Selling Printed Versions of Public Domain books such as Project Madurai and TamilVU Texts – Is It Legal?

Community Forums Legal Advice India Selling Printed Versions of Public Domain books such as Project Madurai and TamilVU Texts – Is It Legal?

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    • #32504 Reply
      Epicfalcon9422
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        Epicfalcon9422
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        March 18, 2025 at 6:45 pm
        Hey everyone! I’m looking to print and sell some Tamil texts I found on Project Madurai and Tamil Virtual University (TamilVU) websites. From what I read, the Project Madurai stuff and TamilVU are in the public domain books which are nationalized by Tamil Nadu government , so it *should* be okay to reproduce and sell. But I’m a bit unsure about this.

        Has anyone here tried this before? Are we allowed to commercially print and sell these texts without getting into legal trouble? I’ve seen people saying the government or original authors might still hold some rights, even if the e-texts are free to download. It’s all a bit confusing.

        Also, what about translating them to English and selling them in international platforms ? Also, what about audiobooks?

        If anyone has done something similar or knows how to check each text’s license properly, I’d love to hear from you.

        (note that, I am not going to directly just copy and paste, print, and sell. I’m thinking about adding illustrations, and there are also people who want physical books. Furthermore, I’m working on translations and planning to make them available worldwide.)

        links : [https://www.projectmadurai.org/faq.html#3.3](https://www.projectmadurai.org/faq.html#3.3)

        TamilVU protected by *CC* BY-*SA 4.0* as per this (sorry, in Tamil) : [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a7/Tamil-Virtual-Academy-Copyright-Declaration.jpg](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a7/Tamil-Virtual-Academy-Copyright-Declaration.jpg)

      • #32505 Reply
        Sonaliknight376
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          Sonaliknight376
          PARTICIPANT
          March 21, 2025 at 10:59 pm
          You are free to do whatever you want with public domain books , so basically no one owns any right to it… You can sell it word for word and there should not be any trouble

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