O'Reilly Pushing Founder's Copyright System 134
alansz writes "The O'Reilly and Associates Open Books Project has been around for a while, and I've just received a letter from Tim about the next step" Read on if you are interested in the creative commons, and how O'Reilly authors are being asked to take part.
Alansz continues, "ORA authors are being encouraged to allow ORA to self-limit their copyright to the Founders' Copyright (14 years with one 14-year extension possible), and to allow ORA to distribute their out-of-print (or post-Founder's Copyright) books to the public using the Creative Commons Attribution license (you can freely copy and distribute the work and derivatives, as long as you attribute the work to the author and ORA). Author agreement is required in order for ORA to transfer rights to Creative Commons.
The letter included a handy FAQ about author options (allow assignment to Creative Commons, stick with the usual maximum copyright deal, or have three months to try to find another publisher when the book goes out-of-print and allow assignment to CC if you don't). The letter also notes that different editions of books count as different works, so your latest edition can still be selling commercially and earlier editions can be released as open books.
(For my out-of-print ORA book, I'm going to allow them to assign the rights to CC and make it freely available. It's great to see a publisher thinking about copyright this way, but it's no more than I'd expect from the good folks at ORA.)"
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Software (Score:4, Interesting)
The flip side of the coin is that software is incremental, unless there is a revolution in the software it will most likely take an evolutionary path. So if the copyright expires too quickly you can get a big taste of things like the Windows design and implementation.
Re:Software (Score:5, Insightful)
In any event -- the point of copyright is not to prevent the public from getting "a big taste" of how things work, but to allow the author sufficient opportunity to make money as to encourage the work's initial production. Permitting the public access to the source of 14-year-old software does little to harm copyright owners and much to widen the variety of sources available to curious tinkerers.
Re:Software (Score:5, Funny)
Understand this: No corporation has ever made enough money out of something. The only way that would happen would be if that corporation was the only corporation in the whole world, and made ALL the money. Then things would be right, and the world would be a happy place.
Daniel
Re:Software (Score:2)
Re:Corporations (Score:2)
Granted, sometimes a company wants everything and ends up merging with AOL as a result, but often they get monetary benefit instead.
I think we're just waiting (Score:5, Funny)
What's that?
Oh.
Re:I think we're just waiting (Score:2)
You mean like in some incredibly poor 3rd world country right?
Re:I think we're just waiting (Score:1)
You mean like in some incredibly poor 3rd world country right?
Not to worry... I have six at home. That should help. Combine that with all the other self-respecting Geeks, and we should have the third-world countries covered.
Re:Software (Score:3, Insightful)
At some point it costs the corporation more to dig up and make a copy for distribution than anyone is willing to pay for it. When this happens, it is impossible for them to make any more money off of this product.
Windows 1.0 probably falls into this category.
OTOH, it also costs something to dig it up and release it for free. With books it's a little different, since the book's content is already out there.
I wouldn't be supriz
Re:Software (Score:1)
Even that copyright ends, it do not indicate that source of product will come available. Microsoft just can not require license (or payment) for someone using Windows 1.0.
If source is avail
Re:Software (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Software (Score:2)
Besides, how would Microsoft make money when legacy bugs are fixed and a superior competing product is produced.
Re:Software (Score:2)
Simple: Because it would be more expensive to make a product superior to Windows XP from Windows 1.0 than to make a product superior to Windows XP when starting from scratch.
Microsoft themselves threw out that old codebase. Why would anyone else be likely to do otherwise?
Re:Software (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Software (Score:3, Insightful)
'95 won't be useful in 2023 if for no other reason but that it won't be compatible with any hardware for which folks can still buy replacement parts -- it's incompatible with a good part of the hardware in most new systems now.
Re:Software (Score:1)
Lions' Commentary on Unix 6th Edition with Source Code by John Lions
ISBN: 1573980137
Dan
Re:Software (Score:2)
http://www.info.apple.com/support/oldersoftwarelis t.html
So if older Apple hardware you don't have to fork out dollars or break copyright to get stuff working. Although I note they don't have their old versin of unix (AUX) that ran on older hardware available :-(
Think Id (Score:5, Interesting)
One more reason why I like O'Reilly
Re:Think Id (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a key feature of Id's release scheme that you have to take into account, though. You can't take what Id has released and create a fully functioning Quake. That's because although they have released the source, they have not released the level files which make the game.
