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O'Reilly Commits to Short Copyright Durations
Sam King writes "I found the following link on the lisnews.com site: O'Reilly Adopts 1790 Copyright Durations. A small but encouraging step taken by a publisher." We should provide direct links to O'Reilly's announcement and the Founder's Copyright website.
How long are computer books useful these days?
Since much of their material is somewhat time-sensitive anyway, in that it addresses systems that are constantly evolving and therefore most people are going to want to get the latest version. Nicely symbolic, though, I guess.
That's gotta fit into your schema somewhere
A small step forward to a good cause. Now if only other publishers followed this.
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/03/22/195121 6&mode=thread&tid=162&tid=99
I don't think anyone ought to break their arms applauding O'Reilly's generosity. Most of their books are technical in nature and have a relatively short shelf life. They probably weren't making a whole lot of money off of decades-old works anyway.
What's next, your local grocery store offering to give away year-old fruit for free? Discounts on expired lottery tickets?
:-)
O'Reilly's gesture is a good and excellent thing of course, but most of their titles are computer books that will be obsolete in six months and useless in three years, so having it enter the public domain in 28 years isn't all that impressive
Now if we could get Tim to enter the recording industry...
G.
I can't remember O'Reilly ever fucking up in a big way (alas they had their share of heat) and their right to rake a decent profit (otherwise no more O'Reilly books and now that would be a shame) goes undisputed.
I like this move. I really do.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
I like the idea, but how many of Oreilly's books will be useful in 28 years?
Everything you need to know about Java 1.4 isn't really relevant when they just released Java 7.4. And what good is Mac Os X secrets with a copy of Mac OS XIV?
I would think most O'Reilly books only have a lifespan of 5, maybe ten years top before they are completely outdated.
Not to bash O'Reilly, I think they but out some really great books, but they tend to focus on implementation, rather than something that will be useful in 28 years, like say The Art of Computer Programming, by Knuth.
...like everyone else, I'll agree that this is almost pointless, considering the fact that these books are outdated after 2 years, obsolete after 5 years, and completely useless after 7 years.
As well, yeah. It's a duplicate.
Only in slashdot are posts of solidarity modded at -1 Redundant, while posts of antagonism are modded as -1 Flamebait.
It's all well and good to adopt 28-year copyrights when your books have a shelf life of five years, tops. I like that they're doing this, but it strikes me as mostly PR.
Never approach a vast undertaking with a half-vast plan.
But seriously, O'Reilly has done a lot more important stuff in copyright but this is laughable. He is not publishing Steamboat Willie or Moby Dick.
The four large keys labelled F1 through F4 are the functin keys. Period.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
I have a book by K&R. It's still helpful and that was written how many years ago? Some things stand the test of time, some things don't. But I'm not going to attack O'Reilly who puts out really good books because they won't be selling the same books in 28 years. It is a symbolic gesture and that's okay.
ooops, fifty other people have already commented on that. :(
If you think algorythms from 14 years ago are irrelevant you might want to relook at that linux code.
While many OS specific manual may be woefully obsolete in 14 years many of the underlying concepts are not and many of O'reilly's works that were put out now a decade ago still have valid and relevant information for todays information age.
they're probably accurate for historical context, raw designs, conceptual stuff etc. It's good for their PR, and I'd compare it more to Abandonware software rather then books due to the limited useful life of the publications.
Don't call my crazy, that's what they called me back in the home!
That is the point, if they only have a shelf life of 5 years, why do we need 100 years of copyright protection?
This is a real company proving that shorter terms will have a very small, if any effect on them. And provide a case study that short terms are effective.
This would be more interesting if O'Reilly published CS books instead of software manuals. But even though this gift horse has no teeth, it's still rude (and pointless) to be looking in its mouth, so let's all shut up and smile.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
If it was published before 1923 it is in the public domain. Otherwise here is a link to a table that has all the other cases. Until Congress extends it again
Free cell phone tracking
"thirty-year-old computer science manuals aren't in particularly high demand"
Not always true. Well written computer science books can often be timeless, and occasionally software can last that long or longer. An example is Maxima (http://maxima.sf.net) which was largely written back in the late sixties and early seventies and is still active today. I'm involved with the documentation effort on that project, and we would dearly love to be able to include the older manuals written about the system. Recreating docs is not simple!
