The Bondage of the Word - Copyright & the Bible

Selling Jesus

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In this episode, I want to direct your attention to one of the more important articles written in modern church history.

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It was presented at the Evangelical Theological Society back in 1996 by Dr.

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Maurice A.

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Robinson, and to my knowledge, it has largely faded into obscurity, so I want to change that.

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I realize this is a long article, but I want to encourage you to listen all the way to the end.

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At the beginning, you may feel a little bogged down by some of the technical jargon regarding copyright law as he builds the background and the foundation for what he's about to say.

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But if you persevere through this episode, I promise you will learn some surprising things.

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You will hear some anecdotes that you have never heard before, and overall, I think you will be inspired with a new zeal to take part in a movement to release God's Holy Word from its bondage.

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Not to the dark chains of Rome in the Middle Ages, but rather, to the dark desire to create profitable merchandise out of the very Word of God.

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The Bondage of the Word, Copyright and the Bible by Maurice A.

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Robinson, presented at the Evangelical Theological Society in November of 1996.

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Copyright as a means of special protection for the written product of an author, has a long history, dating back to the guilds of antiquity.

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Our own laws regarding copyright stem from British jurisprudence, which in 1710 granted to authors the first meaningful protection of their own works.

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In America, the framers of the Constitution declared that the Congress shall have power to promote the progress of science and useful arts by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.

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Note what has come about as a legal result of this provision.

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1.

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Copyright is not an inherent right of an author, editor, composer, printer, or publisher.

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It is a privilege specifically granted to certain works by an act of Congress for a limited time.

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2.

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Certain items such as government documents, book or song titles, or tabulated lists specifically have been legislatively excluded from copyright protection by Congress.

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3.

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Once the limited term of a copyright has expired, a work will enter the public domain and become free for use by all.

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Anything no longer protected by statute is deemed to be in the public domain, as well as any works which are specifically donated to the public domain.

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4.

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The law secures the exclusive right to control one's own creative contribution only for limited times.

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5.

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Material protectable by copyright includes original works of authorship, translations of a work from one language to another, and quote-unquote derivative works taken or compiled from existing sources.

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Add to this the entire realm of musical composition and artistic endeavor and one can see the scope of what is copyrightable.

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The duration of copyright protection has varied over the years.

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The first copyright legislation enacted in this country granted a 14-year term, renewable for an identical period.

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In 1909, a new copyright law fixed the initial period at 28 years with an equal renewal period.

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The Copyright Law of 1978, as amended, has increased the maximum from 56 years to the life of the author plus 50 years, with certain mandated exceptions.

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Congress is currently considering legislation to extend the term of copyright by an additional 20 years, even though further extension will likely benefit only the copyright holding publishers rather than the original authors or their immediate heirs.

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Under the 1909 law, any work published before 1940 would now be in the public domain.

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However, under the current law, works published between 1922 and 1940 will not enter the public domain until the period 1997-2015.

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Only works published and copyrighted before 1922 are currently in the public domain.

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The change in the 1978 law has led to many abuses and much windfall profiteering which does not benefit in any way the original authors or their heirs.

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For example, the manual grammar of the Greek New Testament by Dana and Manti was completed in 1935 and under the 1909 law would have become part of the public domain as of 1991.

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From that point, low-cost reprint houses such as CBD, Hendrickson, then would have produced royalty-free copies selling for approximately $15.

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However, under the 1978 law, Macmillan publishers retained the copyright to Dana and Manti until the year 2010, thus reaping windfall profits beyond what they had ever anticipated due to the unexpected extension of copyright.

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In the meantime, Macmillan has increased the price of that small volume from what was already an expensive $39 volume in 1992 to an outrageous $57 today.

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The current copyright law adversely impacts the common good by extending a reasonable 56-year period of protection solely to enhance the profitability of a few older books which continue to sell.

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The greater benefit of public access to quality material of the past has been stifled by publishers, lobbyists, who have transformed the copyright law into a profiteering tool which frustrates the public good.

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Yet in terms of the present paper, it is not the term length of copyright protection which is the matter of primary concern.

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My interest is in the matter of copyright in regard to ancient religious texts which de facto should be in the public domain, especially in regard to any religious work which its advocates claim to have been derived from direct revelation and inspiration such as the Bible.

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In this paper, my concern clearly transcends the legal aspects of copyright law and contemplates the moral implications of copyright as applied to such texts.

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There are two issues at stake, the original language texts of scripture and the translations of what is deemed to be holy scripture into modern languages.

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Although the same concerns could apply to the sacred texts of any religion, I intend to speak from within an evangelical Christian context respecting those matters which directly concern our community of faith and which reflect the believer's devotion to those sacred texts.

