Licensing and the German Bible Society

[Weston Ruter]

Hey team,
I got an email back from the German Bible Society. It is grave. She says that as "a matter of principle we don't license the NA27 or the UBS4 Bible text for open source projects" and they also request that we remove the MorphGNT citing their copyright. (Tommy, I don't know but maybe you should suspend downloads of your E-Book based on the MorphGNT.)

Obviously the MorphGNT is an absolutely vital resource!

What are we going to do? We have to find some solution to this issue, to generate royalties for them while at the same time promote open access to Scripture. I don't believe that their closed-source licensing policy can survive given the current technological environment. We need to figure out how present a shift in policy as a positive change.

What do you think?

Weston

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Schubert, Beate
Date: Wed, Mar 18, 2009 at 3:57 AM
Subject: Open Scriptures
To: Weston Ruter <westo...@gmail.com>

Dear Weston,

 

I understand your Open Scriptures project as being not-for-profit and open source.

 

The German Bible Society is a not-for-profit religious foundation. Its mission, in collaboration with other members of the United Bible Societies, is to promote biblical research and worldwide Bible translation work in order to make the Bible available to everybody in their own language.

 

Biblical research and translation work costs a lot of money. Therefore, according to the standing rules of our foundation, we have to earn money with our texts to enable further Bible translations worldwide.  

 

Please understand that as a matter of principle we don't license the NA27 or the UBS4 Bible text for open source projects.

 

Regarding the "MorphGNT with UBS4" on the Open Scriptures website: This is again a copyright infringement as the basis of the text is the UBS4. We ask you to remove this text from your website, too, as we are the copyright holder of the UBS4.

 

With kind regards,

 

Beate 

 

Beate Schubert, M.A.

Lizenzabteilung/License Department

Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft/German Bible Society

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Tommy]

So the licensing problem is with the source, MorphGNT. But the
MorphGNT is itself open-licensed as derivative of CCAT. So did the
German Bible Society allow CCAT to use this material under an open
license, and if so why does that not trickle down to this project?

The MorphGNT text is up at a lot of sites. If it is not (legally) open-
licensed, then all those derivative projects are in danger. It is is,
then those derivative projects should be protected.

I am removing my ebook.

Tommy

> *Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft/German Bible Society
> *

[Weston Ruter]

Tommy, thanks for your excellent question. I have sent it onto the German Bible Society and I will post back here with their response.

[James Tauber]

The danger with MorphGNT has generally been when the text column in the database has been used to generate a sequential text. In its raw form, MorphGNT is somewhat less problematic although there are still things I'd like to do to make the analysis it includes more separated from the UBS text.

Ulrik and I have long planned to split MorphGNT into three relations: one with analysis at the lexeme level, one with analysis at the form level and one that maps various texts to the form analysis (because of ambiguities, that can't just be a text match). This separation would not only enable the analysis to be applied to multiple texts (thus enabling Ulrik and I to unify our respective Tischendorf/WH and MorphGNT analyses) but provide for a cleaner copyright situation.

For those actually wanting to produce sequential texts, though, the only solution may be to use something like Tischendorf or WH as a base text and to provide differences from NA/UBS via apparatus.

James

[Weston Ruter]

I just sent the following email to the German Bible Society:

Dear Beate,
I deeply affirm the mission of the German Bible Society (DBG), to promote biblical research and worldwide Bible translation to make the Scriptures accessible to everyone. I share this mission, and I am attempting to fulfill it by means of the Open Scriptures project. By semantically interlinking manuscripts, translations, morphosyntactic parsings, annotations, and other related data... Biblical study will be greatly assisted for speakers of minority languages who haven't benefited from thousands of scholars' research in the English and German speaking worlds. For example, if a Creole translation is semantically linked back to Greek and Hebrew, it can benefit from the data attached to German and English translations since they would be all connected together

I also understand that Biblical research and translation work costs a lot of money, and I understand (and affirm) the German Bible Society's policy to charge for the work it produces. I wholeheartedly affirm the DBG's mission, and I want to support your essential work. One of my core philosophies regarding the Open Scriptures project is that "the laborer deserves his wages" (Luke 10:7 ESV). Content owners like the DBG have a right to receive compensation for their labors, and I want to affirm this right in the Open Scriptures project.

