Copyright & Sources

We publish a book only if both of these are true:

1. It was first published in 1930 or earlier.
2. Everyone whose work is in our edition (authors, co-authors, translators and illustrators) died in 1955 or earlier.

Why these numbers: in 2026, books first published in 1930 or earlier are in the public domain in the United States. Books whose creators all died in 1955 or earlier are out of copyright in countries where copyright lasts 70 years after death, such as the United Kingdom and the European Union, and in Pakistan, where it lasts 50 years. Copyright law is different in some countries, so if you live elsewhere, please check the rules where you are.

A few books may be newer texts shared under an open license (such as a Creative Commons license) or used with the written permission of the rights holder. The book page always says which applies.

Before a book is published, a person:

1. Confirms the year of first publication from at least one reliable reference, such as a library catalogue, a scholarly edition or the source archive.
2. Lists everyone whose work is in our text (author, translators, illustrators, and editors who added their own writing) and confirms the year each of them died.
3. Makes sure our text comes from a public-domain edition, not from a modern edition with new notes, introductions or translations that are still under copyright.
4. Records the source, the version of the text and the date of the check. That date is shown on the book page as "Copyright status last verified".

We check each book again at least every 12 months, and straight away when someone reports a problem.

Most English texts come from public-domain archives such as Project Gutenberg, Standard Ebooks and Wikisource. Urdu texts come from Urdu Wikisource, where volunteers type them from old printed editions. Wikisource shares those typed texts under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license, and our adapted versions are shared under the same license. Every book page names and links to its exact source.

We fix obvious typing mistakes and keep the words of the original. The covers, descriptions, design and code of this site are our own work.

If you own the rights to a book on this site, or believe a book should not be here, please tell us:

• use the report form, or
• email codebitsdaily7@gmail.com with the book title, the page address, who owns the rights and how we can confirm it.

We take a book offline while we look into a credible copyright notice. If it turns out the book was removed by mistake, we put it back.

Public-domain books belong to everyone: you may read, copy, share and reuse them. Books under an open license may be reused under the terms of that license, which is named on the book page. Our own work on this site (design, covers, descriptions and code) is not in the public domain.