FAQ: How Can I Tell Whether a Book Can Go Online? Frequently Asked Questions How Can I Tell Whether a Book Can Go Online? In order for a book to go online, either the copyright holder (usually the author) has to give permission, or the book needs to be in the public domain (i.e. copyright on the material has expired), or there must be a special legal exemption allowing whoever puts the book online to do so without permission of the copyright holder. (This last case is quite rare; in the US, it may apply to libraries and archives with respect to some out-of-print copyrighted books published between 1931 and 1950. In some other countries, it might apply to books known as "orphan works".) Most free online books are from public-domain texts, but there are also many books online with the permission of the copyright holder. How do I get permission from the copyright holder? There are three basic steps: Find out the name and contact information for whoever holds the copyright and can give permissions. The copyright page on a book will usually tell you who the copyright holder is. If a publisher holds the the copyright, you can find out their mailing address by looking in Books in Print. If a person holds the copyright, and their address cannot be found through other means, most authors and estates can be reached care of their publishers. Many well-known authors also have a copyright contact address listed in the online Writers, Artists, and Their Copyright Holders (WATCH) database, or in the Authors Registry. You can also consult some guides to locating copyright holders in various countries: Australia: How Do I Find Copyright Owners? (from the National Library of Australia) Canada: Canadian Copyright Database (official site: has post-1991 registration information) United Kingdom: Locating UK copyright holders (from WATCH) United States: Locating US copyright holders (from WATCH) Contact them to ask permission. If you're writing to ask permission, tell them who you are and what you plan to do with the book. If you make it clear that you're planning a free, non-profit venture, and are willing to cooperate with the author, it's quite possible the author will welcome the chance to see their work made available to new generations of readers. Authors may be concerned about losing control or royalties for their work, or about the integrity of their work. You may want to address these concerns in your letter. (For instance, you can note that they will retain copyright over the work, and that your copy will prominently assert their copyright and author's rights. You can offer to have them check over the electronic copy if they want to make sure it's being published as they intended. You can also note that online versions of books, especially if they provide a way to buy print copies, or other books by the author, in some cases have increased sales and demand for an author's works.) See what the copyright holder says in reply. The author may reply quickly, or may take a while to respond (especially if the letter has to be routed via publishers). Some authors may not reply at all. Others will say no. While it may be unfortunate that the book cannot be read online, the author or other copyright holder does get to have the last word on whether and how they want the book published online, while the copyright is still in force. You can always try pursuing permission for someone else's book, or work on one that is in the public domain. How do I find out whether the book is in the public domain? The rules vary from country to country. In the US and many other countries, authors can put a work in the public domain by formally declaring that they are doing so. But most books enter the public domain either because they are not copyrightable (e.g. certain government documents), or because their copyrights expire. Below, I give my best understanding of when copyright expires in various countries, but keep in mind that I am not a lawyer, and should not be relied on for legal advice. In the United States, the following rules apply: Anything (other than sound recordings) copyrighted prior to 1931 is in the public domain. (Practically speaking, this includes anything published prior to 1931, since publication without copyright put the work straight into the public domain. But note this possible exception in some western states for some 1909-1930 foreign works that were not published in the US before 1931. Sound recordings need to have been published before 1926 to be in the public domain, but see below for more information on exemptions that cover them.) Certain works copyrighted in 1931 or later may already have entered the public domain. In particular, works published in the US before 1989 without proper copyright notice, and works published in the US before 1964 whose copyrights were not renewed, may have entered the public domain. However, works from 1931 or later that were originally published in countries outside the US may still be copyrighted regardless of whether they were printed with proper notice or renewed. To research whether a book's copyright has been renewed, or needed to be renewed, see this article. Works never published prior to 2003 (and never registered for copyright prior to 1978) are now in the public domain in the US if they are by authors who died more than 70 years before the most recent New Year's day. (For 2026, this means authors who died before 1956.) The Cornell University Library has a useful annotated set of tables covering the US copyright status of various types of works in more detail. Here's a summary of copyright durations in other countries, last I checked them. Please double-check terms for your country though, since as of 2026 this summary has not been fully updated for a few years. Also some countries may have transitional provisions in which some older works got shorter copyright terms. Some are noted below, some are not: Short