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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.
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
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.
...like everyone else, I'll agree that this is almost pointless, considering the fact that these books are outdated after 2 years, obsolete after 5 years, and completely useless after 7 years.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.
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.
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.
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.
I wouldn't say it's laughable. Consider the alternative for a momment. Which is better? Having a copyright which expires in 14-28 years, or one which expires in life + 70+ years? (Say, approx. 100 years on average)
The fact of the matter is that for a company like O'Reilly, it probably doesn't make sense from a business perspective to hold onto the copyrights for that long. As you've so brilliantly pointed out, there is little call nowadays for Perl 3 books. That, my friend, is exactly the point!
In the tech industry, the significant majority of books published have a shelf life of a few years at most. After that, they're practically worthless. Once taken out of print, the chance of them ever being republished is almost nil.
Eventually, it gets to the point where it's no longer worth it to even defend those copyrights because the money you'd spend searching for violations and defending your copyright in court costs far more than you could expect to earn over the remainder of the term. (And I would be very surprised if Tim O'Reilly didn't have a report cross his desk which showed this to him in concrete numbers)
Now, this doesn't hold for all publishers. Outside the tech sector, some books pay off in the long run. The Lord of the Rings saga is a perfect example. In those cases, from a business perspective, it's worthwhile for a publisher to hold on to his copyrights as long as possible because you never know which book in your catalogue is going to be "The Next Big Thing", and pay off big time.
For Tim O'Reilly, the chance of these books paying off for his company after 28 years is pretty close to 0. Tim O'Reilly may have strong principles, but he's a businessman first and foremost. It's a bold move that costs him and his company almost nothing.
The way I see it is that this is a brilliant move for O'Reilly. They gain practically no value from holding their copyrights to the maximum term allowed by law. By releasing their works under a shorter term, and remaining profitable, they can serve as very powerful case study for those who argue against the endless parade of copyright term extensions.
I just want to take over the world...Why does that automatically make me EVIL?