What are the different Copyright statuses of items in HathiTrust, and what do they mean?
HathiTrust maintains a database of every item in the Library and a corresponding rights status. Brief descriptions of the most common statuses are given below. Detailed descriptions of all statuses, with information about how they are determined and stored, are available on the HathiTrust Rights Database page. • Public Domain – In general, these are texts that are 1) US federal government documents 2) published in the US prior to 1923 or 3) published outside of the US before 1869. Volumes may be determined to be in the public domain for other reasons, however. See the link to the HathiTrust Rights Database page above for more information. • Public Domain only when viewed in the United States – Works published outside the US prior to 1909 are in the public domain; however, due to the variations in copyright law in countries outside the US, it is estimated that 1869 is the earliest date foreign works may still be under copyright. Therefore, users accessing the volume from US IP addresses