Therefore, my hope is that non-free resources such as NA27/UBS4 may be incorporated into Open Scriptures via either donations, ads, and/or subscriptions. The proceeds from these revenue sources can be used to compensate the DBG for your scholarship. I want Open Scriptures to be an avenue by which the DBG may receive financial support to further its critical work, while at the same time make it possible for your data to enter “The next Web of open, linked data” for Scripture. This quotation comes form a talk by Tim Berners-Lee (who is credited with inventing the Internet). Please refer to his 15 min talk available here: http://openscriptures.org/2009/03/the-next-web-of-open-linked-data-for-scripture/

All of this is to say that I do not intend that Open Scriptures should incorporate the German Bible Society's content without due compensation.

Best of regards,
Weston

I hope this will change the German Bible Society's perception of the project.

Weston

[Weston Ruter]

NEWS FLASH: zhubert.com has been taken offline

I forwarded the email from the German Bible Society to Zack Hubert a
few days ago, and he replied to me this afternoon:

> Oh. Well that's really bad news.
>
> As I'm using the MorphGNT for zhubert.com, it pretty much sounds like
> the project needs to shutdown to protect their copyright.

Shortly thereafter he notified me that he has shutdown zhubert.com
because of the email from German Bible Society.

Site off-line: http://www.zhubert.com/

Clearly we need to resolve these copyright issues.

> >http://openscriptures.org/2009/03/the-next-web-of-open-linked-data-fo...

>
> > All of this is to say that I do not intend that Open Scriptures should
> > incorporate the German Bible Society's content without due compensation.
>
> > Best of regards,
> > Weston
>
> I hope this will change the German Bible Society's perception of the
> project.
>
> Weston
>

[richard....@gmail.com]

I am totaly heart broken. I live in Japan and have been using this
site. Is this what it is all about? Hiding the scriptures from the
world? I really needed this site. The only one who should have
copyright of the scriptures is God. This is devestating news for me...

> > > *- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

[Tommy]

I still maintain that the crucial point is the licensing of the
MorphGNT. If it is legally licensed under the terms of Creative
Commons NC Share and Share alike then these derivative projects are
protected. That license explicitly allows transformations: "to Remix —
to adapt the work." So taking out the morphological tags would simply
be adapting the work, and as long as the resulting product is
similarly licensed it should be legal

Of course maintaining that on a discussion list and defending it in
court are two totally different things.

It also seems to me that the real value of the GBS books is the
critical apparatus. That's why people will continue to buy there
books, even if the text itself is open. So far from cutting into
profits, an open data model would actually promote the company and the
text they produce. ESV, of course, would be a classic example.

[Weston Ruter]

Hi Tommy,
I understand what you are saying, and I agree with you. Perhaps the issue is that the MorphGNT not legally licensed under the Creative Commons license, or only the parsings and lemmas are CC-licensed but the UBS4 text column is not. So by taking out the morphological tags, the only thing you are left with is the copyrighted work.

I also totally agree with you that the real value in the UBS4 is the critical apparatus, and the text itself they should make open in order to promote the text and the German Bible Society. You mentioned the ESV, which I also think is a very good example, especially now since they have made available study notes to go along with their text; the ESV text is liberally licensed, but study notes require the purchse of a physical Study Bible. If the German Bible Society could adopt a similar policy, that would be wonderful.

I am still waiting to hear back from the German Bible Society regarding your question about the MorphGNT's relationship to CCAT and the fact that the MorphGNT text is used on dozens of sites out there (not that this makes it legal).

