News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Sherlock lives in public domain, US court rules.

Re:Sherlock lives in public domain, US court rules by bane on Tuesday June 17, 2014 @10:14AM (#7904505)
Some real absolutely timeless classic stories are available in the public domain right now. If I had more time, money and passion, I'd be the RMS of the public domain. In my mind it's the free-est a work can possibly be. Unencumbered by licensing or copyright (or copyleft) considerations. You like it? Use it for whatever you want in whatever way you want.

One of my friends was looking for something to read, had an old kindle but didn't really have any money to pay for anything. I pointed her towards these absolute classics which kept her occupied for months, and then she passed them down to her kids. She now has a kindle full of more books than she can possibly read, all for free. And her children are now benefiting from this as well. The last time we spoke, her son was enjoying romping across Mars in the "Barsoom" series, a series of books I grew up enjoying immensely. Even while looking for these I was stunned how many freaking awesome works are out there in the PD.

(most of these have ready-to-go kindle versions)

All of the Oz books (yes, there is more than 1 as I was delighted to find out) - http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/42

E.R. Burroughs, which gets you the Barsoom series, Tarzan and a handful of other fantastically great adventure reads http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/48

Even better, Verne, which gets you adventure, sci-fi and more - http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/60

A huge collection of Doyle works, Sherlock is a big piece, but he wrote tons of others. http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/69

A collection of old Science Fiction monthlies - http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?query=astounding+sto...

The indomitable works by Dumas - http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/492

An entire classic bookshelf of Rudyard Kipling - http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/132

Jack London, who I grew up reading as a child and loving - http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/120

Stevenson - http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/35

And that's just the Gutenberg project. You can dive into several Library of Congress's worth of books, magazine and other literature at archive.org, a well so deep, it's easy to get lost and never find your way back to the same place again. And also happens to have the best on-line e-reader ever made. (Note: not all of these have fallen into the PD, but Archive.org treats them like it's from a world where they are in the PD, demonstrating the power of the idea).

https://archive.org/details/texts

but does have an almost 3,000 item Children's library https://archive.org/details/iacl, mostly of scans of original prints which are amazing on tablets.

The Harvard Classics https://archive.org/details/harvardclassics

And these astonishing collections

https://archive.org/details/comics

https://archive.org/details/imslp

https://archive.org/details/magazine_rack (which includes 196 issues of OMNI magazine https://archive.org/details/omni-magazine and 103 issues of Galaxy https://archive.org/details/galaxymagazine, 300 issues of Starlog https://archive.org/details/starlogmagazine)

And almost 1,500 scans of various Pulp Magazines https://archive.org/details/pulpmagazinearchive

Several libraries' worth of Computer Magazines (11,000 issues!) https://archive.org/details/computermagazines

And finally https://archive.org/details/sciencefiction

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Sherlock lives in public domain, US court rules by MrZongle2 on Tuesday June 17, 2014 @12:30PM (#7905354)
Excellent call on the Oz books. L. Frank Baum was quite prolific and built a whole pantheon of characters beyond those most people know from the Judy Garland movie. When I was in elementary school, I was lucky enough to inherit most of Baum's Oz books (in hardcover, bound in the late 40s and 50s) and consider them a real gem. The illustrations by John R. Neill were fantastic.

Why Hollywood continues to insist on ignoring a treasure-trove of "canon" material in favor of utter crap cobbled together by teams of screenwriters is beyond me.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Sherlock lives in public domain, US court rules by RexRollman on Tuesday June 17, 2014 @07:59PM (#7907782)
Many of Robert E Howard's Conan stories are in the public domain now, due to renewals not being performed:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conan_the_Barbarian#Copyright_a...

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Sherlock lives in public domain, US court rules by Spooky23 on Tuesday June 17, 2014 @10:54AM (#7904756)
Thanks for a great post. My family will have lots of good stuff to read when we go on vacation!
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Sherlock lives in public domain, US court rules by wahsd on Tuesday June 17, 2014 @11:21AM (#7904918)
I can't recall the exact process, but you can bookmark a certain Project Gutenberg page on the Kindle that puts basically all of their works at your fingertips.

May I also plug Distributed Proofreaders (http://www.pgdp.net/), which is a major source of primary source documents to Project Gutenberg. It is the power of the global community of internet citizens who digitize scanned documents that are difficult or impossible to OCR.

To anyone looking for inspiration and creativity and innovation; that is where you will find those stories that are obscure and hidden and have not been rehashed ad nauseam.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Sherlock lives in public domain, US court rules by shambulatron on Wednesday June 18, 2014 @09:32PM (#7913943)
Good plug. Joined!
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Sherlock lives in public domain, US court rules by Torgo on Tuesday June 17, 2014 @02:44PM (#7906177)
Is it possible to make new works based on Tarzan? It appears that Burroughs was a pioneer in the strategy of "trademark the characters, assign ownership to an eternal corporation."
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Sherlock lives in public domain, US court rules by bane on Tuesday June 17, 2014 @03:07PM (#7906328)
I think it's complicated. But the best answer I'm aware of is that you basically can do whatever you want. But the new work is now copyrighted.

In fact: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1705952/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120855/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2

And with Holmes

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1475582/?ref_=nv_sr_1

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0988045/?ref_=nv_sr_2

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1515091/?ref_=nv_sr_3

It's basically like they signed a $0, non-exclusive license to use the characters as they wish in a new work.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Sherlock lives in public domain, US court rules by shmerl on Tuesday June 17, 2014 @03:36PM (#7906492)
If you like Jack London, I'd also recommend O. Henry:

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/634

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Sherlock lives in public domain, US court rules by furley on Thursday June 19, 2014 @02:55PM (#7917697)
One note on Verne -- a lot of early Verne translations (e.g. the ones in the public domain) have really lousy English translations. Big things, like sections being excised because they seemed anti-England, and little things like metric units not being converted to English (screwing up Verne's careful math). So while it's nice to have them free, you'd actually do yourself a favor of getting a modern translation when available, even if you have to pay for it.
[ Parent | on HN ]