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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?
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.
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.
"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
Most works under copyright are out of print, because the publisher can see no economic reason to keep it in print.
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.
Hey, I am going to really look forward to when the copyright runs out on Perl 3 books, Windows 95 annoyances and appleworks 6: the missing manual. In 14 years I will be able pick up all these and write some derivative work without having to worry about the copyright.
More importantly, you will have access to those manuals in 14 years without having to chase down out-of-print hardcopys or worrying about defunct publishers that can't even make a new copy if they wanted to. You would be suprised how often people need old documentation, whether it is for some old files found on a tape in a cabinet somewhere or that computer in the backroom that cannot be upgraded from Windows 95 for whatever reason.
Personally, I have been in desperate need for software documentation that really is only five years old, but the software company stopped distributing it to "encourage adoption of their new software". To hell with them, I need that documentation! Even five years, not fourteen, is plenty for copyright in the tech industry.
He is not publishing Steamboat Willie...
OT: I hope Disney goes out of business. They've really turned into a one-product company, and that product's not even very compelling, anymore.
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
The character might be copyrighted
But then again, it might not thanks to a faulty copyright notice.
Will I retire or break 10K?
So now if you're a poor writer who cannot afford the big registration fees, you have two options:
1. Settle for the 20 year copyright.
2. Sell your soul to some big monolithic corporation who will own you till the end of time.
Sounds suspiciously like what's wrong with the music industry right now.
Mmmm.. Donuts
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.
Ideas are not property. Inventions are not property. Copyright laws weren't invented to protect 'property' (there are other laws for this, dealing with 'theft') but to allow creative sorts some measure of time to profit from their work before said work was turned over to the commons.
It was a fundamental assumption of the Founding Fathers that no man could own an idea or an invention, that all creative work was derivate of work that came before it, and therefore that it must eventually be given over to the public (in essence, nothing you do in this regard is ever truly original). One of the great Orwellian word-plays of the day is to take intellectual labor and turn it into intellectual 'property', equating it to physical property. Just look how many people buy into the nonsense, and actually argue in support of it!
Copyrights are not about protecting property but about protecting the motivation of people to create, by giving them a decent time to profit from creativity. There is no 'property' in these endeavors, nor has there ever been any property. The entire concept of property is utterly irrelevant when it comes to copyright, although there are plenty of brainwashed idiots who take what's spoon-fed to them and parrot it endlessly, letting others do their thinking for them.
The problem with long copyrights is relatively straight-forward: what you invent is by necessity based upon all relevant inventions, research, and science that's gone before you. Your invention would not have been possible if these things had not been available to you. Overly long copyrights make it possible to stifle or even bring creation to a screeching halt because they profit only those invested in the status quo. Why bother to invent thing x if Company ABC is going to sue you for it, or require an enormous licensing fee, because your invention stands upon the shoulders of what they've done? In essence, these copyright laws claim that Company ABC is perfectly justified in claiming ownership not only in what they invented, but also everything that's gone before their invention - and that future potential inventors aren't allowed to do the same.
Remember, we live in a society where copyright extends to 1-click shopping and naturally occurring phenomena, like genes. You don't even have to invent something derivate, you simply have to yell 'dibs!' fast enough to get a patent. And once you do, it's wholely within your power to put an end to any invention based upon whatever you've copyrighted, or to make the price of entry so high most folks won't bother.
According to the U.S. Constitution, the highest law in the land, there exists one and only one justifiable reason for copyright:
"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; "
Anything else is bullshit, and uncontitutional besides.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
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.
It's not a great sacrifice for *most* publishers.
Most works under copyright are out of print, because the publisher can see no economic reason to keep it in print.
You are making a very common mistake in assuming that because there is no economic incentive to print a work, that there is no economic incentive to prevent others from doing so. If all of the novels currently mothballed and unavailable to the public were freely available, publishers would have to compete with all of them, This would be difficult especially considering how cheap those works would be.
Please note: I do not believe that effectively erasing the least profitable 99% of our literary heritage is in any way justified.
No, you definitely DON'T want to give discounts to copyright extentions for "worthless products". If anything, you would want to encourage media moguls to release anything that wasn't making money for them. Otherwise, you end up with more or less the same mess you have now.
The fees should not be tied to product value. The fees should be universal and indexed for inflation. The fee should actively DISCOURAGE hoarding of works that won't be published.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
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
I don't like the idea that if I wrote Moby Dick when I was 30 I'd have to relinquish my copyright or fork over my retirement money when I was 70.
In fact, if IP is truly property it should also be inheritable. One should be able to go through life releasing high-quality works, making enough off of each one just to get by, and then be able to leave the collected works to one's children.
I disagree. I think there are a lot of people who enjoy politically oriented music of all genres and eras. You may not listen to anything other than '60's protest rock, but I don't think that's representative.
Just a few very political bands/artists of note: R.E.M., Annie DiFranco, Pearl Jam, System of a Down
Also, although I agree that copyrights should be shorter (but not non-existent), I'm not sure that I buy your reason for Disney and other corporations not wanting things to go into the public domain. In what way is anybody's ability to say what they want politically related to whether or not Disney owns the copyright on Steamboat Willy? I don't think Disney wants the copyright on any of their cartoons to expire because then they lose their monopoly on the Mickey Mouse name, not because of political motivations.
"If English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for everyone else."
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?
This is a good idea. Just one question:
When the copyright expires, are they going to give the ebooks to efforts like Project Gutenburg?
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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.
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.
Does that matter? Would Disney have had movies like Snow White, Treasure Planet, Alice in Wonderland, if copyrights were extended in perpetuity? No. Disney is the worst for taking things in the public domain, and turning around and not wanting their "property" in the public domain. Personally, I would argue that Mickey, at this point, while being recognizable as related to Disney, is ingrained enough in the popular culture, that it suffers the same fate of the word xerox as protectible. If Disney had a dime for every kid who doodled Mickey on a school notebook, etc, they'd be fat, dumb and happy, but I would say that it's like people saying xerox something, when they say copying.
Coming back to O'Reilly, are you only familiar with their tech books. You do know that O'Reilly publishes many other books don't you? Such books as Beyond Contact, Childhood Cancer (Survivors), among other titles including Adult Bipolar Disorders. There were also a bunch of travel books that I remember but can't find now, perhaps they've been spun off. If these books are also included in this effort, and assuming that alien contact and medical science aren't completely turned on their ears, these things can definitely provide useful content to the common good.
I don't know, you might try working for the intervening forty years, just like the rest of the world. I didn't write my first computer program then retire on the proceeds. No, I keep writing new software. Movie makers film new movies, musician record new albums, and writers write more books. Maybe sometime in those forty years you could manage at least one more book? Is it that bloody hard? Melville wrote a number of books after Moby Dick , why can't you?
Any copyrights that continue to exist are inherited. That would be why copyright is Life + 70 years for human copyright holders. Of course, shouldn't you spend some time raising your kids to get their own jobs, or at least write their own books?
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