Weston

[plil...@gmail.com]

I am beyond sad too!! I am a mom and christian and was following a
quote from Martin Luther that the gospel stays fresh and alive if
studied in the original languages. I was teaching myself Greek and was
using this site to learn how to transliterate and read Greek. I was in
love with what I learned. I learned to trust the Bible through the
original languages such as in Genesis the day had three different
ways of specifically letting us know that it was a literal day, and
the fact that Jesus had phileo love for Lazerus but agape love for
Mary in the chapter on Lazerus's death....amazing how that refutes the
Davinci code to a simple person like me. I am not very smart, but this
gave me the fighting chance to see things a common person could have
never dreamed of. Thanks for the small revelation I was allowed to
have!!!!

> > - Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -

[redf...@hotmail.com]

Friends, I have been using zhubert.com for about a year and a half and
have been incredibly blessed. It's been a great help for me in my
intermediate Greek classes in seminary.

I don't have any copyright or licensing knowledge to add, but I just
wanted to say that I am praying that God would provide a generous
individual or group who would lend their expertise and time to allow a
fantastic resource like zhubert.com to be rebuilt, and that nobody
would try to dip their doughnut in coffee that rightfully belongs to
God and not man.

Thank you for all that you faithful servants have done, are doing, and
will do!

Matt

On Mar 21, 12:51 pm, Weston Ruter <westonru...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Tommy,
> I understand what you are saying, and I agree with you. Perhaps the issue is
> that the MorphGNT not legally licensed under the Creative Commons license,
> or only the parsings and lemmas are CC-licensed but the UBS4 text column is
> not. So by taking out the morphological tags, the only thing you are left
> with is the copyrighted work.
>
> I also totally agree with you that the real value in the UBS4 is the
> critical apparatus, and the text itself they should make open in order to
> promote the text and the German Bible Society. You mentioned the ESV, which
> I also think is a very good example, especially now since they have made
> available study notes to go along with their text; the ESV text is liberally
> licensed, but study notes require the purchse of a physical Study Bible. If
> the German Bible Society could adopt a similar policy, that would be
> wonderful.
>
> I am still waiting to hear back from the German Bible Society regarding your
> question about the MorphGNT's relationship to CCAT and the fact that the
> MorphGNT text is used on dozens of sites out there (not that this makes it
> legal).
>
> Weston
>

[Jerri Badenhop]

Hello there,

I am in agreement with Matt.  I am also a Greek exegesis student who was very blessed by ZHubert.
I have been following your email thread and I'm hoping and praying for another ZHubert type
of website.  Do any of you in the group have any references?  

Blessings to all of you (and gratitude),
Jerri

[Weston Ruter]

I got a reply from the German Bible Society:

Dear Mr. Ruter,

Thank you for your message that my colleague Beate Schubert forwarded to me. We acknowledge that you removed the MorphGNT form openscriptures.org. Both, the Greek Bible text and the critical apparatus of this edition are copyright protected. Thus publication and distribution is prohibited without permission of the copyright holder, the German Bible Society.

As Beate Schubert already mentioned the German Bible Society does not license the Greek New Testament for online use as a matter of principle. This does not only apply to your but to any website. However the Greek Bible text is available for free in our Bible portal www.bibelwissenschaft.de. Thus, everybody who wants to read the Greek Bible text has the opportunity to do it there.

Kind regards,

Bertram Salzmann

--------------------------------------------------------

Dr. Bertram Salzmann - New Media Director
German Bible Society - www.scholarly-bibles.com
Balinger Str. 31 - D-70567 Stuttgart/Germany

Obviously, I'm not very satisfied with their response. :-(

First of all, Beate Schubert never said they don't license the text for any online use, but rather that they don't license the text for open source projects (that is, I assumed, projects that don't generate revenue). Beate's entire argument as I understood it was that Biblical research costs a lot of money and that open source projects don't generate compensation, and so that is why they don't allow open source usage of the text. In my email to them, I was explaining that I want to support the work of the German Bible Society by means of revenue generated from ads, donations, and/or subscriptions (for access to their text). But Bertram says they disallow all online use of the text, apparently even those that generate revenue for them. So Beate's rationale isn't apparently valid... so what is the principle behind this decision? The text is already all throughout the Internet and anyone can get access to it, so it's not like they are protecting the text itself from distribution (since it's already available via their website).

