Everybody complains about copyright extension and expansion, but nobody does a thing about it. Until now, that is. The Creative Commons people have launched the Founders' Copyright, a project which allows copyright holders to voluntarily adopt Jeffersonian copyright terms (i.e., 14 years plus an optional 14 year extension):

Rather than adopting a standard U.S. copyright that will last in excess of 70 years after the author's lifetime, the Creative Commons and a contributor will enter into a contract to guarantee that the relevant creative work will enter the public domain after 14 years, unless the author chooses to extend for another 14. To re-create the functionality of a 14- or 28-year copyright, the contributor will sell the copyright to Creative Commons for $1.00, at which point Creative Commons will give the contributor an exclusive license to the work for 14 (or 28) years. During this period, Creative Commons will list all works under the Founders' Copyright, along with each projected public domain liberation date, in an online registry.

One of the early adopters of Founders' Copyright are technical publishers O'Reilly and Associates (i.e., the people behind those animal books).

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