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Number 1.

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Ancient Biblical Texts The Old Testament in Hebrew and Aramaic and the New Testament in Greek have always been received by the Christian community as the revealed and inspired Word of God.

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The revelation of these texts occurred centuries ago, and they have been vouchsafed to us in thousands of original language manuscripts, ancient language translations, and patristic quotations.

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The science of textual criticism has labored long and hard to ensure that the printed editions of the Greek and Hebrew texts we currently enjoy are substantially identical to the text originally revealed by God and inscribed by the human authors.

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So much labor and effort has been devoted to the restoration of the sacred autograph that in most cases we are 100% certain as to the original reading of the text, and even where differences of reading occur, we are quite certain that the true reading is preserved among the manuscripts we currently possess.

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It might seem inconceivable that any modern printed edition of these ancient sacred scriptures would ever impose a claim to copyright since the public domain nature of these ancient texts should be plain by virtue of age.

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Yet the Bible Societies and other publishers since the end of the last century have presumed to copyright every critically edited original language text that they have published and even take the position that the text is edited even though claimed to be the closest possible reproduction of the autographs originally given by inspiration of God, and they claim this to be the specific intellectual property of the Bible Societies themselves.

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Note that this writer does not object to the copyright of introductions, appendices, the forms of an apparatus, or other explanatory details, but the biblical text itself should be a different matter.

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Certainly the vast labor of learned editors in collating manuscripts, comparing and evaluating the variations, and publishing the text determined by such scholarly effort is valuable for the Christian community as a whole, but the question is whether such labor should be restricted by copyright from its free and open use by God's people.

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Should a book devoted to textual restoration be published, such a work clearly would be copyrightable.

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For example, Bruce Metzger has written a volume explaining the reasons for the decisions of the UBS committee in over 1400 places of textual variance.

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That volume clearly reflects original creative work and is deservedly protectable by copyright.

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The biblical text itself is a different matter, however.

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The facts are plain, over 90% of the biblical text is common in all editions, regardless of text type, whether printed in the present century or in the 1500s.

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Further, almost every variant reading cited in modern critical editions was known and published over a century ago, and scholars have been free to select from among a mass of variants since the time of Mill in 1707.

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All these variant readings are as much a part of the public domain as the Greek text itself, regardless of their individual selection or rejection by modern critical editors.

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The present writer compared the entire Greek text of the 1994 Nestle 27th edition against the now public domain 1881 Westcott-Hort Greek text.

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Out of approximately 138,000 words, there were only 1600 variational differences between both editions, and half of these were merely the presence or absence of brackets surrounding the identical text.

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Most of the remaining 800 differences were already clearly known from previously published editions, critical apparati, or collations of the past century, which shows clearly that in textual matters, as elsewhere, there is nothing new under the sun.

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It's interesting to note that the editors of the UBS and Nestle 27 text made at least one alteration from the text of Westcott and Hort in every book of the New Testament, seemingly thus to ensure that their edition would not be identical with the public domain Westcott-Hort text in any given New Testament book.

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By rearranging variant readings, they produced a text differing only sporadically from that of the Westcott and Hort.

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The resultant text, which remains 99.9% identical to its public domain predecessor, is then somehow claimed to be unique, the result of contemporary scholarly labor and thus copyrightable.

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A similar procedure is followed in regard to the Bible Society's Stuttgart edition of the Hebrew and Aramaic Old Testament, which merely reproduces the exact text of the ancient manuscript St.

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Petersburg Leningrad B19a, whose text remains virtually identical to almost all other manuscripts and previous printed editions of the Hebrew Bible.

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Even where slight differences occur in the manuscript B19a, which reflect scribal peculiarities or differences between recensions, virtually all of the basic variations had long ago been noted in the collation data of Kennecott and Rossi from the 1700s.

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Again, there is nothing new under the sun, and that which is not new should not be copyrightable.

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Some might ask, however, is not the deep and diligent labor of the critic sufficient in itself to merit copyright protection? The answer is no.

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Supreme Court decisions, such as Rural Telephone v.

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Feist, have declared that what is termed quote-unquote, sweat of the brow labor, based upon intellectual decisions regarding pre-existing factual data, is specifically excluded from copyright protection.

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Editorial selection from pre-existing public domain readings does not, in itself, create a protectable entity.

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The present writer has prepared a volume, the Greek New Testament according to the Byzantine Majority text form.

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Every reading in that edition, though carefully selected by myself and my co-editor from among numerous variants, was derived from pre-existing public domain sources, and copyright is thus only claimed for the introduction and appendices to that volume.

