I have read a number of things lately that reinforce the idea that copyright terms should be shorter to optimally promote the creation of new works. I blogged about two articles just last week, in particular, Rufus Pollock's, Forever Minus a Day? Some Theory and Empirics of Optimal Copyright, which concludes that 15 years is optimal. Today, Peter Suber notes that, in accordance with the original term of copyright, 14 years, John Ockerbloom is dedicating the works he authored when the Web was new (1993) to the public domain, as part of a celebration of public domain day: Peter Suber, Open Access News -- How to celebrate public domain day. Since reading Polluck's article, I've been contemplating adopting the Founder's Copyright for the Copyright Crash Course, so today, after reading Suber's post celebrating Public Domain Day, and having had a couple of weeks to think about it, I have decided that I will indeed adopt the Founder's Copyright for the Crash Course.
I went to the Creative Commons website to get the little "FC" icon and paste it on the Crash Course homepage, alongside the current CC 3.0 license I use, and discovered that it's not quite that easy. Unlike the other licenses, which give the public rights to use my works, but which don't divest me of the copyright, the Founder's Copyright actually entails a sale of the copyright in the Crash Course to the Creative Commons, the listing of the Crash Course in a registry with a notation about when it will enter the public domain, and an option to renew the copyright for an additional 14 years at the end of the term if I want to. That would be 2021. I can't imagine in any wild dream that the Crash Course still has value then, but whether it does or not, I thought about it, and I want others to take what's of value and reuse it by then, at the latest. I already have an attribution share-alike no commercial use license (the 3.0 license) on the Crash Course, so this just seems like a good next step. I'm only sorry that it's a bit more complicated than the other licenses, because I suspect that discourages many people from opting for it. For example, I would like to opt for a 14 year term for everything I have written since I started practicing law (some of which would be pd by now with a 14 year term), but of course, that's impossible to apply in practice. I can't even identify all those works or find copies of them. Just think about the nightmare it's going to be to sort out who can do what with what for works that aren't on the Web with attribution and clear rights allocated to the public, to say nothing of death dates, certain, etc. Just when the Internet has made it possible for us to benefit in concrete ways as never before from sharing our works with others, the law has made it almost impossible to do so legally. What is wrong with this picture?
Actually, it makes me want to just opt for public domain right here and right now. Why wait 14 years? Why not just create my own copyright notice that unambiguously dedicates everything I do from this moment on to the public domain? Well, there's attribution. That's about the only thing standing in the way. If you care about attribution, the pd is not quite the perfect fit it might otherwise be. Well, 14 years with a CC 3.0 should do the trick. That's what I'll stick with for now. Going forward, certainly, if not going back.