Lastly, Bertram's suggestion that we just go to their website to view the text completely disregards the entire rationale for why we would need the text (that is, semantic integration with other texts). I explained to Beate:

Open Scriptures can be an intermediary between application developers and content owners. The idea is for Open Scriptures to be a platform upon which developers can build applications of scripture while at the same time give content owners a distribution channel and revenue stream.

(I know not all of us are too keen on this idea, but I wanted to present it as a possibility to the German Bible Society.) I want to send a reply to Bertram that asks about the true principle behind this decision, and to get a more adequate explanation. If their rules regarding the usage of their text are this rigid, then obviously it's time for them to rewrite them. Do any of you have additional things you think I should include in our response?

I also need to cool down a bit.

Lord please give us patience and wisdom.

Weston

[jonathon]

If anybody from the German Bible Society is at BibleTech 2009, ask
them for a clarification.

jonathon

--
The court in the southern city of Shenzhen on Wednesday sentenced 11
people to jail terms of up to six-and-a-half years for making
high-quality counterfeit software that was sold in 36 countries,
Microsoft said in a statement.

The first clue that genuine Microsoft products were not being offered,
was that it was "high quality software".

[James Tauber]

On Mar 21, 2009, at 10:55 AM, Tommy wrote:
> I still maintain that the crucial point is the licensing of the
> MorphGNT. If it is legally licensed under the terms of Creative
> Commons NC Share and Share alike then these derivative projects are
> protected. That license explicitly allows transformations: "to Remix —
> to adapt the work." So taking out the morphological tags would simply
> be adapting the work, and as long as the resulting product is
> similarly licensed it should be legal

Well, to the extent that you can recreate the UBS text from MorphGNT,
it calls in to question whether MorphGNT is legally clean or a
derivative work.

I have permission to modify and redistribute CCAT's text but that only
works to the extent that CCAT had the right to grant me that in the
first place.

As I've mentioned elsewhere, though, back in the mid 90s, CCAT had
both a morphological analysis and the UBS3 text on their site and they
took down only the latter at the request of, I presume, the GBS.

As I've also mentioned, though, I've long planned to better separate
out the analysis from the particular text, mostly as a way of reusing
the analysis for other texts but with the added advantage of more
cleanly separating out the UBS text.

But it still raises questions. Even if I had a text-independent
analysis with each unique form keyed of, say, an integer id, I'd want
to provide a mapping from a text to that analysis, e.g. "the 37th word
in John's Gospel (NA/UBS text) is unique form #285 in MorphGNT". But
this mapping could still be used by people to reconstruct the text.

Imagine I have a mapping file that has 138,019 lines that look like
this:

04 0037 285

where 04 is the book number, 0037 is the word offset and 285 is the
unique form key.

Is this a derivative work of UBS, subject to GBS's copyright?

James

[JAG3773]

Hey guys,

I don't know if you have seen this post, but if you haven't, check it
out: http://www.baylyblog.com/2009/03/german-bible-society-protects-its-cash-cow.html.

I think my favorite part is this, "Is that not crazy? If I'm right,
then you can state it another way: the goal of the UBS is to copyright
the *original* text of Scripture."

Jesse

[Darrell Smith]

James,

Taking the devil's advocacy, I would presume it was, because it is just a way of encoding the layout of the particular rendition of the NT which UBS4 is. Looking at that encoding scheme, wouldn't it be more flexible to use: book number | chapter number | verse number | word offset?

That way, the various verse differences for the codices could be stored in a way that tracks them more easily -- at the verse level rather than the word level. Isn't it true there are not really that many differences? It seems to me that if the morphGNT were to be encoded this way, with encoding also for variances, that we could obtain a text rapidly from the morphGNT as it is now for any of the other codices and avoid the copyright problems.