or nonexistent: A few countries have no copyright relations with the United States or with international copyright conventions. Other countries provide no copyright protection at all, or protection only for a short time period or for locally produced or registered works. One country in this category was Afghanistan, last I checked. The Online Books Page will not list online books that are only in the public domain in such countries, unless they were originally published in those countries, or the copyright holder has given permission. (Note that in the US, works are not eligible for copyright protection unless they are published or created in a country that has copyright relations with the US.) Life + 50: The Berne Convention specifies that copyrights should run the life of the author plus (at least) 50 years, rounded up to the end of the calendar year. "Life + 50 years", is therefore the standard copyright length in many countries, including (to the best of my knowledge) Algeria, Angola, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belarus, Belize, Bolivia, Benin, Brunei, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, China, Cuba, Djibouti, the Dominican Republic, Egypt, Fiji, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, (South) Korea, Kuwait, the Kyrgyz Republic, Lebanon, Libya, Malawi, Malaysia, Moldova, Mongolia, Namibia, Nepal, New Zealand, Niger, Oman, Pakistan, Panama, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Qatar, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Saudi Arabia, Seychelles, Solomon Islands, South Africa, Syria, Taiwan, Tanzania, Thailand, Togo, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, Yemen, and Zambia. Some countries that recently enacted life+50 terms may not have applied them retroactively. Therefore, some works by authors who died less than 50 years ago, but long enough ago that their copyrights had ended by the time of the country's term extension, might still be in the public domain. Some life+50 countries are also considering extending their terms to life+70 years as part of agreements with the US or the European Union. Some may already have done so, though I do not yet have definite confirmation of any of the countries below. Among these countries are: Dominican Republic (stipulated in CAFTA; I don't know what the timetable is for such changes, or whether it has enacted new legislation as a result) Authors living in 1972 or later: This is the transitional term for copyrights in Canada, which extended its copyrights from life+50 years to life+70 years, effective December 20, 2022. Copyrights that had already expired at that point were unaffected. Life + 60: In Haiti, India and Venezuela, copyrights tend to last for the lifetime of the author plus 60 years. Life + 70: In the European Union, Albania, Andorra, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Bahrain, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Canada (for new works), Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Georgia, Ghana, Iceland, Israel, Liechtenstein, Macedonia, Madagascar, Morocco, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Norway, Paraguay, Peru, Russia, Serbia and Montenegro, Singapore, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom, copyrights tend to last for the lifetime of the author plus 70 years. (The European Union includes Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, and Sweden.) Life plus 70 years is also the standard duration of copyright in the United States for works first published after 1977. But note: Many countries with a term of life+70 years or longer adopted it relatively recently. Some may have a transitional period that means that some works by authors who died less than 70 years ago may still be in the public domain. If you want to use some of those works in one of those countries, you'll need to research national laws to see whether a country made the extension retroactive, of whether it just simply froze the public domain for a while. For example, most European Union countries made the extensions retroactive, rolling the public domain 20 years by bringing works back into copyright. But some other countries like Canada did not do this, as noted above. Israel and Australia had also done this previously, though long enough ago that their transitional phases have effectively ended at this writing. Life+75: Even as more countries move to life+70 terms, some countries are now extending the copyright even further. These longer terms may in the future serve as an excuse for extensions in other countries in the name of "harmonization". In Guatemala, Honduras, and Samoa, for instance. copyrights tend to last for the lifetime of the author plus 75 years, with certain exceptions. I do not know if these laws cover older works or are just applied to copyrights current at the time the longer terms were adopted. Life+80: In Colombia, copyrights tend to last for the lifetime of the author plus 80 years, with certain exceptions. Again, I don't know to what extent, if at all, this law retrospectively applies to older books, or whether they just apply to books under copyright when the longer terms were adopted. Even longer: A few countries are now at or near the century point. In Cote d'Ivoire, copyrights tend to last for the lifetime of the author plus 99 years. And in July 2003, Mexico extended its copyrights to the lifetime of the author plus 100 years! Again, I don't know to what extent, if at all, these laws retrospectively apply to older books, or whether they just apply to books under copyright when the longer terms were adopted. In some countries outside the US, there is also a "law of the shorter term", which may expire copyrights for books written and published in other countries at the same time as they expire in their "home" country, if this is a shorter time period. In the cases of multiple authors, authors that are organizat…