O’Reilly & the Founders’ Copyright

I got a (form) letter from Tim O’Reilly yesterday; he’s the head of O’Reilly & Associates. Tim is a very bright guy who has done a lot to help build the Internet’s knowledge infrastructure. Much of what he’s done has been cultural, and the letter falls into that category.
O’Reilly is asking its authors to put their books under the Founders’ Copyright. He believes that the existing copyright system has deviated from the Founding Fathers’ intent: that the interests of authors be counterbalanced with the public good. It’s hard to argue with him, when you see that companies like Disney are able to protect their works, basically, in perpetuity, even though many of those works are based on public-domain works themselves. (If you’re wondering why you should care, see this FAQ; it does a better job explaining than I could. This article is also pretty good).
Anyway, Tim’s asking that O’Reilly authors agree to have their books fall under the Founders’ Copyright. For those authors who agree, O’Reilly will release their books into the public domain (under the “Creative Commons” reuse license) after 14 years have passed. This doesn’t harm the authors in any meaningful way, given that in 14 years almost none of O’Reilly’s current books (and definitely none of mine!) will be of anything but historical interest. The practical value of releasing that content to the public is pretty small too, but the symbolic value is large. That’s why I’m going to sign the agreement.
One minor kibitz: the agreement O’Reilly sent us has three choices: put the book under Founders’ Copyright, leave the copyright alone and have the book taken out of print (which is what would happen normally), or leave the copyright alone, but give the author a chance to find another publisher when ORA decides to take the book out of print. Most publishers now allow the copyright to revert to the author when the book goes out of print. (Some even put the copyright in the author’s name– the publisher gets an exclusive perpetual license to use the work, until they decide they don’t want it any more.) I’m a little disappointed that Tim didn’t offer authors the option of having the copyright returned to them.
When I get around to it, I’ll probably be putting both this blog and E2K Security under the Creative Commons license.