Striking a blow for the public domain, O’Reilly will limit copyright terms on its books to 28 years, according to LISNews.com. Yes, as has been noted, computer manuals are not literary classics. Then again, after three decades, just about all books are out of print anyway.
Check out a chart from Eldred vs. Ashcroft if you think that terms are a yawner of an issue.
More reasonable terms could trim the costs of running a well-stocked national digital library system in the TeleRead vein and actually help writers such as dramatists who rely on the works of others. Other beneficiaries in certain respects? Piggish entertainment conglomerates that have short-sightedly warred against the public domain–even though companies such as Disney have made fortunes off works out of copyright.
