Be Careful

I've told you about Gutenberg. You can go there and use their public domain books in any way you like. A fantastic site and worth donating to.

But beware. There are sites out there that bring you public domain books but have a stipulation on their site that you need to beware of.

Bartleby.com is such a site. But be careful if you plan to do more than use the works here for personal use. They claim copyright on all of the content they provide.

Wait. What? It's public domain material. It is and if you find it on many other sites, dive in.

But Bartleby has a user agreement that warns you not to “modify, publish, transmit, participate in the transfer or sale of, reproduce, create new works from, distribute, perform, display, or in any way exploit” any of its content.

Hmmmm. My advice is to enjoy the stuff they give you but find the text elsewhere if you want to use it commercially or on your own website or blog. Hey - They did the work digitizing material so you need to respect their rules.