I've been looking at zhubert.com analytically for a while now and I don't see any great complexity issues for knocking off a clone. The most complex part is indeed the morphGNT. With some form of it in another codex we could get the site back up soon.

Darrell


Ζῆ Χριστός! יְבָרֶכְךָ יָהְוֶה


--- On Thu, 3/26/09, James Tauber <jta...@jtauber.com> wrote:

[Steve Keiser]

I appreciate the need for the German Bible Society to be compensated
for the the work they put into their edition of the Greek New
Testament, but I found their response offensive.

"However the Greek Bible text is available for free in our Bible
portal www.bibelwissenschaft.de. Thus, everybody who wants to read the
Greek Bible text has the opportunity to do it there."

First of all, in order to use this site, one must understand German.
Secondly, it doesn't have nearly the research features that MorphGNT
had. Try finding all the places where a particular form of a lexical
root appear in the New Testament. As far as I can tell, their site
doesn't offer that.

Most people didn't come to MorphGNT to simply read the Greek New
Testament. There are plenty of places online where one can do that.
Or just spend $20 and buy a printed version. I used zhubert.com
because it was an amazing research tool. It's too bad the German
Bible Society isn't interested in collaborating with others to make
this gift available to more people.

Steve Keiser

> ...
>
> read more »- Hide quoted text -

[James Tauber]

I have been in communication with the German Bible Society and am
working with them on both legal and technologically ways for me to
continue to make MorphGNT available in some form without enabling
people to violate the GBS copyrights with it.

People here probably won't like it, but the solution will likely be a
version of MorphGNT that would require you to have the UBS GNT already
in order to do mapping from that text to my analysis. In fact, I will
likely provide a Python script that regenerates the current MorphGNT
format as long as you have (1) a (hopefully legal) list of the 138,019
words in the UBS GNT in order and (2) the forthcoming version of
MorphGNT.

One advantage is this will speed up my intended work to make the
analysis mappable from multiple texts.

James

[Weston Ruter]

Hey James,
Here's another idea. To get around the UBS4, we could associate your parsings with the merging of all available public domain MSS, that is, the unified manuscript used the Open Scriptures infrastructure. The unified manuscript contains all of the attested readings of all of the MSS, and so it is almost a complete superset of the words found in the UBS4. I did a comparison of all the UBS4 words in 1 John compared with a merging of TR (1551), TR (1894), MT/Byzantine, W/H, and Tischendorf... and there were only two words in 1 John that were not also attested to in the other MSS.

If the UBS4 were also linked into the UMS (unified manuscript), then you distribute a version of the MorphGNT that contains only the readings attested to in the non-UBS4 manuscript editions (virtually everything).

What do you think?
Weston

[glenjonz]

Hi Weston,

I was using Zack's site to study God's Word for myself and my family.
I helped out financially when I thought there was a need, and would
have been happy to continue to do so. Would it be acceptable for each
MorphGNT user to have an account and pay an annual fee so the GBS
could receive revenue?

Thanks!
Glenn

> *Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft/German Bible Society
> *- Hide quoted text -

[Weston Ruter]

Hello everyone,
I've been giving a lot of thought, obviously, to the issue of copyright, and I have been getting the advice of people much wiser than me. I and many in this group are very new to the complexities of copyright and scriptural texts, and thus it is easy for us to draw (potentially incorrect) conclusions because we have limited information. It is all too easy for me, at least, to let emotional reactions determine my responses, and I am wrong to do so. The bottom-line is that the copyright situation with the German Bible Society (GBS) and other content owners is not simply a matter of money, and it is NOT about any attempt to keep God's word out of peoples' hands (this is the opposite of GBS's stated mission). We cannot make those accusations. May God bless GBS.

