Rights and takedown

Publishing something we have no right to publish is the failure this library is most careful to avoid. This page explains how that is managed, and how to reach us if we have got it wrong.

What we publish

An edition is only ever offered for download if it is in one of two states:

• Public domain. Out of copyright in every jurisdiction we distribute to.
• Licensed. Distributed with the rights holder's written permission, which we hold on file.

Every other edition — anything unassessed, anything where permission has been requested but not granted, anything refused — is held but never served. The default state for a newly added file is "uncleared", and uncleared means invisible.

How the public domain test is applied

Because the library is readable worldwide, an edition must clear both of the common tests before it is treated as public domain:

• United States: published before 1931. This advances by one year each 1 January.
• Life-plus-seventy jurisdictions: the relevant author died before 1956, likewise advancing each year.

For a translation, the relevant author is the translator, not the original author. An ancient text can be long out of copyright while a modern translation of it is firmly protected, and the two are not to be confused.

Asking us to take something down

If you hold rights in something published here, write to rights@catholicpubs.com and tell us which document and what your interest in it is. You do not need a lawyer, a formal notice, or any particular wording.

We will remove the edition from the library while we look into it. Withdrawal is a single action and takes effect immediately: the file stops being served, the document disappears from every listing, the sitemap and the catalogue feed, and its download address begins returning "410 Gone".

We would much rather hear from you directly than through anyone else, and we will not argue about it first.