That way, they can still sell the game (as part of a bargain anthology or something) if and when they want to.
Re:Think Id (Score:2)
-A
What is your book? (Score:1, Interesting)
What is your book?
Re:What is your book? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:What is your book? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:What is your book? (Score:2)
What's so hard to understand about that?
Re:What is your book? (Score:2)
You're a super genius!
Open Books Project (Score:5, Informative)
It's things like this (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:It's things like this (Score:5, Insightful)
See, I think that when bad things happen in law, its only because people havn't realized that legislation or law that *sounds* like it will make you more money might actually not.
Imagine if O'Reilly books are free. More people get them. O'Reilly's mindshare in the market increases, and there is more demand since more people have O'Reilly books and everybody sings the praises of the quality of their product (which, fortunately is the case with O'Reilly.) Economically speaking, this *could* make O'Reilly more in the long run. Theres also a collary here; the companys that lobby most heavily often have some of the worst quality products; they simply want to rely on law to make it easier to make money without having to worry about quality. Controlling the law with dollars is much more risk free than depending on the quality of code your employees can produce.
I don't think its about being money leeches. All corperations have to be; its just that the ones with the balls (and confidence in their product) that figure out that sometimes letting some revenue go here and there in the interest of the public is actually *why* you might be able to bolster your bottom line in the long run.
And thats just a round about way of saying that citizens with access to the commons are also customers; and I *think* some companies still hold onto that time honoured truth that if you keep your customers happy, they'll probably be in better shape to make more money of their own, and more likely to hand some of that over to you in the future.
Re:It's things like this (Score:5, Funny)
Exactly! Even though they lose money on each unit, they will make it up in volume!
Re:It's things like this (correction for idiots) (Score:2, Informative)
Imagine if older O'Reilly books are free.
But that was obvious if you didn't feel like being stupidly pedantic. The rest of my point was about letting *some* potential sales go for free in the interest of gaining market share and making consumers feel better about you as a brand.
It would be great... (Score:5, Interesting)
How many times have you picked up a book for a research paper and it was dated from the 60s or 70s?
Even then, I doubt that many people will get the extension... so we're talking 80 and soon to be 90s.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:It would be great... (Score:3, Informative)
You could have.
A proper OCR of a book destroys that book. Feel free to take your old, old books which are not in print, and cut & scan them in. Transfer them to a media that will last until their copyright expires, and when it does expire distribute them.
Of course, in order to "register" a copyright (which gets you better legal protection, and used to be mandatory for any protection at all) you need to send a copy to the LIbrary of Congress--so those old books from
Re:It would be great... (Score:5, Informative)
Unfortunately that's not true. The LoC discards those two copies if the book is published, they only keep unpublished registered work on the theory that once a book is published someone is likely to hold on.
Re:It would be great... (Score:2)
Even 14 years is long enough so that practically everything will have become irrelevant. Think back 14 years
Copyright trade (Score:4, Interesting)
Money is simplyfing things, of course, but the question is, if the thing which you trade for the money rather than for things you produce yourself, has the anymore same quality or will it become something different.
Trading just things is easy, object remains object even after trade, you can still preted that it is _really_ the same object.
Ideas are more flexible and their base value can change far more radically.
Re:Copyright trade (Score:4, Insightful)
Trading the pair of shoes that I made to my neighbor in exchange for a bag a wheat is easy. In the end I have a bag of wheat and he has a pair of shoes.
This is different than if I exchange a book on how to make shoes for a bag of wheat. The knowledge of shoe making is more flexible and can radically change in value than a simple bag of wheat or a pair of shoes.
(excuse me if that was a gross misinterpretation, but that's how I read it)
Just looking at computers today, I'm not sure I agree. How much is a cutting edge Pentium 4 going to cost me today? How much is that same computer going to cost me next year? Within a short time that object significantly loses value. The same goes for ideas/books. What about the value of a book on how to operate my computer? For most people, it will be worthless in a few years. For my grandparents, however, should they have to pay a ridiculous amount for something that is valuable to them but worthless to everyone people? Or worse yet, what if this book is out of print? Take another book: The Lord of the Rings. As great literature, it will never be worthless.