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Yet how, by any criterion, a text constructed out of pre-existing ancient manuscript data should be copyrightable seems beyond comprehension, even if that text reflected the result of fifteen years of joint editorial research and evaluation of individual variant readings.

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But the truth is plain, our labor created nothing new, but merely utilized freely available material from the past in light of a specific text-critical methodology in order to construct a close approximation to the autographed text.

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Sweat of the brow labor of this nature is not copyrightable, regardless of its merit.

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My editor and myself freely offered the electronic form of our text to the public and to the publisher with no thought of remuneration or personal gain, specifically because it was the biblical text which was at issue.

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There is no reason, no good reason, why the Bible Societies or other publishers should not apply the same policy to the original language source texts of the Old and New Testaments.

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If a work is merely a reflection of a public domain text or a reproduction of public domain variations from manuscripts which make up that text, copyright should not be claimed.

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There is no original work being performed and the creative selection which produces the final product is strictly labor based.

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Scholarly labor in such a situation, which is commendable, merely selects a pattern of readings out of pre-existing data and publishes that pattern as an edition of the Greek or Hebrew Bible.

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Much labor is involved, and certainly the laborer is worthy of his hire.

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The authors or publishers of such editions will generate the deserved profit from the initial publication of such works.

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However, the text as an entity should not be copyrightable, though introductions, prolegomena, and the specific format of a critical apparatus are protected.

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Once the publication of an edited biblical text has occurred, anyone should be able to utilize that edition freely as public domain material since those texts themselves claim to be nothing more than an almost exact equivalent of the inspired autograph.

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God himself was the initial publisher long ago, does he not hold the ultimate copyright to his own divinely revealed words? Is God's intent to benefit his people by the free and unhindered dissemination of that word or not? The time is long overdue for the Bible societies to renounce copyright on the original language texts of the Bibles they prepare and distribute.

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This especially includes the elimination of the incongruous policy of charging a license fee or royalty payment in order to utilize what they claim are the original texts of the word of God in either printed or electronic form.

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The Bible societies were constituted to serve the churches and to be supported by free will offerings from God's people.

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Their charter declares their mission to be a united endeavor based upon cooperation from Christians and churches of various denominations to promote the dissemination of copies and portions of scripture at the lowest possible cost with the goal of enhancing and not of restricting the distribution of the biblical texts and translations.

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With the advent of electronic publishing, the lowest possible cost is now often free, except for the intrusion of license or royalty fees.

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To charge such fees, whether to a consumer, book publisher, or software programmer, merely so that they might utilize a translation or critically restored version of the word of God is not only unbiblical, freely you have received, freely give, but borders on the unethical and unconscionable.

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Yet such fees, along with other restrictions, continue to be imposed whenever publishers or individuals might desire to use such edited texts to promote the reading, study, and use of the word of God.

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Copyright claims and licensing fees imposed upon God's people merely so that they can use God's word is an immoral action into which the Bible societies themselves should be ashamed ever to have entered.

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However, such a policy does not serve God's people in the most honorable or efficient manner, and anyone should be ashamed to charge a fee for permission to publish God's holy word.

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I would exhort the Bible societies to eliminate all royalty or license fee restrictions and to permit the free dissemination of the biblical texts in the original languages and ancient versions.

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While it is obviously permissible for a publisher to recoup costs of production and advertising in their own printed volumes, it is quite another matter to claim that the very text of the word of God is some sort of proprietary matter or intellectual property which can be bartered and sold by those who maintain the exclusive copyright to such.

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There is a guilt which remains upon certain heads in this regard, and the Bible societies in particular need once more to recognize their original mission and purpose and begin to support those purposes with integrity and responsibility and not with bullying legal claims to talk of intellectual property which supposedly subsists in man's rendition of God's holy word.

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2.

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Modernized Bible Versions Another area in which the laws of copyright have been invoked to the disadvantage of God's people involves modernized English renditions of previous English translations.

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Certainly, translations from one language into another is protected by copyright law.

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This includes modern translations of any ancient text, even though the original language forms of such texts may be in the public domain.

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Homer's Odyssey translated into English is clearly protected by copyright, but it's questionable whether putting the works of Shakespeare into contemporary English rather than its 17th century form is really quote-unquote translation.

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A questionable and thin use of the translation provision of the copyright law has been manipulated by certain publishers to create an illusion of translation when little or no real translation has occurred.

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Translation reflects the original creative work of those who render a text from one language to another.

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A simple modernization of older English words or expressions to those in current use is not translation, nor is the restructuring of antiquated English syntax.

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Merely because a rendition ultimately derives from a non-English original is not sufficient ground for presupposing that modernization of the archaic English text is a primary act of translation regardless of whether the original language texts are consulted and diligently compared during the modernization process.