There are also other very good reasons for these books to survive even if their subject matter doesn't do so well - 1) If the manuals are collected in a huge central archive as their copyrights expire and they become free, then the poor sucker who has to deal with a rare and/or obscure legacy system will have a place to go 2) The design and usage priciples of the software will be documented. They may suck, but old program != bad ideas. In fact, quite the contrary. Look at TeX, or Emacs. Old programs, but masterpieces of their art.
Don't knock old manuals. Yes there are huge amounts of crap out there in the computer world, but don't casually throw away knowledge. Even of old computer systems. You never know when you might wish you still had it.
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
They write excellent books, sell them at an excellent price (relativly), have a massive website with tons of free information. Publish many of thier titles as cheap Ebooks, and now volunatily shorten their copyright length
I dunno about you guys, but all these things make me look at Oreilly books before any other.
Thanks again Oreilly!
That now-free book on configuring Usenet to run over UUCP on 1200 baud modems is going to be really useful.
G.
O'Reilly is nothing more than Animal porn. They just LOOK like computer books. I should know I saw one at a bookstore and it had an animal on the cover.
Sick-o's
John Hubbard is tiltowait. Sure, that's obvious. I guess you didn't do a decent write-up. Better luck next time.
I never could figure out why IP laws regarding time were extended in light of advances happening at an ever increasing rate.
...... forever....
In other words: now that technology is useful for a shorter and shorter time, it's important to make the inventors and artist of such technology able to have control rights over it for even longer periods of time.
For at such a rate the day will come when you invent of create something on the spot and spure of them moment to solve a one time problem and then own rights to it even after you have been dead
The day when we can no longer breath cause someone already did.
Can someone please post up a copy of "Altair BASIC in a Nutshell" please?
Do I understand correctly that all of O'Reilly's titles will be in the Public Domain in 28 years or less?
Then why have I been buying them, when I can wait?
Good for O'Reilly.... however, it doesn't make a difference. Most of their products are worthless after only a few years.
This is much like Coke and other large companys starting to expense their options. The only ones that do it now are those that it doesn't make a difference to their bottom line. The others who it would affect don't even consider it.
O'Reilly's action is a great sentiment, but it won't make a difference until the government alters the copyright laws.
An even better idea is the Baen Free Library
It makes much more sense to put older works out there for everyone at no charge in order to generate interest in newer works. And it's been working just like that for Baen. I know that I've bought quite a few books from various Baen authors after reading some of their work through the Free Library.
"Suppose you were an idiot..... And suppose you were a member of Congress... But I repeate myself."
Having access to something like steamboat mickey to watch,distribute and use snips of it in your own works is one thing. But when something eventually enters public domain, say the first appearance of a character, are people free to use that character in their own creative works?
After hearing of this a few months back, I emailed him If I were American I would vote for him as President, he gently told me he was Irish, and with me being British, I guess it would have to be President of the EU if he ever decides to come home :)
Economic Left/Right: -0.62
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -3.69
Only 16 more years until my copy of O'Reilly's Programming with Curses goes public domain!
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Were you dropped on your head as a child, or what?
I have a idea that just jumped into my head while reading this thread.
Why not make copyrights variable? The author could choose to accept the free default (short) copyright, or pay to register for a longer one. And the extra premium you pay for additional years gets more expensive the longer you want it.
Ok, in order to clarify what I mean, how's this for an example.
20 years copyright: Free, no registration required.
30 years: $10,000 registration fee
40 years: $25,000 registration fee
50 years: $100,000 registration fee
75 years: $1,000,000 registration fee
That way, if you're a big company like Disney and you have something you think will be big, you can pay more to lock it up longer. But if you're willing to let your stuff go into the public domain sooner you don't pay anything.
Maybe you would allow a copyright holder to change their mind and extend the copyrights later. If you didn't regiser to extend it and your product was a big hit, maybe you could sign up for the longer protection at a later time. Although I think that should be even more expensive than buying the longer copyright protection up front since you could wait till you see how successful your product is before registering (less risk = more cost).
