“ Free The Wikimedia Foundation, which hosts Wikisource, is very concerned about intellectual property rights. Not only are copyright violations prohibited, but also those works which do not allow others to freely re-use them. This means that the work must be in the public domain, or else it must be released under a free license. ”

“ In most cases, if a work is considered to be in the public domain in the United States, it is considered to be in the public domain on Wikisource.
Any fixed work (such as a book, image, or transcript) that was published anywhere in the world prior to 1923 is in the public domain in United States. If a work was first published after 1923, then its copyright status depends on where it was first published. In much of the world, copyright lasts for a fixed number of years (usually 70) after the death of the author. U.S. laws work differently. ”

“ Anonymous texts Determining copyright status generally requires knowing detailed authorship information. Most source texts have an identifiable author (individuals, groups, governments) , but there are texts where this information has been lost. Historical anonymous texts are appropriate at Wikisource, and some are even quite important. However, most anonymous texts should not be added to Wikisource unless they have some historical value and have no ambiguity under the copyright policy.
Evolving works Wikisource's mission is to collect and preserve works in their published form. ”