or
Tor. From the License I quote[2]:

> These books are in the public domain in the United States and
> everybody — including Project Gutenberg and *you* — may read and
> distribute them. If you don't live in the United States you'll have
> to check the laws of the country you live in before downloading and
> distributing our ebooks.

> A Project Gutenberg ebook is made out of two parts: the public
> domain book and the non public domain Project Gutenberg trademark and
> license. If you strip the Project Gutenberg license and all
> references to Project Gutenberg from the ebook, you are left with a
> public domain ebook. You can do anything you want with that.

There are also copyrighted books, but they are uninteresting to the
general public. They are just a way of promoting the work through PG by
putting them under a compatible licence:

> Some authors give Project Gutenberg permission to distribute their
> book(s). This permission does not automatically expand to include
> you. If you want to distribute a copyrighted ebook you found on PG,
> you have to contact the author and stipulate an agreement.

> N.B. The catalog will tell you if an ebook is copyrighted, but
> sometimes the catalog is wrong. Always look at the license inside
> the ebook to tell if it is copyrighted or not.

The whole thing is written once more in the Permission Howto[3]:

> Permission not needed

[1] http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:Terms_of_Use
[2] http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:The_Project_Gutenberg_License
[3] http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:Permission_How-To


More information about the tor-talk mailing list