With all of that said, in this group (and I am speaking to myself), let us seek to be conciliatory and peaceable, and to not jump to conclusions based on our limited knowledge. Let us think before we speak, checking our attitudes and feelings before we press the send button. And furthermore, let us in gestures of humility and with grace, approach content owners' and seek to truly understand the reasons behind their policies, many of which we clearly do not understand.

"Let every person be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger. For human anger does not accomplish God’s righteousness." James 1:19a-20 NET

Thanks for your understanding and collaboration, for your passion for the Scriptures, and your enthusiasm to make them accessible via the Web.

Weston

2009/3/25 Weston Ruter <westo...@gmail.com>

[glenjonz]

Thanks, Weston,

I totally understand, and have no problems with anyone involved...just
looking for a solution which works for everyone.

Thanks again!
Glenn

> 2009/3/25 Weston Ruter <westonru...@gmail.com>

> > On Sat, Mar 21, 2009 at 9:51 AM, Weston Ruter <westonru...@gmail.com>wrote:
>
> >> Hi Tommy,
> >> I understand what you are saying, and I agree with you. Perhaps the issue
> >> is that the MorphGNT not legally licensed under the Creative Commons
> >> license, or only the parsings and lemmas are CC-licensed but the UBS4 text
> >> column is not. So by taking out the morphological tags, the only thing you
> >> are left with is the copyrighted work.
>
> >> I also totally agree with you that the real value in the UBS4 is the
> >> critical apparatus, and the text itself they should make open in order to
> >> promote the text and the German Bible Society. You mentioned the ESV, which
> >> I also think is a very good example, especially now since they have made
> >> available study notes to go along with their text; the ESV text is liberally
> >> licensed, but study notes require the purchse of a physical Study Bible. If
> >> the German Bible Society could adopt a similar policy, that would be
> >> wonderful.
>
> >> I am still waiting to hear back from the German Bible Society regarding
> >> your question about the MorphGNT's relationship to CCAT and the fact that
> >> the MorphGNT text is used on dozens of sites out there (not that this makes
> >> it legal).
>
> >> Weston
>

> ...
>
> read more »- Hide quoted text -

[redf...@hotmail.com]

Thanks for your well-spoken words of diplomacy, Weston.

Apparently you and I are a lot alike and we both have to repent on an
hourly basis at times for attitude issues.

That being said, I wholeheartedly support whatever decision you and
your colleagues make in this situation. I am fine with paying a
subscription fee (preferably a 1 year or longer term) if my opinion is
any help to you guys. I would have difficulty in paying anything over
$40 or $50 a year, however.

I'm not one of your heavier users, but I do use it regularly enough to
be willing to support it.

If you guys get it set up, you might even consider using a ubb board
or similar discussion forum for people to discuss various issues
regarding the Greek. I'm sure there are scores of scholars who would
love to spend some time helping us students. Just a thought.

Thanks Weston and all. I've been following the events around a couple
times a week, meanwhile using "lesser" sites that are helpful, but boy
are they a longshot from the zhubert site!

Matt

> 2009/3/25 Weston Ruter <westonru...@gmail.com>

> > On Sat, Mar 21, 2009 at 9:51 AM, Weston Ruter <westonru...@gmail.com>wrote:
>
> >> Hi Tommy,
> >> I understand what you are saying, and I agree with you. Perhaps the issue
> >> is that the MorphGNT not legally licensed under the Creative Commons
> >> license, or only the parsings and lemmas are CC-licensed but the UBS4 text
> >> column is not. So by taking out the morphological tags, the only thing you
> >> are left with is the copyrighted work.
>
> >> I also totally agree with you that the real value in the UBS4 is the
> >> critical apparatus, and the text itself they should make open in order to
> >> promote the text and the German Bible Society. You mentioned the ESV, which
> >> I also think is a very good example, especially now since they have made
> >> available study notes to go along with their text; the ESV text is liberally
> >> licensed, but study notes require the purchse of a physical Study Bible. If
> >> the German Bible Society could adopt a similar policy, that would be
> >> wonderful.
>
> >> I am still waiting to hear back from the German Bible Society regarding
> >> your question about the MorphGNT's relationship to CCAT and the fact that
> >> the MorphGNT text is used on dozens of sites out there (not that this makes
> >> it legal).
>
> >> Weston
>

> ...
>
> read more »

[Murray Hogg]

Hi Matt,

$40-50 a year? My UBS4 cost less than that and it's lasted more than 10 years! That said, 10 years is about the time between "upgrades" of UBS, then I'd suggest around $3-4 per year for using their product is a more realistic figure.