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For example, no one would claim that the KJV is a translation of the Bishop's Bible, even though a similar process occurred in that revision, paralleling what one sees in the NKJV or NASV.

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There is no original creation involved in such a process, and the result should not have been copyrighted, let alone have become proprietary to any individual publisher.

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Infringement cannot and should not occur when significant creativity has not been involved in the production of a work.

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This, of course, does not preclude a publisher from claiming and even filing a copyright protection.

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The U.S.

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Copyright Office will supply notice of copyright to almost any work submitted with the proper forms and fees.

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The Copyright Office does not have the time or manpower to determine the validity of that copyright, but notes that any infringement of copyright must be pursued in a court of law, and only the court can determine whether a claimed copyright is valid.

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The fact that a work is issued a certificate by the Copyright Office does not make it a valid copyright.

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Consider a parallel example.

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Were I to prepare and attempt to copyright a novel derived from John Grisham's The Firm, with 95% of my text still in agreement with Grisham's original wording, only the names of the characters might be changed, I certainly would not possess a valid copyright, regardless of the action of the U.S.

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Copyright Office concerning my application for such.

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In fact, I certainly would be liable for damages due to plagiarizing infringement.

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To consider even the previous example of a work which is clearly in the public domain, were I to modernize the 5% Elizabethan English of Shakespeare and leave 95% of the text as he originally wrote it, my copyright on the final product would and should be called into question as a non-original work which basically, though legally, plagiarized the Bard's original text.

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Certainly, I could not be sued for appropriating public domain material, but anyone else could modernize Shakespeare in an identical or near-identical fashion so as to produce a text like my own, and I would have no legal recourse since, by definition, infringement could not occur.

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The slight modification of an original source does not represent a creative production which should be protectable by copyright.

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It would smack of blatant plagiarism for me to claim authorship and copyright and royalty protection for my Shakespearean text where 95% of it remains identical to the original.

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The case is no different in regard to so-called English Bible translations which are primarily mere modernizations of older public domain versions.

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The bulk of the text of such modernizing versions is identical to that found in their public domain predecessors, and almost anyone familiar with contemporary English would be able to perform the same task, even without a knowledge of the original languages.

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Despite claims to that effect, the modernization of archaic language and restructuring its form of expression, even in light of the original underlying texts, is not and should not be considered translation nor should be protected by copyright.

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There are two major translations currently marketed as modernizations of older translations which long ago became part of the public domain in this country.

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Regardless of the scholarship involved in its production, the New King James Version is little more than the modernization and restructuring of the 1759 Blaney revision of the 1611 KJV.

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Words and phraseology were updated but significant real translation rarely occurred.

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The facts are simple, the average person who can handle Elizabethan English, not being familiar with the NKJV and not consulting such in the process, could randomly select almost any chapter of the original KJV and modernize it so successfully that he or she will find that the resultant text will be approximately 95% identical to the NKJV.

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Such a revision process primarily concerns simple matters such as the alteration of thee or thou into you or the altering of God forbid into may it not be or certainly not.

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Whether one proclaims thus saith the Lord or thus says the Lord, the public domain nature of the text remains evident.

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Even the removal of archaisms such as replacing niecing with sneezing or letteth with restrains is not translation, but simple non-copyrightable modernization.

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Such a modernization process also includes basic syntactical restructuring.

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Know ye not becomes know you not and must be restructured to do you not know? Again, no real translation occurs with such a process, but merely the modernization of older forms of expression within the same language base.

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Most anyone familiar with older and current English should be able to produce a nearly identical product even without consulting and comparing against the original Greek and Hebrew and Aramaic underlying texts.

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The case is simple.

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No one should presume to claim copyright protection for simple English modernization, whether the text be that of Shakespeare or the word of God itself.

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Yet every modernized revision of the KJV claims copyright protection, not only the NKJV, but also minor additions such as Jay Green's modern KJV and the recently advertised 21st century KJV.

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None of these additions reflects a true work of translation, since little or no real translation has actually occurred to produce the final product.

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The Lockman Foundation similarly claims copyright for their translation of the New American Standard Version when it also is little more than a modernization of the public domain American Standard Version of 1901.

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As an experiment, the present writer modernized a sample chapter of the New Testament, Matthew 4, from the ASV 1901 without consulting either the NASV or the Greek text.

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Without even trying, my modern English result was 96% identical with the wording of the NASV, and the 4% were differences of rendering occurred, either my own or the NASV rendering could have been acceptable.

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I of course was prejudiced in favor of my own rendition.

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Lest anyone presume that such occurred because I was already familiar with either the NASV or the ASV, this was not the case since I have not used the NASV during the past 10 years and rarely use the ASV.

