DMCA Notice

Family & Home Living (www.familyandhomeliving.com) is a website that showcases and allows the PDF downloads of public-domain English books and novels. Each year, new books come into the public domain because their intellectual property rights have expired or aren’t valid anymore. Not only are people legally allowed to download these books but everyone is also free to reuse and share these books.

There are hundreds of public domain books that are freely available on the web and we have chosen those which we think adults and children will enjoy. We do not in any way sell or profit from the public domain books which we host on our site.

Cornell University Law School states:

The public domain includes every creative work that is no longer protected by a copyright, trademark, or patent. Creative works that are no longer protected are owned by the general public rather than the original creator. As such, the work is free to be copied, performed, or otherwise used by anyone.

As stated on the Stanford University Libraries site, creative works most commonly become public domain in the four following ways: (1) the copyright expires, (2) failure to properly renew a copyright, (3) the work is placed in the public domain deliberately by the copyright owner, and (4) the work was not of a type that can be protected by copyright. Further, certain transformative uses of the creative work can result in a new copyright owned by the one who created it. That being said, only the aspect of the use that is transformative can be copyrighted, not the public domain work itself. For example, all of Shakespeare’s works are in the public domain. While no one could claim a new copyright on any individual play, a new creator could copyright the specific arrangement of a collection of the plays. Further, new works based on the original works but with a creative new take can be copyrighted, such as the 1999 film “10 Things I Hate About You” based on “The Taming of the Shrew.”
Cornell University Law School

While we do believe that all the books available for download on our site are in the public domain we do respect the intellectual property rights of authors and international laws. Therefore if you believe that any book we share on our website infringes on your intellectual property rights please let us know by emailing us at [email protected]. Please include the following information:

Your full name
Your contact phone number
Your contact email address
Your website address
The URL where the book is located
Whether you are the author or have the rights to the material

Recommended Article: https://www.copyright.gov/legislation/dmca.pdf