Or, to calculate it another way, one might ask the lifespan of the average bible software package and the license fee that GBS collect per sale. I have no idea what this might amount to, of course, but I'd be comfortable suggesting that GBS would be delighted to get $40-50 per year per user.

In view of the above, I'd suggest a once-off license purchase per user - exactly as per the current print and software copies of the UBS text - and I think a price somewhat below that of the print copy would be realistic given the obvious reduction in cost of production and supply.

Whether this would be a realistic commercial venture for GBS is the question, however, and I'm not sure how one might go about assessing the likely interest in a down-loadable edition of UBS.

Blessings,
Murray Hogg.

[redf...@hotmail.com]

Lol, Murray, value is in the eye of the beholder (or more literally,
"card holder") ;)

You catch me in a week moment and I might even go $55 and a cup of
coffee (McCafe, not Starbucks).

For what it's worth, I wasn't suggesting that more than one shiny
nickel go to the GBS. I was referring more to the overall upkeep of
the site. I trust folks like Weston, and our former leader, Zack,
moreso that I do a lot of other groups (aka some parachurch
organizations).

I do believe that the GBS ought to be able to feed their families by
their work. I'm all for paying people for what they do, "you shall not
muzzle the ox", especially concerning matters of faith.


That being said, I have a 300 page rant about the whole Christian
marketplace and how we've turned Christianity and the Bible into a
capitalist venture. I haven't written it yet.... every time I go to
the bookstore I add a few more pages.

eh. Whaddya do....?

On Mar 30, 8:32 pm, Murray Hogg <muzh...@netspace.net.au> wrote:
> Hi Matt,
>
> $40-50 a year? My UBS4 cost less than that and it's lasted more than 10 years! That said, 10 years is about the time between "upgrades" of UBS, then I'd suggest around $3-4 per year for using their product is a more realistic figure.
>
> Or, to calculate it another way, one might ask the lifespan of the average bible software package and the license fee that GBS collect per sale. I have no idea what this might amount to, of course, but I'd be comfortable suggesting that GBS would be delighted to get $40-50 per year per user.
>
> In view of the above, I'd suggest a once-off license purchase per user - exactly as per the current print and software copies of the UBS text - and I think a price somewhat below that of the print copy would be realistic given the obvious reduction in cost of production and supply.
>
> Whether this would be a realistic commercial venture for GBS is the question, however, and I'm not sure how one might go about assessing the likely interest in a down-loadable edition of UBS.
>
> Blessings,
> Murray Hogg.
>

[Weston Ruter]

Stan Gundry posted on the Better Bibles blog on "Sweat equity" and the inability for Manuscript Editions to be copyrighted just as phonebooks cannot be. I believe it deserves our thoughtful consideration:

I am not a copyright attorney myself, but I have had lengthy phone conversations with a lawyer who is credited with being the best in the USA. Here’s the deal, at least according to USA copyright law. Ancient texts such as those we are dealing with in the OT (Hebrew/Aramaic) and NT (Greek) are in the public domain and are not protected by copyright. In fact (and this is controversial), even the critical texts as reconstructed by textual critics cannot be protected by enforceable copyrights. The textual critical apparatus has a somewhat better claim to copyright, but to the extent that such an apparatus is a catalog of information, my sources tell me that any claim to an enforceable copyright is weakened. “Sweat equity” in the recreation of ancient texts is not sufficient to establish copyright. It takes sweat equity to create a phone book, but you cannot copyright a phone book. This is not something that the United Bible Society or the German Bible Society wants to hear or agrees to, this is what our lawyer consultants have told us.