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I also did not consult the underlying Greek text during the modernization process.

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The claim is regularly made in promoting both the NKJV and the NASV regarding the diligent and strenuous labor of numerous editors and translators of both translations over a period of many years at great expense and how stylists went over every line of the product to bring it to perfection.

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While this is true, and a noble undertaking in all respects, the fact remains that despite all the hoopla, the end result in either version is a product which in general the average English speaking person with simple common sense could create on the fly as he or she read from the original KJV or ASV modernizing the English as need required.

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Certainly those who know the biblical languages can improve the final product at certain points, but for the average person the end result remains similar to what anyone without the benefit of scholarship or ancient language skills could accomplish.

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The current text of both editions remains primarily a mere modernization of pre-existing public domain translations.

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By pressing a claim of copyright, both the Lachman Foundation and Thomas Nelson Publishers suggest that there is something original, creative, and unique in their modernized translations.

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But, remember Grisham and Shakespeare? Had the identical process been used to make a modernization of a current copyrighted volume, and the respective final texts ever been subjected to an open demonstration of how easily anyone could produce virtually the same product by altering the original English language sources, I doubt that any judge or jury would hold the text to be copyrightable let alone proprietary, but that such publishers would be found liable for plagiarism of the copyrighted text.

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The advantage which the KJV and NASV publishers possess is that, just as with Shakespeare, no one can or will bring charges from the original KJV or ASV in regard to infringement.

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So, it seems ludicrous that they should then claim a particular proprietary right in the modernized product merely because no claim of infringement is possible.

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Do not misunderstand my point.

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The problem is not with these publishers and their modern renditions of public domain translations, nor even with their making a reasonable profit from publishing such versions in a variety of forms.

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The problem is with the specific claim that such texts must become exclusive and proprietary to them, protected by copyright, and requiring a license or royalty fee from anyone who might otherwise desire to publish and distribute those texts.

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One publisher who licenses the NASV from the Lockman Foundation told me that they must pay a royalty fee exceeding 10% to the Lockman Foundation for each copy of the NASV that they sell.

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This should not be the case considering that virtually anyone could produce a near-identical product with no expenditure of effort beyond mere English modernization of the 1901 ASV.

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Allow me to propose a money-saving alternative for all publishers.

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Assemble a team of scholars who will work voluntarily for the glory of God alone, who will then use computer technology for search and replace, and finally completely modernize the 1901 ASV from scratch so as to produce a totally public domain version of the ASV.

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The result will be a royalty-free modern American Standard version, which will be 95% or more identical to the wording of the NASV, but which will require no licensing or royalty fees for anyone to use.

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Such a text would clearly be available freely to all, and anyone would be free to publish that modern ASV with no copyright problems, let alone licenses or royalty fees.

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The same can just as easily be done with the KJV so as to a free public domain equivalent to the NKJV which would be nearly identical to it.

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The rationale for such a proposal is clear.

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The Word of God in any form should be free for all to use with no restrictions or hindrances to hobble the free dissemination of God's Holy Word to a dying world.

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License and royalty fees have become attached to the text of the Word of God primarily because publishers are more interested in the almighty dollar than they are in a commitment to serving God and ministering to His people.

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Note that I am not arguing that publishers should not print and distribute numerous Bible editions, nor that they cannot make some profit on each copy sold.

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I am rather railing against proprietary restrictions which hinder the free and open dissemination of God's Word, regardless of translation, whether such restrictions are designed to enrich the publishers or not.

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The KJV itself appears in hundreds of editions from numerous publishers in every type of format varying in price and quality.

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The 1901 ASV has also been reprinted by various publishers since it entered the public domain in 1957.

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The publishers of the KJV or the 1901 ASV make whatever profit they can in a free market economy and serve the people of God in the process.

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No proprietary claim can be involved with the dissemination of those versions, since they are already a part of the public domain.

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It should be recognized that neither the quality of the KJV or ASV nor the profits for their publishers are harmed by the free and open availability of these versions from multiple sources, and God's people derive great spiritual benefit thereby.

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But licensing and royalty restrictions imposed upon the modernizations of those versions reflect a bold attempt to seize the rights to God's Word from His people and financially to restrict the free distribution of that Word until the proper fee be paid.

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Publishers should freely release such modernized versions into the public domain so that all the people of God may be unrestricted in their use of such, with no financial or legal hindrances attached.

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Every publisher can earn a just profit by marketing the biblical text in a multitude of specialty editions.

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There is no question that introductions, study notes, and supplementary materials which appear in such editions will remain proprietary and protected by copyright.

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The only issue is that the text of scripture itself should be freely distributable, regardless of translation.

