Copyright law gives authors a copyright term that is longer than many authors think necessary. The Founders' Copyright gives these authors a chance to choose a shorter term. Through a legal device provided (for free!) by Creative Commons, the Founders' Copyright gives authors the chance to select a copyright term equal to the term that the Founders (of the American Constitution) gave authors in 1790. They gave authors a term of 14 years, renewable to 28. So too does the Founders' Copyright.

Why would any author ever choose a shorter term than a longer term? Many won't, but some will. And already, one of the most important publishers for the computer community, @O'Reilly Associates, has.

O'Reilly is our first major adopter of the Founders' Copyright. It has made two promises to benefit the public domain. 

First, regardless when the copyrights expire, as soon as it gets the 
permission of the author, O'Reilly has promised to make its out-of-print books available under a CC-attribution license. The list of those books is @here, and they are CC-free as of today.

Second, beginning today, O'Reilly has promised to publish as many of its books as its authors will allow under a Founders' Copyright. That means in 14 years (unless renewed for 28), every new book on this list@ will be CC-free. 

O'Reilly is not the only contributor to the public domain through the Founders' Copyright. A list of other contributors is @here. And just as important as the contribution of the rights, we are excited to announce that Brewster Kahle's @Internet Archive will help make the content freed under a CC license available on the net. We'll have more to announce about this soon, but as soon as we can convert O'Reilly's list of out-of-print books into an electronic form, the Archive will be posting those works within the Internet Archive. The list on our site will link to the Internet Archive as soon as the content is available for free online.

If you or your company is interested in learning more about the Founders' Copyright, or contributing work to the FC-free domain, please contact @us.


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The list of OOP is a list of content that is available under a CC-attribution license today. The list of other books should include a date when they will be free. So we can build this as a simple list today, but we need to think about how this migrates to a database later on.

We need to sync this with two other events: (1) Brewster has to sign off on us saying this, and (2) the other contributors have to have signed licenses. So we need legal code to effect (2). Also, add my books to the FC as well.