Even better would be a way to make the copyright charge based on the "value" of the property. Like you'd pay more for a long copyright on Star Wars than you would for a long copyright on Battlestar Galactica. I have no idea how that would work, but it would obviously be a better system than a fixed rate since people who make less from their item don't pay as much to register it.
I don't know if even *I* like this idea, but it seemed to me that it might be worth throwing out there. Thoughts?
My motto is: Never give up - unless it's harder than you want it to be.
Then the Atair Basic (Micro-Soft) would just about be public domain. (Everyone could swap papertapes of it guilt free!)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
when your OpenBSD server with 30 year uptime needs work, you'll need one of those manuals!!
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
I just got my notice in the mail. I'm giving mine up to the public domain after 14.
And copyright law becomes an issue of choice, in the same way that you still have the choice to close-source your software. You think copyright terms should be shorter? Vote with your work. You think it should be 130 years? You have that option.
This is just what I'd expect from a publisher who espouses the value of choice, including the choice to not share. This could be good.
If aspiration is a virtue, achievement cannot be a vice.
Authors retain the copyright to most books published in the United States; they simply license reproduction and distribution rights to a publisher. Terms vary, but typically the rights revert to the author when the book goes out-of-print. So my original question was how can the O'Reily (the publisher) decide to release something to the public domain?
But now I see a strange pattern as I investigate the books on my nearest shelf. Every copyright notice has the author's name except for the O'Reily books. Has O'Reily been forcing its authors to assign all copyrights?
Moby Dick is available at Project Gutenberg. Herman Melville died in 1891; it was release in 1991.
As far as 28 years for computer texts go, if you're talking about something like Using Java 1.2, then yes most of the information within it would be dated. However, if you're talking about books along the line of 'Solving Real World Problems with Logical Representations', then the concepts would still be useful, even if the examples require modernization. (And there's no such exact book that I know of, though there are probably similar ones that approximate it.)
R: That voice. Where have I heard that voice before? B: In about 365 other episodes. But I don't know who it is either.
I'm really looking forward to my free as in beer copies of "Algol-68 In A Nutshell", "Colossus, the missing manuals" and "BBC BASIC: The Definitive Reference"
Seriously, the day after an article on VIC20 catridges is posted on games.slashdot.org, it's pretty hard to claim that resources on out of date hardware/software aren't going to be pretty useful to the retro gamers in another thirty years. Imagine how much easier it would be, building emulators, writing new Atari games, etc. if you have an O'Reilly level guide from the era.
...capacitors charge exponentially. They never full charge but after five time constants we say it is completely charged. ...profits from contents decay over time (exponentially?). They never fully capitalize on their potential, but after 15 years most content has made most of its money.
So why do content holders insist on 90+ years? I can think of three reasons:
1. There is still money to be made occasionally from historic pieces.
2. They fear free content would divert consumers from newer content.
3. While individual movies aren't worth protecting, the set of all older movies is.
If ITunes catches on with Apple, maybe we will see IMovies, ITV etc.
--Joey
So let's see - as an author I'd get life-plus-70-years for anything I write... but then if I publish with O'Reilly he forces me into this restrictive contract that shortens my royalty stream by more than 70 years... and you praise the guy?
Imagine what would happen if Torvalds and Stallman committed to this. Versions of the Linux kernel from 1990 would be available under public domain terms in a year, and versions of emacs and gcc would already be available. It'd be interesting if all the anti-copyleft people who call the GPL "viral" would be sufficiently anti-GPL enough to fork a 14 year old version.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
Yeah... I agree... that is precisely why I want short copyrights.
Humor aside, it's the political speech that scares the crap out of corporations. Disney *knows* that people are going to pound them the minute their stuff gets into public domain.
For music, however, they have no excuse. Some really terrific stuff can come out of public domain music. The political stuff will be irrelevant in this area, I believe. If people aren't buying music, they are searching for popular music for free. Few people, if anybody, search for political music. The '60s protest rock is the extent of my political noise.
Laws are for people with no friends.
