The majority of works on this site are those of dead people. As such, they are in the public domain. The text documents posted containing these works may be downloaded and shared freely, as digital files or prints, provided they aren’t modified or sold. You may freely copy the text of these works from the documents and do with it as you wish, unless they are our own, copyrighted works, or were licensed from a 3rd party. Documents and web pages have copyright info listed.
Site Content Legal Details
Much of the site content is in the public domain. Unless otherwise stated, the raw text of works displayed on web pages, or in downloadable PDFs and raw text files, are free for you to copy and use as you see fit, unless it is specifically stated that the work is copyrighted. All other design elements, images, logos and fonts contained in these documents are copyrighted.
You will find one of the following elements at the top of all works pages that will show if the work is in the public domain, copyrighted, or if it is provided under a specific license:
Clicking on one of the above badges (go ahead, try it) will open a popup with example text describing the rights for a specific work on this website. These badges will be under the document info at the tops of individual works pages. You must have javascript enabled for these popups to function.
There may be cases where a work is copyrighted—because we own the rights or we’ve obtained the rights. In that case, a downloadable file may not be available, but it will be clearly stated on the page and in the document if the work is under copyright.
Privacy
You can learn about how we use analytics and other data by visiting our privacy policy page.
Determining Copyright
How we determine copyright status of US works. We are based in the United States. As such, any works copyrighted before 1978 will be in the public domain if they were copyrighted/published prior to January 1st, 1929. So, TL;DR, all works copyrighted/published in the United States from 1925 and earlier are now in the public domain. The United States copyright office recognizes copyrights of those works for a maximum of 95 years from the first date of copyright/publishing which includes the 95th year itself. Consequently, a copyrighted work such as previously explained will go into the public domain in the United States on January 1 after the conclusion of the 95th year. This can be found in the US Copyright office Circular 15a. The only caveat to this is if works published after January 1, 1929 did not renew their copyright after 28 years—law under the 1909 copyright act required a copyright renewal. The work needed to have its copyright renewed during the final 28th year. If those who owned the copyright failed to renew the copyright, the work was no longer protected under US law and went into the public domain. This is why there have been a large number of books entering the public domain over the past few years that would otherwise be copyrighted. For example, many of H. P. Lovecraft’s works are now in the public domain, even though there has been an insane amount of legal battles over the decades of people trying to claim the rights to his works. As far as we can find, there are roughly 6 Lovecraft stories that had their copyrights renewed, and no more, and that is because the issues of Weird Tales that they appeared in had renewed their copyrights. For a full breakdown of this and below, checkout this great page at Cornell Law where they have laid out how to determine copyright status in a simple chart. You can also search the Stanford University Copyright Renewal Database to try and ascertain if a work had its copyright renewed.
How we determine the copyright status of unpublished works. All unpublished works for an author who is deceased are seen to have entered the public domain 70 years after the author’s death. So any unpublished works by known authors are in the public domain in the United States if the author died before 1954. If it is an anonymous or pseudonymous work, it enters the public domain 120 years later. Therefore all anonymous/pseudonymous works from 1903 and earlier are now in the public domain in the United States.
How we determine copyright for works published outside of the United States. The United States Copyright Laws provide foreign works with roughly the same protection as U.S. citizens, and provides for the copyright extension renewal they would have needed to receive the full 95 year term (if published by a corporate entity) or 70 years after the death of the author, (which includes the time added from laws passed and treaties signed later on). As such, anything copyrighted/published outside of the United States, is now in the public domain in the United States, if it was copyrighted/published before 1978 and before January 1st, 1929. So all works copyrighted outside of the Unites States in 1928 or earlier are now in the public domain. This can be found in the US Copyright office Circular 38b, and please refer to the chart at Cornell Law. We have specifically only chosen works from other countries based on these laws, so if any person, family, trust, foundation, or corporation, approaches us with demands to remove our content due to copyright that is no longer recognized as being valid in the United States, we will not comply with your request. There may of course be instances where we make a mistake, and if we do so, we would be happy to remove anything that infringes upon an existing copyright. We are trying our hardest to avoid copyright infringement which is why our website and the content we produce is based on works that have entered the public domain.
PDF Documents
Full PDF documents (.pdf) with “print” or “read” in their titles and/or file names are released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-SA 4.0), and may be shared in their original, complete PDF form as posted on the website. Pages in the PDF documents containing public domain text have, “the text on this page is in the public domain,” printed in the page footer. You may open these PDFs in a PDF reader, select the public domain text, copy it, paste it elsewhere, and do with it as you like. Feel free to email these PDFs to friends. Print them out and read them. Send them through text messages to your cat. Send them to your mother’s podiatrist if you like. However, the PDFs may not be modified, modified and redistributed, or sold. We also do not permit them to be added to 3rd-party e-commerce sites, including as free bonuses to your customers. Feel free to post links to web pages on theproudreader.com website if you’d like to bring them to your customers’ attention.