Both ideas and physical objects can radically change in value. What's great about this is that those books that are worthless to nearly everyone, including the author(s), can be availible to those that do value them.
Re:Copyright trade (Score:5, Insightful)
You're mixing up "price" and "value," but even if we assume that the value will be measured by looking at the price, you're still wrong: why does the price of CPUs drop? The main reasons are the devlopment of new, improved CPU designs, and advances in production technology. Those however are not physical goods but "ideas."
In other words, the value (price) of physical goods degrades not because they're physical (that might be the case for with high wear and tear, but that's a predictable process, not a "radical change in value"). It degrades because of the invention of new products -- in other words, because of ideas.
Also note that while physical goods lose value, the value of most ideas will increase. How valueable, for example, is the "idea" of electricity? Or the transistor? These are also both good examples of how the value of ideas can change in a very radical way, as claimed by the original poster: the invention of the transistor radically changed the value of electricity. Likewise, the invention of technologies for global-scale computer networks radically changed the value of computers.
Money is not like copyrights (Score:3, Interesting)
Howerver, with copying it is a totally differnnt thing. I'd say 99.99% of people who copy music or whatever are not attempting to fradulently misrepresent themselves as the original creator, they just want to
Copyright Term Self-Limitation (Score:5, Insightful)
We ought to applaude O'Reilly for acknowledging the importance of honoring the original intent of copyright to promote innovation and the limited term of protection for intellectual property to benefit individuals. They are one of the few corporate citizens who have broken ranks to speak out against the attempts by industry to make copyrights more or less permanent. But we should also note that O'Reilly has a bit less self-interest in promoting extended copyright protections due to the nature of the majority of their publication: technical publications that have a limited shelf life.
Ambivalence (Score:5, Interesting)
But under two decades.... I don't know. For one thing, if I wrote something famous, I'd want control over it long enough for a perception of it to soak into collective consciousness before it got Disney-raped or something. For another, the more substantial you make the time period you have copyright, the more you can recover risk/opportunity costs associated with a work -- or other works that didn't make it (indefinite or 75 years is waaay too long, but I don't think 30 is).
Re:Ambivalence (Score:4, Insightful)
My perspective is...if I'm an author, then I'm not going to be sitting on my hands for 14 years, soaking up the control-trip...I'll be writing more things along the way.
I think that since the original idea of copyright (Jefferson) was 14 years way back then...then it might even be ok for it to be even less than that, since publishing is almost costless with some mediums now and instantaneous as well.
Re:Ambivalence (Score:5, Interesting)
My perspective is...if I'm an author, then I'm not going to be sitting on my hands for 14 years, soaking up the control-trip...I'll be writing more things along the way.
Absolutely agree in the "sit on your hands" argument. The thing I'm anticipating... while it doesn't take much time to achieve modest success with a work, it takes a while for it to permeate most of society. So there's some financial concern with that, yes, but my bigger concern is creative/artistic. OK, so, say I'm Victor Hugo (even though there's no resemblance), and I'm just getting started and write this "Hunchback of Notre Dame" novel. It's not quite as accessible as, say, your average John Grisham novel, but it's pretty good, and a number of people like it. Disney, wanting new material, decides they like it too. They ask for film rights. I say, OK, but insist on preserving character of the book. They hum and haw, then decide they don't like me. A few years later, the copyright goes, and they do whatever they like. Mass-marketed and watered down, it goes to screen. Lots of people who might have actually liked the book the way it was get a different impression of what the story is, and decide never to pick it up.
If the copyright is longer, the idea of the book has more time to permeate society, so people can at least compare....
Or imagine you're Michael Crichton, and you have these books called "Jurassic Park" or "The Lost World"... oh. wait.
Demand integrity before granting exclusive rights (Score:2)
Disney, wanting new material, decides they like it too. They ask for film rights. I say, OK, but insist on preserving character of the book. They hum and haw, then decide they don't like me.
