Reference Alcoholics Anonymous: Big Book, v.1, 29 October 2008.

[Patricia]

This is the key text of Alcoholics Anonymous, and was a seminal work in the development of 12-step programmes to treat addictions.

Copyright etc.
The current edition of this book is the fourth one. It is under copyright. You may read it online at http://www.aa.org/bigbookonline/ . It is in a mix of html and protected PDF. However, the first two editions did not have their copyright renewed in the U.S. I cite evidence below. The eleven core chapters are the same, as far as I can see. However, the personal stories were updated with new stories in later editions, as were the appendices. There is no ebook available of the third or fourth edition; not even for ready money. There are people trying to sell this title as an ebook, but all versions emanate from the source that I have used. Given that I have spent some time cleaning up formatting and OCR errors, I believe mine is actually better. I made it because a forum member was interested in having a copy.

Both these sites argue that the U.S copyright of the first edition was not renewed:
See:
http://www.recovery.org/aa/bigbook/ww/
and
http://alcoholism.about.com/library/weekly/aa990825.htm
The following site makes it clear that the U.S. copyright has expired for both the first and the second edition: http://anonpress.org/faq/files/read.asp?fID=239
And this hostile site argues that the original copyright was invalid and that neither the first nor second editions had their copyright renewed. http://www.orange-papers.org/orange-bigbook.html

[larliz]

Thank You very much Patricia.