Rejoice! Here's a list of best copyright-free resources across genres for those hungry for information

It's been 50 days since StoryWeaver went live as India's first open-license, digital repository for children's books. All 1,022 stories in 28 languages (and counting) on this platform by Pratham Books are governed by the Creative Commons license. They can not only be accessed and shared by all, but also be built upon, in a collaborative effort, by story writers, illustrators and translators.

StoryWeaver heralds a new phase in Indian literature and publishing not just because it flies the coop of copyright restrictions, but also because it upholds reader autonomy – that is, it allows one to truly read and share as one pleases.

But, contrary to popular opinion, such initiatives – gifts that keep on giving – are plentiful. So plentiful, in fact, that one broke the back of the beast in compiling this list of the best rights-free literature resources by genre:

Articles and essays

1. The Electric Typewriter (TETW): It's seemingly self-defeatist to start things off with a site that doesn't host anything copyright-free. But TETW is a godsend at a time when we bookmark, then forget about long form pieces we've always intended to read. This is a collection of the greatest articles and essays of all time by some of the world's greatest writers and journalists.
TETW redirects one to sites where such content is hosted/made accessible to all. There's Susan Orlean, Malcolm Gladwell, David Sedaris, Zadie Smith, Hunter S. Thompson, Joan Didion, Adam Gopnik… once you check in to TETW, you don't want to check out.
tetw.org


Children's books

2. International Children's Digital Library (ICDL): Launched in 2002, this initiative by the ICDL Foundation (in partnership with the Human-Computer Interaction Lab, University of Maryland) is a must-visit for its 4,619 titles in 40 languages – digitised by librarians and contributors across 60 countries.

From Jataka Tales and regional Indian titles to Obayedzakani's Delightful Satires (Persian, c. 1378), 1890 Baby's Annual: Pictures and Stories for Little People to contemporary works like Tyrone the Horrible (Spanish), there is something on ICDL for every child, no matter what country or culture s/he hails from.
en.childrenslibrary.org

3. ByGosh: A good starting point for illustrated classics, be it stories by Hans Christian Andersen or Mark Twain – although it does have a better collection of short stories and classic poetry.
bygosh.com


Comics

4. Digital Comic Museum (DCM): Let's cut to the chase: today's comics don't hold a candle to Golden and Silver Age titles. The generous folks at DCM know this too well, which is why they offer free, unlimited downloads to registered members. This is an opportunity a comics fan doesn't overlook: access to 15,000-plus obscure but pop-culture friendly crime, romance, sci-fi and other titles.
digitalcomicmuseum.com

5. Comic Book Plus (CBP): If DCM blows one's socks off, CBP goes a notch higher. Not only does it host 27,127 vintage comics, it also offers pulp fiction, dailies, and magazines from the era for reading and downloading. CBP also has a Newsstand section, where it meshes any development in the comic books industry in a particular year with corresponding happenings in world history.
comicbookplus.com

If you're a DC, Marvel or Disney fan, these aren't for you. Copyright-free, remember?


Drama

6. The Eserver Drama Collection: A go-to if one is a sucker for play/drama scripts. The collection spans from classical and medieval plays to contemporary productions. Also available are theatre journals and play critiques.
drama.eserver.org

7. University of Connecticut Uconn libraries: Drama is just one of the sections in this warehouse of rights-free works, but UConn makes the Drama list for its unique collection of Vaudeville scripts.
classguides.lib.uconn.edu/all -> Drama -> Find Plays and Monologues -> Full-Text Plays Online


History

8. Forum Romanum: Harvard University Professor David Camden's labour of love is one of the most exhaustive digital libraries on all things ancient Rome. Subjects span literature, philosophy, mythology, medicine and more.
forumromanum.org

(Notable mentions: Tuft University's Perseus Project (http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/) and The Internet Classic Archive (classics.mit.edu) for Greco-Roman history and culture.)