Then make sure not to sign away exclusive film rights before Disney demands the privilege to change the basic theme of the film. Tell Lord Farquaad's minion that if Disney doesn't want to preserve the spirit of your novel, you'll take it to Warner/New Line or Fox or Universal.
Re:Ambivalence (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Ambivalence (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Ambivalence (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Ambivalence (LOTR history) (Score:2, Interesting)
Some one in the publisher's employ forgot to renew the copyright after 14 years. Within a very short time, many publishers came out with editions of LOTR. My impression ws that Tolkien's estate did not do well as a consequence of the copyright loss. I'm not sure whether Tolkien was still alive at time of the outburst of copyright-free publication; does anyone know?
What I am sure of is that the three volumes of LOTR didn'
Re:Ambivalence (LOTR history) (Score:2)
It was pro
Asimov was paid per word... (Score:2)
I don't see how it has promoted the state of science and art that he unexpectedly many years later got paid a second time for work already done when the short stories were collected and printed as a series.
He was also paid a third time by doing later sequels
Re:Ambivalence (Score:3, Insightful)
I certainly understand your point, however-- I actually think copyright is a good idea, and giving authors some control over their work for 30 years doesn't bug me (though maybe we should consider a different copyright term for computer software-- 15 years seems like a good term to me).
What DOES bug me is the idea of people managing copyr
Re:Ambivalence (Score:3, Interesting)
VERY interesting point...
How, then, about a shorter copyright, BUT with a
"No-one Can Harm Its Worth" period?
Sorta:
I publish work, non-bothering to register copyright, thereby getting minimum protection, or actually-registering it, gaining more protection.
My right to EXCLUSIVELY-OWN the work expires after awile, but...
For another while, it may be used only under liberal 'fair use' rules, in other words, no use that mutates it into something monstrous, and
Community-use, rather than commercial/poli
Re:Ambivalence (Score:1)
The courts would just love making those kind of subjective calls. They would love it so much that they would likely declare the whole scheme invalid after the first case came up.
Re:Ambivalence (Score:2)
If the intent of the law is built-into it ( rather than just enacting a regulation ), then, as long as the author was able to communicate the intent, it'd have some possibility of working, in any sane legal-system...
*cough*
My opinion of any court-system where the judge isn't permitted to dig for justice, but has to only judge what the presenting lawyers present, though...
Also, I hear that many civil cases are based on subjective conditions, in spite of the objection you offer...
Re:Ambivalence (Score:2)
IANAL, And Therefore Disclaim Everything![tm], etc...
IIRC the protection one has under Copyright exists if one doesn't register, BUT ... one's likelyhood of winning a court-case is significantly diminished without registration
( and sending a copy to one's self by courier, and keeping the purchase-tag and the signing-papers for it, isn't as strong as simply registering the actual document with the actual copyright registration whomevers at the Intellectual Property Office, I've been told ).
... and/or on
Re:Ambivalence (Score:5, Insightful)
On one small point, the maximum copyright period under the Founder's copyright scheme was 28 years -- 14 for the initial term plus one extension. That's a lot closer to three decades than two.
To address your main point: if you've written something so un-frigging-believably good, the work will stand on its own. It shouldn't need babying along. Even if it does, you have just shy of thirty years to promote the work. That's longer than most parents take to launch their children into a fully independent existence. By the time the copyright expires, your work should be suitably well known.
If it's not, then you should be glad for the free publicity that you would get from a Disney version. IIRC, they still have to credit the author of a public domain work, even if they don't have to pay you anything. Just a little "Based on $THE_BOOK_TITLE by $AUTHOR" in the credits is sure to cause some people to read it. And then they can give copies to their friends, because it's out of copyright.
Basically, you have two different desires going on here: you want your work to make money for you, and you want it to be widely read. These two desires can be at odds with each other: maybe your book it's the best thing since the Odyssey, but the price is too high, so very few people buy it. In this case, you haven't made much money and you haven't made a splash in the collective consciousness.
