As defined by Project Gutenberg, "public domain is the set of cultural works that are free of copyright, and belong to everyone equally", i.e. for books, the ones that can be digitized and released on the internet for free. But the task of Project Gutenberg hasn't be made any easier by the increasing restrictions to public domain. In former times, 50% of works belonged to public domain, and could be freely used by everybody. A much tougher legislation was set in place over the centuries, step by step, especially during the 20th century, despite our so-called "information society". In 2100, 99% of works might be governed by copyright, with a meager 1% for public domain.
In the "Copyright HowTo" section of its website, Project Gutenberg explains how to confirm the public domain status of books according to U.S. copyright laws. Here is a summary: (a) Works published before 1923 entered the public domain no later than 75 years from the copyright date: all these works belong to public domain; (b) Works published between 1923 and 1977 retain copyright for 95 years: no such works will enter the public domain until 2019; (c) Works created from 1978 on enter the public domain 70 years after the death of the author if the author is a natural person: nothing will enter the public domain until 2049; (d) Works created from 1978 on enter the public domain 95 years after publication or 120 years after creation if the author is a corporate one: nothing will enter the public domain until 2074.
Each copyright legislation is more restrictive than the previous one. A major blow for digital libraries was the amendment to the 1976 Copyright Act signed on October 27, 1998. As explained by Michael Hart in July 1999: "Nothing will expire for another 20 years. We used to have to wait 75 years. Now it is 95 years. And it was 28 years (+ a possible 28-year extension, only on request) before that, and 14 years (+ a possible 14-year extension) before that. So, as you can see, this is a serious degrading of the public domain, as a matter of continuing policy."
John Mark Ockerbloom, founder of The Online Books Page in 1993, got also deeply concerned by the 1998 amendment. He wrote in August 1999: "I think it is important for people on the web to understand that copyright is a social contract that is designed for the public good - where the public includes both authors and readers. This means that authors should have the right to exclusive use of their creative works for limited times, as is expressed in current copyright law. But it also means that their readers have the right to copy and reuse the work at will once copyright expires. In the U.S. now, there are various efforts to take rights away from readers, by restricting fair use, lengthening copyright terms (even with some proposals to make them perpetual) and extending intellectual property to cover facts separate from creative works (such as found in the 'database copyright' proposals). There are even proposals to effectively replace copyright law altogether with potentially much more onerous contract law. (…) Stakeholders in this debate have to face reality, and recognize that both producers and consumers of works have legitimate interests in their use. If intellectual property is then negotiated by a balance of principles, rather than as the power play it is too often ends up being ('big money vs. rogue pirates'), we may be able to come up with some reasonable accommodations."
Michael Hart wrote in July 1999: "No one has said more against copyright extensions than I have, but Hollywood and the big publishers have seen to it that our Congress won't even mention it in public. The kind of copyright debate going on is totally impractical. It is run by and for the 'Landed Gentry of the Information Age.' 'Information Age'? For whom?"
Sure enough. We regularly hear about the great "information age" we live in, while seeing the tightening of laws relating to dissemination of information. The contradiction is obvious. This problem has also affected several European countries, where the copyright law switched from "author's life plus 50 years" to "author's life plus 70 years", following pressure from content owners who successfully lobbied for "harmonization" of national copyright laws as a response to "globalization of the market". To regulate the copyright of digital editions in the wake of the relevant WIPO international treaties, the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) was ratified in October 1998 in the United States, and the European Union Copyright Directive (EUCD) was ratified in May 2001 by the European Commission.
According to Michael Hart, and Project Gutenberg CEO Greg Newby, "as of January 2009, the total number of separate public domain books in the world is between 20 and 30 million, and that 5 million are already on the internet, and we expect another million per year from now until all the easy-to-find books are done. 10 million or so will be done before people start to think about the facts telling them the rate cannot continue to double as they come up to the point of already having done half. New copyrights lasting virtually for ever in the U.S. will bring the growth process to a screeching halt when The Mickey Mouse copyright laws, literally, copyright laws on Mickey Mouse, and Winnie-the-Pooh, etc., stop all current copyright from expiring for the forseeable future."
= Copyleft and Creative Commons
The term "copyleft" was invented in 1984 by Richard Stallman, a
computer scientist at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of
Technology), who launched the GNU project to develop a complete
Unix-like operating system called the GNU system.
As explained on the GNU website: "Copyleft is a general method for making a program or other work free, and requiring all modified and extended versions of the program to be free as well. (…) Copyleft says that anyone who redistributes the software, with or without changes, must pass along the freedom to further copy and change it. Copyleft guarantees that every user has freedom. (…) Copyleft is a way of using of the copyright on the program. It doesn't mean abandoning the copyright; in fact, doing so would make copyleft impossible. The word 'left' in 'copyleft' is not a reference to the verb 'to leave' — only to the direction which is the inverse of 'right'. (…) The GNU Free Documentation License (FDL) is a form of copyleft intended for use on a manual, textbook or other document to assure everyone the effective freedom to copy and redistribute it, with or without modifications, either commercially or non commercially."