For another data point, you might find it interesting to check out the changed rules at Nature magazine. For some reason, /. wouldn't accept the usual html tag, so here's the URL:
x ml /05_news.xml&style=xml/05_news.xsl
http://npg.nature.com/npg/servlet/Content?data=
In February, they basically dropped the old rule that you had to sign your paper over to them to get it published. Now their rule is that copyright must stay with the original author(s). To get it published, you assign to Nature a license that leaves you with ownership and the right to do essentially everything except give up ownership of your paper. You can use it freely in classroom material, make reprints, and put it up on web sites, as long as you maintain control. You can't hand it over to an employer, no matter what their rules may say.
If your employer already has a legal claim to your paper, Nature won't publish it. To get it published, your employer must first give you full rights.
And they are assigning ownership of all previously-published papers back to the authors under the same terms.
Their intent is to guarantee that any research that they publish can be made available to the public by the author(s), and that employers can't take any publication rights away from an author.
It'll be interesting to see what other tech publishers do.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
The problem with many old, but still copyrighted works, is that it is impossible to track down who if anyone holds the copyright. For example, who has the copyright on old Apple II games. If there were a $1.00 fee every ten years at least we would know who to go to in order to license the work.
Free cell phone tracking
Look like all I have to do is wait about ten years so Creative Commons owns enough copyrighted material to make it worth my while, then stage a "hostile takover". All the copyrights will then belong to me and I can license them at whatver cost I wish.
BWAHAHAHA....
Cheap storage VM.
I could actually use that!!! One of my clients would really like to get his Altair up and running, if for nothing else but to say he's got it running. (He's actually willing to pay my going rate). Alas, it's got issues, and he has the machine, but no manuals...
Just because one person wouldn't find information useful doesn't mean every person would.
Look at the literary critics of today. They claim the originals of stuff like Moby Dick are classic, and if the writers of today would just go back to their roots..... But I find the original Moby Dick to be obtuse, hard to read, and thoroughly unenjoyable. Even so, it should be public domain, as should all works that are 14-28 years old. All corporate institutions should die.
For those who describe their systems as 'boxen', do you order multiple 'boxen' of corn flakes also?
/. is always saying we don't need more legislation on copyrights (more extensions and such), but to work things out economically.
So here's an opportunity to send publishers a message.
Everytime you buy an O'Reily book, circle the purchase on the receipt and send it to their offices, with a short note saying something like:
"I chose this book not only because I think it will be a high-quality resource but also because of your commitment to allowing innovation by limiting the term in which you hold exclusive copyrights to it. Thank you for your intelligent stance on IP." Send a copy to one of their competitors as well, saying that you didn't buy -their- book for the same reason.
If a publisher/producer/company of any sort gets enough of this type of feedback, other companies will take notice. And that's when they start limiting themselves, and not paying congress to buy more copyright extensions.
Trolling-putting a rubber c0ck down your pants and cutting it off with a chainsaw: noisy and it makes you look d1ckless
to be wearing my O'Reilly shirt today. :)
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
Not correct at all. 28 years is a whee bit short. For technical manuals this is on the edge of out of date and still useful. But for novels this is nowhere near enough.
Case in point, "Stranger in a strange land". Great SciFi book written in 1961, which means it would have been in public domain in 1989 it would be entered into the public domain. Or how about the original Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy? It would be really close to becoming public domain.
Sorry, but this is not right. Not to say that the current are better. But there are people who earn their monies from writing books.
I also think that having that many novels coming into the public domain will pressure writers to earn less. Consider it as follows. When books enter the public domain the publishers win and author looses. If the publisher knows that there is a short copyright then the publisher will wait and create a market in "cheap" books. These books already exist in the book stores now. If the supply of these books is huge then people will buy those books and not the new ones. For example, while Frankstein from Shelly is a damm good book, it is only for those BOOK readers willing to make the time for the book. It was written in a prose that simply is not used these days. But contrast that with Stranger in a strange land or Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy. These books are still written in a modern prose using semi modern plots, etc. These books would undercut author's right to earn an income, because as we all know in the end it is the publishers that win not the creators of the content.
I personally would go for the rule, Authors Life + 14 years. That would be fair because for the life of the author they can earn a living and shortly thereafter for other expenses. Having longer after the life of the author means again it is the publisher that profits not the original creator of the content.