On the other hand, the two can be complementary: say your work goes public domain, and all of a sudden it's the inspiration for three new plays, two movies, a parody, and a children's book. In this case, you aren't making any money from it directly . . . but you are making a large splash. And once you've made that big splash, people are bound to ask "Well, what else have you written?" And then you can point out all the OTHER fantastic books you've been writing that are still under copyright. You HAVE been continuing to write, right? You'd have to, against the day when the first one goes out into the big scary world and leaves you behind. So now you've got the fame to go with, and your books are selling like hotcakes, and life is good.
Re:Ambivalence (Score:1, Informative)
Nope. If it's public domain, then you can do anything you want with it, in any way you want. No credit required. (Though they might credit it anyway so as not to look bad.)
Disclosing original PD works in © registration (Score:3, Interesting)
No credit required.
Though the author of a work that's derivative of a pre-1923 work does not have to list the original work in advertising, he still has to list the original work on the U.S. copyright registration.
If you get First Post, then Disney can't (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd want control over it long enough for a perception of it to soak into collective consciousness before it got Disney-raped or something.
Keeping Disney's paws off your work can be done with "first mover" marketing, including official merchandising and licensing to a movie studio within a few years after publication. For example, J. K. Rowling is doing this with her Harry Potter series of novels about a young wizard in training. Such a "first mover" strategy doesn't need life plus 70 to be effective.
Really a wonderfull thing (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't count the number of times, I have gone to the bookstore, seen a topic of some interest, and then been completely destroyed by the price of the book. Can anyone really think that pricing textbooks at over a hundred dollars a copy is anything but an attempt to rip students off. Should it require a business case justification to learn something new.
Our whole society is becoming knowledge based, with skill and information as the new capital. If we want to continue to have a wealthy society we need to make access to knowledge easy for everyone. Dead tree models that price books to the skies will insure that we dont have a skilled or educated populace.
Incredibly true (Score:4, Interesting)
I can't count the number of times, I have gone to the bookstore, seen a topic of some interest, and then been completely destroyed by the price of the book.
Computer books, anyone? Especially those with CDs...
Re:Really a wonderfull thing (Score:1, Insightful)
Now the bookstores, they make a lot of money since the mark-up is nearly 100%, and then they but the book back at 30% of it's original value and then re-sell it at 50-60%.
If more bookstores existed, prices could be lower (competition) and the internet has helped this. I wouldn't mind buying a textbook right from the author/publisher for $40. Buying
Visit Lessig's Blog.. (Score:5, Informative)
Visit the man [stanford.edu] who is at the front lines of this battle for us all.
"If this case has taught us anything, it is the importance of their battle."
Viva la Resistance!
14-year old computer books.... hmmmmm (Score:3, Insightful)
It's a nice gesture, but effectively useless.
Re:14-year old computer books.... hmmmmm (Score:3, Insightful)
A C++ book from 1989? (Score:2)
However, it was the year C got standardized, so a C book from 1989 is still relevant (C99 isn't widely supported yet).
Re:14-year old computer books.... hmmmmm (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:14-year old computer books.... hmmmmm (Score:5, Insightful)
For example, I am not sure how old "the Art of Programming" is but I am sure that it will still be quite usefull in 14 more years.
Re:14-year old computer books.... hmmmmm (Score:2)
Re:14-year old computer books.... hmmmmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Some things, yes, but then there's things like McConnel's Code Complete, or Numerical Recipes, or Knuth's Art of Computer Programming.
Granted, O'Reilly doesn't sell a whole lot of these things. Though they do have a vi pocket guide.
Re:14-year old computer books.... hmmmmm (Score:2)
Re:14-year old computer books.... hmmmmm (Score:1)
Yes, 14 year old books will be "somewhat out of date". BUT ... it's starting to rebuild the creative commons, and it's a step in the right direction.
License? (Score:2)
Re:License? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:License? (Score:3, Interesting)
We take inspiration from other folks interested in promoting the sharing of creative works. Foremost among these is Richard Stallman, founder of The Free Software Foundation and author of the General Public License, or the GNU GPL. We want to complement
Re:License? (Score:4, Informative)
I guess O'Reilly's using CC's thing, but that's not open to everyone.
I think you're misinformed. CC isn't a license. CC offers a variety of licenses. They machine-generate a license to give the author whatever license terms she wants.