However, translations of ancient texts can be proetected by copyright.

I have heard all the arguments of those opposed to copyrighting Bible translations. I am not impressed with them. For me it boils down to three principles–protection of the integrity of the text, using the revenue generated by sales to fund new projects and distribution, and the laborer being worthy of their hire. I agree that this creates a tension between the profit motive and the ministry motive. This, BTW, is a tension that all believers share whether they are working for a “profit” or a “non-profit” organization that is engaged in the selling of Christan books and Bible or related services. As a Christian, I embrace and encourage this tension. Without the ministry focus, I have sold my soul; if the bottom line is not in focus, the ministry screeches to a halt.

http://betterbibles.com/2009/03/31/the-production-of-the-tnivniv-bible-the-standard-of-integrity/#comment-13306

[jonathon]

The major issue with ancient texts is not if they are copyrightable,
but if the transcription into either digital, or print copy is
copyrightable.

For example, the differentiation between the following Hebrew letters,
especially if the scribe has "sloppy" handwriting: רדך

Faded ink, and worn away parts of letters can further hinder the
decipherment of the manuscript.

jonathon

[Lucius]

Dear Jonathan,

That's not quite true.

It's rather long, but this post speaks to that very issue:
http://www.baylyblog.com/2006/02/christian_busin.html

The gist of it is that digitizing a text that is in the public domain
does not give the individual who did the work of digitizing the right
to copyright that digital text. Here is a quote from the post that
gets to the nub of the issue:

"Unless Christian businesses making money off selling digitized copies
of works in the public domain can demonstrate they have added
significant original or creative content--not hyperlinks,
standardization of Scripture references, formatting, or indexing, for
instance--their claim of copyright is baseless, legally. Further,
threatening that they will take users to court if they share the
public domain text with others is contrary to the explicit command of
Scripture--that we are not to go to court against one another."

Warmly,

Lucas

[jonathon]

On Thu, Apr 2, 2009 at 12:33, Lucius wrote:

> It's rather long, but this post speaks to that very issue:
> http://www.baylyblog.com/2006/02/christian_busin.html

That blog addresses slightly different issues.

* _Sweat of the brow_ alone does not make a work copyrightable;
* Format shifting does not make a work copyrightable;

a) What I was addressing was the transcription of semi-decipherable,
or completely undecipherable texts. (Which is why I used Hebrew and
Greek letters as examples.);

b) That blog addresses US Law. Copyright law in other countries does
allow for a copyright to be claimed, purely on the basis of _sweat of
the brow_. Under WIPO, if something is copyrightable in one country,
the copyright is enforcible by all of the WIPO signatories;

c) I'll just point out that the copyright to the UBS4 and the
copyright to the NA-27 are held by two different organizations.
Granted, the organizations are based in different countries;

If the deciphered text is not copyrightable, then the transcriptions
are public domain, even if there are questions about the accuracy of
the transcription.

jonathon

[Lucas Weeks]

Dear Jonathan,

Thanks for taking the time to look over that article and respond. I
think that you're last sentence is really the question that I have
been wondering this entire time, namely, on what grounds is the NA27/
UBS4 copyrighted at all? Is it the fact that those who put together
the NA27/UBS4 had to do the work of "deciphering" the original
manuscripts? Is it their work in deciding which words to include in
their edition that's copyrightable? I just don't know...

Warmly,

Lucas

[Michael Aubrey]

That issue does continues to be an issue.

> If the deciphered text is not copyrightable, then the transcriptions
> are public domain, even if there are questions about the accuracy of
> the transcription.

1) What countries recognize public domain at all?

2) Does Germany?

---

From: Lucas Weeks <ldw...@gmail.com>
To: Open Scriptures <open-sc...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Friday, April 3, 2009 5:56:29 AM

Subject: Re: Licensing and the German Bible Society