AHA's Best Practices on Publishing History Dissertations On-Line

There's been a lot of talk about the American Historical Association's recent statement advising that departments embargo the on-line publication of dissertations for six years.  I completely understand the sentiments behind this -- they're trying to protect the intellectual property of the authors.  And there's a lot to fear here -- from personal experience across a lot of different fields, I've seen the ideas and data rapidly move into the public domain.  This is a real problem for young scholars whose hard-won data and insights might become the backbone of someone else's book.  We'll see how long it takes for people to forget that they first heard the suggestion that the author of the Confessions of Nat Turner was gay, or that Nat Turner's "real" lawyer was perhaps skeptical of Virginia slave society, or that the petitions for compensation for slaves killed in the rebellion reveal a sophisticated ideas about risk-spreading in the community.  I'm guessing not long.