Text Files
Plain Text File documents (.txt) are released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license (CC BY-SA 4.0). If you choose to modify these files and distribute them, you may keep the links for The Proud Reader™ and Keygen Ltd LLC in the document as the original source if you like, but you must still leave attribution to Keygen Ltd LLC and The Proud Reader™ project—provided you do not slander or misrepresent The Proud Reader™ or Keygen Ltd LLC in any way or imply that we endorse you. The works text below the license info is in the public domain and you may simply copy that text out of the file and do with it as you please. Only the document as a whole is covered by the CC BY-SA 4.0.
Fonts
Fonts used in the PDF documents and on the website are copyrighted by their respective font foundries or individual creators, have been legally licensed to us to use in those documents and on this website, and are not to be extracted from the PDFs or the server. Doing so is illegal.
Icon Fonts contain both copyrighted and opensource graphics and are not to be downloaded. If you like the free icons we use, check out Fontello, which is the site we use to get free icons and to build our own icon font sets which include our custom icons.
Graphical Content General
Graphics on the website—logos, avatars, background images, header graphics, photographs, derivative works, videos, audio, music, UI elements and other content—are copyrighted, ©Keygen Ltd LLC, unless specifically stated otherwise. They shall not be used/reused, modified, or sold—in whole or in part—without written permission. 3rd-party company brands/trademarks are the property of those entities.
Audio & Video Content
Videos and audio recordings are copyrighted, ©Keygen Ltd LLC. They are not available for download. You are permitted to embed videos on your website if it is permitted via the video hosts we use, providing it is not for commercial use, unless we agree to it in writing. If you’re simply posting an article about our website or one of our videos, embedding videos is fine. What isn’t fine is making a site where you are embedding our work as the primary content and trying to profit off of it.
Audio recordings and videos posted as exclusive content to subscribers on Patreon and SubscribeStar are copyrighted, and they hold the same copyright as our public audio and video content, unless otherwise stated. These are not to be embedded elsewhere as they are for paid subscribers. If you wish to embed a video from our public YouTube channel or another platform, please provide a link to the video on the host platform and/or a link to the page on this site where it resides, and use the proper HTML embed code.
Featured Images
Featured images, on works pages, which bear the text, “(click image to expand),” directly beneath them, we are releasing into the public domain, even if we have modified them from the public domain originals, as the changes are probably not significant enough to warrant a new copyright. Plus, sharing is good. Be aware that all of these have been modified from the originals to adjust color, brightness and contrast, remove dirt and scratches, extend backgrounds, colorize them, or make them sit correctly in layouts, etc..
Portraits & Mugshots
Author portraits, on individual author pages which contain their personal info, quotes and biographies, are in the public domain. Even if we have retouched and modified them, we are releasing them into the public domain.
Author “mugshot” images, the small previews of their faces, are also in the public domain.
Home Preview Images
Home Preview Images are the wide, narrow images on the homepage for the post marked as “NEW.” These also appear above the copy on individual works pages. Some of these images are copyrighted as we have done a fair amount of manipulation and compositing to make them. Even if they include images in the public domain, we feel a copyright is justified in this case, unless we’ve merely cropped a large public domain image. If you’d like to use one of these images, simply contact us and let us know what you wish to use it for and we’ll let you know if you may use it.
Commenting & Contact
You may post Comments on works pages of this website below the text if you so choose. Please try and be respectful of other users, even if you disagree with them. We aren’t going to play warden, but will not tolerate flame wars and general insanity. We will edit or delete comments at our discretion and will ban IPs if deemed necessary. All decisions are final.
You may contact us through the contact form on this website regarding this website. If you have problems on one of the platforms we use, contact their customer service or contact us through those websites.
BE ADVISED : By posting in the comments section of the pages on theproudreader.com, or by sending messages through our contact form on the contact page—data you send through the website forms to our server and/or email addres(es)—you are granting Keygen Ltd LLC non-exclusive rights to the content you send and to use what you post in any way we see fit—be it in advertising, videos, audio recordings, on social media, or whatever we decide we wish to do with it, both commercially and non-commercially—without any form of compensation provided to you—in perpetuity. Do not post anything in the comment section that you do not want made public, that you do not wish for us to use, or that you do not own the rights to. Do not post yours or anyone else’s personal information.
By clicking the “SEND COMMENT” button, or using any form of software or scripting to do the same—be it with bots or otherwise—you are agreeing to the above terms. If you do not like these terms, do not comment on this website.
Etc.
If you’re unsure of the rights associated with website elements, documents, or media, just shoot us an email and ask. We’re pretty laid back, unless someone is trying to hustle us. We hope you enjoy The Proud Reader™ project and all the content we produce in relation to it.