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Modernized versions of public domain translations should not become the peculiar property of any publisher, regardless of sponsorship, how many revisors participated, or at what cost.

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The ultimate product of sweat of the brow labor should not be copyrightable.

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Real translation, a recasting of the biblical text into a wholly unique form of expression directly from the original languages, has not occurred in such cases, only the modernization of an existing freely available text.

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3.

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Other Modern Translations But what about translations which are not mere modernizations? According to the law, these indeed can be copyrighted and thus licensed to various publishers and distributors for a fee.

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Most modern dynamic equivalency translations fall under this category, whether the New International Version, the Jerusalem Bible, the Contemporary English Version, or the many others currently in print.

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One can wonder, however, whether the motivating factor in the multiplication and publication of such translations is the glory of God or the enlargement of publishers bankrolls.

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The awful truth is that Bible publishing is a huge profit-making enterprise, and most publishers seek to enlarge their profits by every means available, without regard for concepts such as sharing and ministry as a primary factor.

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As an example, the New International Version was produced under the auspices of the International Bible Society and was funded by the freewill gifts of God's people and churches.

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That translation should have become freely available to God's people with no restriction or royalty fees attached.

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Yet, the exclusive rights to the NIV were transferred to the profit-oriented Zondervan Corporation, which, due to the great popularity of the NIV, has imposed on other publishers some of the most outrageous license and royalty restrictions that have ever been attached to a translation.

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And let me read a footnote here.

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One software publisher, here Mr.

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J, though I know his real name, told me via the internet that his request for a license to use the NIV in his proposed product was denied due to his inability to guarantee a minimum sales quota of $10,000 worth of copies per year, even though he would have been able to pay the required $10,000 upfront licensing fee, as well as the subsequent percentage royalty fee for sales.

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The absurdity of this licensing arrangement is further compounded by the fact that, in the time since the Zondervan Corporation originally obtained the rights to the NIV, that corporation has been sold and is now a subsidiary of the secular HarperCollins publishing chain, which is a part of the same conglomerate owned by Rupert Murdoch, which includes Fox Broadcasting.

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Mr.

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J also sought a similar permission from the American Bible Society to publish the TEV, CEV, and Versión Popular in electronic form, either for free or for any royalty fee, reasonable or unreasonable.

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His report is disheartening.

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Feel free to relate the ABS absolute denial of my request on behalf of Rainbow Missions Inc.

40:37

They had decided not to grant my request based on the lack of security of my internet distribution method.

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Horrors someone might read the gospel without paying for it, even after communicating assurances of security due to encryption technology, Mr.

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J was again refused permission, with a message from the Bible Society to the effect that they had decided not to let anyone have electronic rights to publish their Bible texts, including, I presume, the foreign language texts that they act as copyright representatives for in the USA, but that if they were published at all, that they would do it themselves.

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Mr.

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J's comments, to me, declare a well-founded exasperation.

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Frankly, I feel like I've been ripped off, having contributed to the ABS based on their stated purpose of providing the holy scriptures to every man, woman, and child in a language and form each can readily understand and at a price each can easily afford.

41:38

I fail to comprehend how these go together.

41:42

This action does not match their mission statement very well.

41:48

Numerous Bible study tools marketed by Zondervan now bear the trademarked term NIV in the title, even if that translation is not the primary focus of such books.

41:59

The profit motive in this regard is obvious.

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Speaking as a Southern Baptist, even Brodman publishers have joined the vicious cycle by licensing the NIV as the base text of its New American Commentary series with certain restrictions accompanying such a license which should not be tolerated in a commentary series.

42:23

When Bible publishers start demanding $10,000 royalty fees as well as a required sales quota merely to obtain a license to utilize a contemporary translation, something is clearly amiss.

42:37

The people of God should never have been willing to barter away their rights to His precious word.

42:43

When exactly did God's people determine to surrender their rights to God's word and to allow the publishing community to dictate its use to the churches? It is the publishers who should be paying the churches royalties for making profit from that word rather than the reverse.

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If silver and gold interferes with the unrestricted use and dissemination of God's word as the sacred scripture for the Christian community, it will be the copyright holding publishers who will have to answer for their motives at the judgment.

43:16

The initial release of the English Revised version of 1881-1885 was free of copyright in the United States and was intended for mass distribution.

43:28

It was the first major revision since the 1769 Blaney revision of the King James in 1611.

43:35

The day it was released, two major daily newspapers in Chicago printed the complete ERV New Testament text.

43:45

This was followed by a number of US publishers releasing editions of the ERV with no restrictions attached.

43:53

When the American edition of the ERV was published 16 years later as the American Standard version of 1901, matters somehow had changed.

