Millions of Books Are Secretly in the Public Domain. You Can Download Them Free | Books - VICE

A quirk of copyright law means that millions of books are now free for anyone to read, thanks to some work from the New York Public Library, inform Matthew Gault, VICE.

Free books!
Photo: Getty Images

Everyone is paying for books when they don’t have to. There’s so many ways to read almost anything ever published, for free, that it borders on the obscene. Libraries: They’re good! Sure, if you want the latest release from your favorite author you either have to pay or wait for a copy from the library, but for millions of older books, you can get a digital version, legally, for free. One secret of the publishing industry is that most American books published before 1964 never extended their copyright, meaning they’re in the public domain today...

In a massive undertaking, the NYPL converted the registration and copyright information into an XML format. Now, the old copyrights are searchable and we know when, and if, they were renewed. Around 80 percent of all the books published from 1923 to 1964 are in the public domain, and lots of people had no idea until now.
Read more... 

Source: VICE