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
This is indeed what the founding fathers intended with copyright -- You profit from your work for a while, then it becomes public.
Copyrights are so long these days, once you've written one book, there's no need to write a second one.
so what? computer programs usually do not outlive book copyright periods (due to new versions, obsolecence, etc)!
Even though computer books become obsolete quickly, there's still value in supporting reasonable durrations for copyright. Way to go OReily!
-- $G
The founders copyright predates the 1841 case Folsom v Marsh which attempted to delineate fair use. So, do 1790 definitions of infringement apply to these books?
3. While individual movies aren't worth protecting, the set of all older movies is.
Every time Mickey Mouse's copyright is due to expire, the copyright gets extended. One of the biggest funders of the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act: Disney.
It's not hard to see that our cultural heritage is being held safe from us simply because Disney doesn't want to lose their prime mascot.
Sucks to be us, doesn't it?
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Respect.
The real value in this is that it helps to keep the commons populated. The commercial value of computing texts after 28 years is effectively nothing. But this makes tracking down older reference materials easier if someone is willing to make them available online. Sure, most technical books are long-forgotten after nearly three decades, but the first edition of Kernighan and Ritchie's The C Programming Language is 25 years old, and Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming goes back several years farther than that. I don't begrudge either the authors or the publishers of those books a penny. But they are still in print in later editions. Releasing other books into the public domain at a time when they aren't profittable to keep in print helps to ensure that they don't disappear entirely from neglect.
The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.
I mean, seriously, who's actually that much of an idiot?
Either way, when the copyright term expires, you're still dead.
paintball
How about we all plant a tree in his memory to thank him for this idea
jay
I was under the impression that the 1976 copyright act was introduced, at least in part, to get rid of the different copyright regimes in the several states and to bring copyright protection under one federal roof. Are these founders copyrights really enforceable or should they be preempted by federal copyright statutes if challenged? I realize that the founders copyright is contract law masquerading as copyright, and may be, I suppose, distinguishable on that ground from a state defined copyright regime, but should that matter? I mean, if we allow people to contract directly around the federal copyright law does that mean federal preemption in the copyright sphere just goes away? Just wondering. -nudicle
When the creator of a work can no longer benefit from that work, not when "doing so would not inflict harm on the creators," then it's ok to have work lapse into the public domain, which is in no way a "seizure," unless of course you consider that any sort of expiry is a "seizure."
I don't know what sort of "modern political theory" says that the good of society NEVER outweighs the good of the individual (but it sounds an awful lot like Libertarianism to me), but that's totally incorrect. The good of society OFTEN outweighs the good of the individual. That's why we have laws against murder and rape; that's why we have public schools and rural electrification initiatives, and yes, that's also why we have copyrights. And you know damn well that copyright expiry isn't an unreasonable seizure of property; that's why there are binding agreements about it -- to make it 'reasonable,' so come off.
If you go back and read the original terms of copyright, you will find that it's much closer to the "limited monopoly" argument put forth by the original poster; ideas don't translate well into the 'property rights' sphere (which is a problem we're always wrestling with here on Slashdot), and your argument suggests the type of reasoning the RI/MPAA uses to justify copy protection in the name of copyright protection.
I'm not a geek, I'm just a clever script.
Produce books that use tons of pages so you can't print them out economically, then allow the digital files to be passed around.
While I have most of the OReilly titles for Perl, PHP, Linux, Unix, shell scripting, and a few other subjects in digital format, and I would never have purchased any of them in dead trees form even if I didn't have the digital form (unless I needed them specifically), I can honestly say that possessing the digital files on the books has caused me to purchase more dead trees books than I otherwise would have purchased in the first place.
OReilly has it right, and the riaa/mpaa just don't get it. I'm buying MORE from OReilly because I have the digital files (for free), and I've virtually stopped buying or renting any music/movies because of the attitude and actions of the music and entertainment cartels.
Didn't you stop to think that even though technology has advanced, people are still using old systems?
I wouldn't be surprised if some people may still have use for a computer that can run DOS, and having an old out of date book on it probably would be of some help to them.
First of all, if you are going to talk about what is "natural" then you must have noticed that there is not a natural equivalency between physical property and "intellectual property." That's merely a metaphor, which has become commonplace for various reasons but there is no "natural" obligation to treat the two equally.