44:04

The American revision, identical to the ERV except for the incorporation of various changes recommended by the American committee, was copyrighted by Thomas Nelson and Sons Publishers with the enigmatic statement quote, to ensure purity of text end quote.

44:22

There was also a notice that Thomas Nelson and Sons was specifically quote unquote certified to be the publisher of the only editions authorized by the American committee of revision.

44:33

That copyright was renewed in 1929 but transferred to the International Council of Christian Education, the forerunner of the National Council of Churches, with both statements still attached.

44:47

In fact, the original 1946 edition of the revised standard version was also similarly copyrighted to quote unquote ensure purity of text.

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Although it may be questioned what purity of text needed to be specifically ensured, and it does not specify who the anticipated or real corrupters might have been, the answer is not long in coming.

45:11

The prefaces to both the 1901 ASV and the 1946 RSV New Testament make the situation quite clear.

45:20

Quote, It was agreed that, respecting all points of ultimate difference, the English companies who had the initiative in the work of revision should have the decisive vote.

45:31

But as an offset to this, it was proposed on the British side that the American preferences should be published as appendix in every copy of the revised bible during the term of fourteen years.

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The American committee on their part pledged themselves to give, for the same limited period, no sanction to the publication of any other editions of the revised version than those issued by the University Presses of England.

45:57

It now, 1901, seems to be expedient to issue an edition of the revised version with those preferences embodied in the text.

46:07

Because of unhappy experience with unauthorized publications in the two decades between 1881 and 1901, which tampered with the text of the English revised version in the supposed interests of the American public by placing the American preferences into the main text rather than in the appendix, the American Standard Version was copyrighted to protect the text from unauthorized changes.

46:30

So, the answer is plain.

46:33

Despite the American committee's agreement not to give sanction to any unauthorized editions of the ERV published in the United States, such publications did legally and frequently occur, and in fact, may have outsold the British printing of the ERV in this country.

46:52

Rather than giving glory to God for the further dissemination of His word, the concern seems to have been with the apparent violation of the initial agreement more than anything else.

47:03

Thus, beginning with the 1901 ASV, the copywriting of biblical translations in the US became a matter of policy, even if by subterfuge.

47:14

Although the copyright of the ASV 1901 was transferred in 1928 to the International Council for Religious Education, as noted, the original agreement allowed Thomas Nelson and Sons publishers to hold the initial copyright.

47:29

Despite the protestations to the contrary, this was not due to any significant desire to quote-unquote ensure purity of text, but was in fact a return for the Nelson Company's financial bailout of ASV committee expenses, to the then hefty tune of approximately $25,000.

47:53

The bailout was needed to cover the costs of preparing the American revision, since the American committee significantly expanded upon the original changes enumerated in the 1881-1885 ERV appendix.

48:07

Thus, a modern policy of restricted access to the word of God was imposed, merely in order that the less-than-altruistic American publisher might financially benefit from an exclusive copyright.

48:22

After 1901, the possibility of further danger to the purity of the text was probably insignificant, but the quote-unquote protection of that purity involved a granting of exclusive rights to a publisher by a translation committee, which probably was not authorized to make such deals to the detriment of the people of God, but which in the absence of an external controlling body chose to seek its own best course.

48:50

Once the ASV 1901 had been successfully copyrighted in this country with no apparent legal challenge, the gate was opened, and nearly all subsequent bible texts and translations followed suit.

49:04

Permissions and royalty fees became the norm, since these were regularly required of all secular writings.

49:12

But somewhere, a great evil is involved whenever the people of God permit commercial publishers to hold hostage their sacred texts by copyright and licensing restrictions.

49:25

For far too long, the Christian community has been distracted from seeing the full implications of this matter, and the time is rapidly approaching when it may be too late to take reconstructive action.

49:39

The word of God is itself the peculiar possession of the people of God.

49:45

It should never become the exclusive property of various publishers and license providers who offer to dole out divine revelation for a fee.

49:55

The primary incentive for publishing the word of God should not be the engendering of profit for the hireling publisher, but that the people of God might use his word for both their own edification and the evangelization and discipling of the nations.

50:15

It is high time that the Christian community awaken itself to the situation and dispatch a loud and strong cry in order to reclaim the biblical text from those who have made it into proprietary merchandise.

50:31

It is not the purity of the text which has to be protected, but the liberation of that text from those non-church entities who desire to profit unjustly from marketing God's word back to God's people who should own and control the dissemination of that word in the first place.

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Our ministry to a dying world requires sanctuary from the profit motive in regard to our sacred texts.

51:00

Let me read a footnote here.

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The Westminster Confession of Faith offers a typical comment to this effect.