9. Public Domain Review (PDR): PDR is the most fascinating cabinet of curiosities on the internet. This four-year-old project by The Open Knowledge Foundation is not your routine collation of historical works in the public domain. Its focus is on the oddest but most intriguing books, films and images. This is where you'll find a 1785 work called Collection of Pornographic Art from Antiquity, a dictionary of Victorian slang and documents showing Isaac Newton's firm belief in the apocalypse, to name a few. Delightful.
publicdomainreview.org


Indian literature

10. The Digital Library of India (DLI): Launched by the late Dr. APJ Kalam in 2003, DLI has over 29,000 titles across architecture, astronomy, law, philosophy, literature, etc. But this is where one should go specifically for Sanskrit, Urdu, Tamil, Hindi and other language titles. You'll find Munshi Premchand's works here, and also a 19th century book on the culture and lifestyles of the Kashmiri Pandits. DLI's aim to digitise 'the significant works of mankind' is commendable, but the indexing needs a lot more work.
http://www.new.dli.ernet.in/


Letters

11. Letters of Note: Like TETW, Letters of Note is not a rights-free platform in as much as it is an archive. And what an archive it is. With 900 mails (of the non-electronic kind) written and received by the likes of Emily Dickinson, Kurt Vonnegut, Anton Chekhov, Malcolm X and hundreds more to friends, fans, lovers, peers and others, Shaun Usher's Letters of Note offers a glimpse into the minds of the literary, artistic, academic and other revolutionary greats who shaped the world.
lettersofnote.com

12. This Day in Lettres: Literary magazine The American Reader's hat-tip to correspondence by renowned writers may not be on the scale of Letters of Note, but it's a treasure nevertheless. Sample this, from a letter by George Orwell to playwright Stephen Spender:
'Even if when I met you I had not happened to like you, I should still have been bound to change my attitude, because when you meet anyone in the flesh you realize immediately that he is a human being and not a sort of caricature embodying certain ideas.'
theamericanreader.com/category/day-in-lettres/


Poetry

13. Rekhta: Finding poetry online is no difficult feat, what with the Poetry Foundation, Poemhunter, and that old rights-free workhorse Project Gutenberg hosting hundreds of poems. Which is why one focused on Rekhta, the largest digital repository of Urdu poetry with more than 12,000 ghazals and 1,200 nazms (non-ghazal poetry) by greats such as Ghalib, Allama Iqbal, Mir Taqi Mir and many more.
rekhta.org


Philosophy

14. Open Culture: The penultimate name in free knowledge online, be it film, music, art or literature. It wouldn't be wrong to say Open Culture was the game changer, the platform that revolutionised how rights-free information would be gathered and shared. It has 550 audio books and 600 free ebooks at present, but its collection of 135 essential philosophical works by Nietzsche, Aristotle, Kierkegaard, etc. make it a one-stop resource. In case one is on a philosophy binge, Open Culture also links to 80 philosophy ebooks and 70 from UC Press and University of Pittsburgh Press, respectively.
openculture.com/free-philosophy-ebooks


The Swiss Army Knife

15. The Internet Archive (TIA): No, 'Swiss Army knife' isn't a genre, but what box can one possibly put the big daddy of all things copyright-free into? Together with the Open Library, TIA has a whopping eight million ebooks which can be read online, borrowed or downloaded.
No matter what language, genre, or medium – print, audio, or whatever else – you're looking for in the public domain, you will find it here, whether it's maps, photographs, music, films, patents or books. Name a public library or archive, and TIA has collaborated with it to expand its digital collections.
The platform encourages people to digitise their print collections and share them online for everybody to use, even offering Table Top Scanners for sale for this purpose. The scanner isn't free, of course. But until one can afford it, one will remain content traversing TIA's vast matrix.

archive.org​

Notable mention: If TIA isn't your cup of tea (!), HathiTrust (hathitrust.org), a partnership of universities and research institutions, also has a digital library with millions of titles. HathiTrust was slapped with a lawsuit in 2011 by the Authors Guild for alleged copyright violation, only to have a federal court and the Second Circuit rule in its favour, since all content it hosts is fair use.