The law's recognition of intellectual property rights is a man-made invention, existing through society's acceptance of it. Thus, it is entirely reasonable to consider how that invented right does or does not benefit society.
Further, even if we choose to accept that an author should have the same rights over intellectual property as over physical property, that does not justify your assertion that 'copyright should be permenant' given that authors are not. Why, and for that matter how, are we attempting to protect the "rights" of authors after they are dead?
Wrong, wrong, wrong. Nothing is "seized" in the case of copyright expiration! An author still has his or her idea even after "selling it" to another, illustrating again that "intellectual property" is not the same as physical property. An author still has his or her idea after the copyright on it expires as well.
The only thing which the author loses upon copyright's expiration is the monopoly on distribution of that idea. And that monopoly was an artificial construct granted to him or her by society in the first place! Thus, nothing is "seized" that was not due to be returned to society at that time anyway.
The only grounds which an author could possibly have for complaining of improper "seizure" of copyrighted work would be breach of agreement, if society were to revoke its protection of the author's monopoly before the author had held it for as long as he or she expected to at the time of creating the protected work.
But by that token, the retroactive extension of copyright to already-existing works, beyond the copyright terms they were created under, is just as much a breach of agreement with society.
Of course, in that case it is in a sense society that is breaking the agreement with itself. But because the terms of that agreement and the right to modify them are determined by a select few "representatives" of society, who may not be acting in accord with "society's" actual wishes, there is still a lot more room to argue about "undue harm" being inflicted to society than to Disney.
"Messed up" indeed. As one AC to another, I suggest you discover that ideas on the responsibilities and limits of law did not begin or end with the United States Constitution.
(Quoted from xttp::sww.marstimes.org.marscolony/./2378924.xtml)
-
May 22, 2553
Excerpts from "Exploring 20th Century Intellectual Property Laws" by Jonathan Swift
-
Near the end of the 20th century, the people of the former corprate state known as "The United States of America", under the guise of "protecting the rights of authors", but actually intended to line the pockets of those who owned the few major media outlets, new laws were instituted, extending copyrights from 28 years to the life of the author plus 75 years. And by exerting their economic and military power over the other nations of the world, starting with Europe, and quickly extending to the middle and far east, other nations were forced, or chose of their own free will, to adopt similar copyright limits.
As we now know, this was their short sightedness which directly resulted in the loss of the vast majority of the culturally significant media from that era.
The swift advances in computing technology which were taking place at the time meant that standards for reading and writing media changed quickly, and the removeable devices onto which data was written were not robust, degrading to an unreadable state after only 50 years.
And this was only the tip of much larger problem.
Corporate America had several other intellectual property laws besides copyright. One of which was called a patent. These patents were only the first obstacle keeping anyone from duplicating, and thus preserving, the software or hardware required to read said media. These patents protected the method by which the data encoded and decoded, how it was encrypted, (it was legal to encrypt works of art until 2239) and yes, even the very order and location of the data on the media.
If one were able to navigate the minefield of patents protecting a work from being duplicated after the hardware and software required to read it were no longer widely available, one may also have to navigate another minfield known as "trademark" law. Trademark law protected the characters contained within a work, and often the look and style of a work as well. Woe to the person who attempted to duplicate a work by the corporation known as "Disney", even long after copyright and patents protecting the work had expired.
The final hurdle was copyright law itself. Copyright law offered the most protection of the three intellectual property laws. Copyrights typically lasted for over 250 years because of medical breakthroughs allowing the extension of the average person's lifepsan to 175 years, and the afformentioned 75 years of additional copyright after the original author's death.
It was because of these intellectual property laws, (and others like the DMCA which were later enacted) that most works were lost. As the years dragged on, and particular works stopped selling, the copyright owners did not take it upon themselves to preserve these works for future generations. And as it was illegal to make copies of these works, or to construct devices capable of transfering the aging and degrading media over to new hardware without violating the millions of patents on said equipment, these works were eventually rendered unreadable and lost forever.
