Print is Dead

An independent guide to books, publishing and reading, on paper and on screens.

Copyright, the public domain and digitised books

Every book is either still in copyright or free for anyone to copy. Where that line falls, how books cross it each January, and what the courts decided when libraries and search engines began scanning everything.

Last reviewed October 2026 · General information, not legal advice

What copyright protects in a book

Copyright gives the author of an original work, or whoever the author transfers the rights to, a set of exclusive rights for a limited time: to copy the work, distribute copies, make adaptations such as translations or films, and perform or display it publicly. In a book, copyright covers the text and any original illustrations, and can also cover editorial elements such as a new translation, annotations or an introduction.

Copyright does not protect ideas, facts, titles or short phrases. Anyone may write another book about the same subject, use the same historical facts or give a novel the same title. What is protected is the particular expression: the words, as written.

Copyright arises automatically when a work is created; under the Berne Convention, which most countries have joined, no registration is required. (In the United States registration is still needed before suing for infringement of a US work, and it brings other advantages.)

How long it lasts

Terms differ by country, and the rules for older works can be complicated, but the general pattern is:

Because the US term for older published works is counted from publication, a fixed year's worth of books enters the US public domain each year.

Public Domain Day

Copyright terms usually run to the end of the calendar year, so works enter the public domain on 1 January. Libraries, archives and scholars celebrate the date as Public Domain Day. In the United States, works first published in 1930 entered the public domain on 1 January 2026. They included William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, Agatha Christie's The Murder at the Vicarage and the first Nancy Drew mysteries. Each year, works published 95 years earlier follow.

In countries with a life-plus-70 term, the date depends on when the author died rather than when the book was published, so the same book can be in the public domain in one country and protected in another. Websites that offer public-domain books usually say which country's law they follow, and readers elsewhere should check their own.

A note of caution: an old text may be in the public domain while a particular modern edition is not. A new translation, a new introduction, new notes or new illustrations can carry their own copyright.

Where to find public-domain books

The great scanning projects and the courts

In the mid-2000s Google began scanning millions of books from the collections of major research libraries, in copyright and out, to build a searchable index. For in-copyright books, Google Books showed only short "snippets" around a search term, and it gave participating libraries digital copies of books from their own collections.

Authors and publishers sued. A proposed class-action settlement, which would have created a licensing system for out-of-print books, was rejected by the court in 2011 as going too far. The authors' case continued, and in October 2015 the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held unanimously, in Authors Guild v. Google, that the scanning, the search index and the snippet display were a fair use: the use was highly transformative, and the snippets did not substitute for the books. The Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal in April 2016.

A related case against HathiTrust, which holds the libraries' copies, had already reached a similar conclusion in 2014 for full-text search and for providing accessible copies to readers with print disabilities.

These decisions became important precedents for later disputes, including over library lending of scans, where the result went the other way (see libraries and e-books), and over training AI models on books (see AI and books). The difference, in the courts' reasoning, turns largely on whether the new use offers the public a substitute for the original book.

Fair use and fair dealing

US law allows some uses of copyrighted works without permission under the doctrine of fair use. Courts weigh four factors: the purpose and character of the use, including whether it is transformative; the nature of the work; the amount used; and the effect on the market for the original. Quoting a passage in a review, parodying a novel or analysing texts for research can qualify; copying a whole book to sell or give away generally does not.

The UK, Canada, Australia and other Commonwealth countries have narrower "fair dealing" exceptions for specified purposes such as research, private study, criticism, review and news reporting. EU countries have lists of specific exceptions. The details matter, and this is an area where legal advice is worth having for anything beyond quotation.

Orphan works and out-of-print books

A large share of twentieth-century books are still in copyright but out of print, and for many the rights holder cannot be identified or found. These "orphan works" cannot be reissued or digitised lawfully without permission that cannot be obtained. Some jurisdictions have created limited solutions: the EU adopted an orphan works directive allowing cultural institutions to digitise such works after a diligent search, and later rules on out-of-commerce works; the UK runs an orphan works licensing scheme. The United States has debated legislation without adopting a general solution.

Open licences

Between full copyright and the public domain sit open licences. Under Creative Commons licences, authors keep their copyright but grant the public permission to copy and share their work, with conditions such as attribution or non-commercial use. Many academic books and textbooks are published this way, and they are often available free online alongside paid print editions, typically produced with print on demand.

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