When does the copyright on Open Source expire? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:When does the copyright on Open Source expire? (Score:3, Interesting)
That what is written X years ago becomes public domain. Linux 0.9 is not same than Linux 2.5.
Re:When does the copyright on Open Source expire? (Score:3, Informative)
Free book cost real money (for us) (Score:5, Interesting)
Unfortunately, I hosted the book on a server run by a friend at a Level 3 co-location, which charges by the 9th busiest hour. In 36 hours, we had 10,000 downloads of an average of 20 Mb each. Right. So we hit potentially a $15,000 bill for the ninth busiest hour being 16 Mbps (the first 1 Mbps was included in his monthly bill).
So I'm screwed here, of course, and trying to raise a dollar or two from folks who downloaded the book and found it useful. We don't know the final bill, and we don't know whether Level 3 will negotiate. This is more like a natural disaster than a business decision.
If I'd been smart, of course, I would have distributed the download to many sites with no bandwidth fees or limited numbers of simultaneous users. I just thought we'd get a few hundred downloads. Not 10,000.
Re:Free book cost real money (for us) (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe you could make back some of that $15,000 by writing about how to release something for free to the audience and the publisher...
Re:Free book cost real money (for us) (Score:3, Insightful)
I'll be making a tiny tiny amount of money wr
Re:Free book cost real money (for us) (Score:3, Interesting)
I've seen situations where the P2P client is built into a browser plugin or Java app. For an example of this, see the Open Content Network [open-content.net], which provides distributed downloading free for content under an approved license.
Re:Free book cost real money (for us) (Score:2)
Um, whether you download a book via WWW or P2P you still need client software to do so. It's just that (currently) a lot more people have a browsing client than a sharing client. I suggest placing the book on gnutella and freenet, and giving download links to both the book and some P2P clients?
Advantage of freenet over gnutella is that anyone
Re:Free book cost real money (for us) (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Free book cost real money (for us) (Score:3, Informative)
Another possibility is to use a certain feature of Apache, which lets you throttle bandwidth. For example, you can set up Apache so that any file greater than 3 Mb in size is only served up at a bandwidth like that of a modem. This might discourage some looky-lous who have fast connections and would otherwise just download the book, say
mod_bandwidth (Score:2, Informative)
Another possibility is to use a certain feature of Apache, which lets you throttle bandwidth
mod_bandwidth [cohprog.com]. I have used it succesfully to prevent automatic downloaders from taking over our webserver.
JP
Knuth (Score:5, Interesting)
TWW
Good for ORA, Bad for Authors (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Good for ORA, Bad for Authors (Score:3, Informative)
Maybe there's hope after all (Score:1)
Wow (Score:2)
Now if this idea takes off, and is adopted even outside the realm of book publishing, the world will be a much better place.
Re:Wow (Score:2, Funny)
Why is everyone looking at me like that?
Re:If O'Reilly's so committed to Open Source, (Score:5, Informative)
I have written other books for ORA in groff and in MS word, and I bet they'd be able to handle several other formats.
Re:If O'Reilly's so committed to Open Source, (Score:2, Interesting)
And if that's true, it explains a lot. I can't tell you how many times I've had trouble with some kind of wacky typesetting in an O'Reilly book. Wouldn't using Tex or something avoid all of that?
Case in point: while I was still relatively new to Python, I picked up a book from them. Python sometimes prefixes variables with a double underscore, which, when run together in the typesetting, is difficult to distinguish from a single underscore.
</rant>Re: (Score:2)
Re:If O'Reilly's so committed to Open Source, (Score:5, Informative)
--Nat
Editor at ORA
Re:If O'Reilly's so committed to Open Source, (Score:2, Funny)
What!? No TROFF?
Was nice to see UNIX Text Processing available as a download.
Re:If O'Reilly's so committed to Open Source, (Score:2, Interesting)
Actually, the problem is not that O'Reilly doesn't accept OpenOffice.org formatted documents as that the O'Reilly author template is not available for OOo. O'Reilly requires authors to format chapters using O'Reilly standard styles. For Word, O'Reilly supplies a template that includes macros, menus, and so on to make this formatting process very simple and quick. There is no such template available for OOo, which means authors have to embed th