We now know that to preserve our culture in this digital age, and for the benefit of all beings, that no one must be granted the legal authority to deny the reproduction of so called "intellectual property", that intellectual property belongs to everyone, and that to deny anyone access to intellectual property is to create seperate castes of intellectual property haves and have nots, where some are denied the right to learn from other's creations, produce artistic works with software, and better themselves so that they may become productive members of society.
Maybe you can help me out here. You state that you can own an idea. That an idea is property. How does that work?
From your comment, it appears that you are a writer. Are you saying that all the ideas you use in your works are original-never-before-thought-of? If so, then Congratulations! Good for you! Pretty much all of the books I read contain ideas that the authors have drawn from elsewhere, either from other novels or other's experiences etc.
I don't think it's possible to own an idea in the same way you can own a car or house or pencil. Even your manuscript you have for your most recent novel. If come in and take your manuscript, I have taken your property. If I copy it, you still have your manuscript, so I haven't stolen anything. I have violated your legally given exclusive right for reproduction and distribution of your novel. I have infringed your copyright, which is entirely different.
If copyrights effectively limited ACCESS to works, you might have a point. But they don't. In fact, copyrights ENCOURAGE access to works, by giving publishers a profit motive to print more copies of them.
That may have been true at one point, when publishing a novel was a cumbersome and expensive process, but not anymore. I think I read earlier today that I can get 500 novels on a cd for free! It might be a bit more difficult for the publisher to give me access to all these books if they had to get permission from each of the authors' estates.
First of all, a great many thanks to O'Reilly for this bold move. I'll express my support shortly by buying a few O'Reilly books :).
Will O'Reilly try to make available an electronic version of the books contributed to the public domain wherever possible?
Constitutional definition:
"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries; "
I honestly don't understand where this could come from. Nobody has the right to make a profit.
When O'Reilly got the Safari Bookshelf?
//H
As mentioned elsewhere, most computer books gets old really fast, but with Safari I can check out a book and read it online before it even leaves the presses, and I must have a deadtree version, I can buy it directly from them.
This slashvertisment was brought to you by;
I'm too stupid to preview.
"The journey of 10,000 miles must begin with a single step" And you may laugh about "Steamboat Wille" and such but consider if the original copyright law was in effect, everything up to 1975 would part of the public domain. IMHO, there is a lot of good movies and most of the best music and books known to humankind that was created before 1975.
FREEDOM!
NOW!
Here's a valuable but soon-to-be-free tip
by Anonymous on Friday, May 02 @01:57PM
As of August 12, 2009, the following work shall be hereby entered in the Public Domain.
Under Microsoft DOS, type a ^Z (control-Z) to signify EOF (end of file).
Gosh, darn, now I've spilled the beans.
Followed by:
Is this a /. comment???
Anwered by:
Probably
who the hell else would come through and type something like that to this little sight [sic]:0? I can't imagine LIS ppls would do this :P
a world in progress...
If you want to make this argument, you may as well say that nobody owns anything ... if I have a desk that my computer sits on, I don't really own that desk, because nobody really created the desk, because the desk came from wood, which was independently grown by a plant, not by some desk-maker, and hell, after all, the wood is just made out of a bunch of molecules and nobody made those, not even the plant, so basically everything is just derived from something that already existed, so how can there be any property?
To put it as politely as possible, you, sir, are an ass.
Breakfast served all day!
O'Reilly is the company that has the least to lose from short copyrights. How useful would a copy of Linux in a Nutshell be in 28 years? About as useful as any late 70s manual is now.
Comments refuting these statements from the other time they were posted can be found here.
Breakfast served all day!
I have a question related to this:
I'm a (hobby-) poet and short-story writer, who at the moment publish my work (most, but not all, of it in my mother toung, Swedish) on my homepage.
I'd like to know if there are any publishers of novels and short-story- and poety-collections, that is, non-technical books, who accept other copyright/licensing-arrangements, than bying the copyright from the author, e.g. materials licensed from him/her under the OpenContent License orr the GNU FDL? Especially if someone knows about such a publisher in Sweden...
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
28 years from now?
Let's see... I'll be 51 years old... in desperate need of "Fortran in a Nutshell", and notice the slashdot article about it coming off copyright.
F-I-R-S-T P-O-S-T I never do it again!!!!