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A comment on Britannica11.org – a structured edition of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica. Parent comment

Re:Britannica11.org – a structured edition of the 1911 Encyc... by gnerd00 on Tuesday April 21, 2026 @02:06PM (#47852245)
legal terms question here also -- several major world economies are operating under very different rules regarding datasets and publication rights. I am in the USA / California.. will there be terms for me, given that I am not a giant deep-pockets FAANG, just a book person ? commercial use terms for "small business" scale ?
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Re:Britannica11.org – a structured edition of the 1911 Encyc... by ahaspel on Tuesday April 21, 2026 @02:18PM (#47852419)
The 1911 text itself is public domain, so anyone is free to use it.

What I’ve built here is a structured edition — the parsing, reconstruction, linking, indexing, etc. I haven’t published a formal license for that yet.

For casual or small-scale use there’s no issue at all. For bulk use (e.g. dataset / training / redistribution), I’d prefer people get in touch so I can figure out a sensible way to support that.

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Re:Britannica11.org – a structured edition of the 1911 Encyc... by Kerrick on Tuesday April 21, 2026 @11:50PM (#47858719)
> What I’ve built here is a structured edition — the parsing, reconstruction, linking, indexing, etc. I haven’t published a formal license for that yet.

If you live in the U.S. I recommend you read No Sweat of the Brow Copyright: https://www.gutenberg.org/help/no_sweat_copyright.html

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Re:Britannica11.org – a structured edition of the 1911 Encyc... by TremendousJudge on Tuesday April 21, 2026 @02:10PM (#47852295)
I guess such an old edition is in the public domain
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Re:Britannica11.org – a structured edition of the 1911 Encyc... by dessimus on Tuesday April 21, 2026 @05:32PM (#47854783)
It's been on Project Gutenburg for over 20 years: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13600

They only release books that are in the public domain.

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Re:Britannica11.org – a structured edition of the 1911 Encyc... by bentley on Wednesday April 22, 2026 @06:45AM (#47861644)
> They only release books that are in the public domain.

Not necessarily. Project Gutenberg does provide some works still under US copyright, such as F. P. Walter’s 1999 translation of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas: https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/2488

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Re:Britannica11.org – a structured edition of the 1911 Encyc... by gnerd00 on Wednesday April 22, 2026 @04:14PM (#47868700)
better link here https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?query=Encyclopaedia...
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