O’Reilly Adopts Limited Copyright Term

Posted on May 2, 2003

This is interesting — tech book publisher O’Reilly and Associates have adopted the limited, 28 year copyright term known as the Founders’ Copyright (since it’s the original copyright term granted by the Founding Fathers in the 1790s) for their publications. This means that many O’Reilly books will enter the public domain within our lifetime — a far cry from the situation with most books, which will be locked up under copyright for 90+ years. Creative Commons, which manages the Founders’ Copyright program, is maintaining a list of O’Reilly publications that are now covered by the limited copyright. Kudos to Tim O’Reilly, Larry Lessig, and their respective teams for working out a way for O’Reilly to contribute so much to the public domain while still earning a profit from his works.