What can I read for free? Copyright Law and eBooks

If you acquire an e-book for free that is still in copyright you are breaking the law. But what the devil is the law?

The law in the UK is that if a book is copyrighted (and you can assume that it is), the copyright lasts for 70 after the end of the calendar year in which the author dies. So if JK Rowling were to die tomorrow (13 November 2008) you could expect to read Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire for free from 1 January 2079 onwards.

Most of the free books on the internet were uploaded by Americans. This is handy for us in the UK because the term of copyright is the same in the US as it is here – 70 years after the death of the author.

The largest easily accessible collection of free e-books that I know of is on the Project Gutenberg website (www.gutenberg.org). The controllers of this site are generally very careful about copyright so if a book is available here you can be pretty confident that downloading it will be legal.

Copyright expiring on 1 January 2009

A search of the internet found two authors who I have heard of (although not read) and who died in the year 1938. The first is Thomas Wolfe, an American author who wrote semi-autobiographical fiction, and is generally regarded as a beautiful and deeply affecting writer.

The other is Karel Capek, a Czech who is credited with inventing the word “robot”. The fact that he wrote in the Czech language complicates the copyright ownership of his work somewhat. In the UK, English translations are themselves subject to copyright if its creation was a process of labour and skill. In the US less emphasis is given to labour and more to originality and creativity. If the translation is any good then, you will have to wait for 70 years after the death of the translator before you can freely read Capek’s plays and books.