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It pleased the Lord at sundry times and in diverse manners to reveal himself and to declare that his will unto his church and afterward for the better preserving and propagating of the truth and for the more sure establishment and comfort of the church against the corruption of the flesh and the malice of Satan and of the world to commit the same wholly unto writing which maketh the holy scripture to be most necessary.

51:37

Article 1 of the Holy Scripture.

51:40

End of footnote.

51:41

So, the commercial copyright quote-unquote owners of biblical texts should once freely and clearly release those texts back to God's people for their unrestricted and unhindered use.

51:54

There is more than one parallel case, whether the subject is musical composition or the editing, recording, or live public performance of biblical translations or original language texts, one either performs his or her labor first for the glory of God or for financial enrichment and personal glory.

52:18

Publishers and copyright holders of material intended for Christian worship, evangelism, and ministry should desire and request little more than the basic cost of production and materials.

52:31

To do otherwise is to forget the genuine concept of ministry and to ignore the biblical admonition, freely you have received, freely give.

52:42

A couple of footnotes on that paragraph.

52:46

As a sometime Christian composer, I would editorially suggest the same for those who ostensibly write music quote-unquote for the God, but then who demand copyright-based ransom fees from our churches, either by CCLI or other licensing arrangements, merely in order that God's people can praise him in public by displaying the lyrics to simple choruses, many of which are mostly bible text, on an overhead projector during worship.

53:16

While the laborer is worthy of his hire and deserves just compensation for the initial sale and recording of music for commercial purposes, it remains absurd for such a composer to claim that quote-unquote God gave me this song and then demand compensation for what is specifically claimed to be God's revelation.

53:37

But in public worship, the people of God should freely praise him with any psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs with no license or copyright restrictions to hinder such worship.

53:49

Christian songwriters and musicians had better sort out their priorities and decide whether for public worship, at the very least, their music is freely dedicated to God's people for the glory of God and God alone, or whether the ultimate object is personal financial profit.

54:08

Our Lord made no idle comment when he declared, do not make my father's house a house of merchandise.

54:16

Had the proper spirit been in place from the beginning, there would have never been a need for the Christian Musical Thought Police to monitor copyright claims by CCLI or similar unbiblical licensing arrangements.

54:32

Next footnote, I allude to a situation in which a Christian radio disc jockey intended to stage a media event wherein 300 people would read different portions of the Bible simultaneously in a public setting for 15 minutes, thus completing the reading of the entire Word of God in that short time.

54:52

The DJ desired to use the contemporary English version published by the American Bible Society and sought their permission to do so, expecting that they would be excited about any such project which would give media attention to the Word of God.

55:07

On the contrary, the Bible Society refused his request, and he opted to use the public domain KJV instead, reported to this writer via internet email by the DJ in question.

55:19

4.

55:22

Unreasonable Limitations Upon Fair Use As if it were not sufficient for copyright holders to license the use of the biblical text for profit, many translational copyright holders have decided to further restrict the fair use of the biblical text itself by the people of God by adding limitations upon how much biblical text can be used at any given time.

55:48

Some editions of the Bible are totally restricted, just as any secular work, by statements similar to the following.

55:56

All rights in this book are reserved.

55:58

No part may be reproduced in any manner without permission in writing from the publisher, except brief quotations and in connection with a review or comment in a magazine or newspaper.

56:10

Or again, no reproduction of the material in this Bible may be made by photocopy, mechanical means, or in any other form without the prior written permission of the publisher.

56:23

Additional restrictions attempt to dictate precisely how much of the Bible one can freely quote at any given time.

56:31

The typical restriction notice will give permission to quote up to 200, 250, 500, or 1000 verses of the text of a given translation without seeking written permission from the publisher.

56:43

The accessory restrictions usually further state that, in quoting such verses, one is prohibited from quoting the complete text of any biblical book, and the portion quoted cannot exceed a certain percentage, usually 50%, of the text of the document containing such quotes.

57:03

In other words, one can reproduce and quote the entire text from 1 John 1-2 through 2 John 12 without infringing.

57:12

But woe to the person who might dare to cite 2 John 1-13 on the back of a church flyer.

57:20

Neither should anyone use any copyrighted translation in a gospel tract without obtaining formal permission from the copyright holder, lest he or she be sued for infringement for merely attempting to present the gospel as Christ commanded and quoting scripture more than 50% of the time.

57:39

The obedient disciple of Jesus Christ should never have to seek permission to quote or reproduce any portion of holy scripture.

57:48

The present writer renounces such restrictions and cheerfully reproduces the entire prohibited text of 2 John from the NRSV at the end of this paper to illustrate the point.

58:02

The truth is, regardless of such authoritative sounding statements, there are no precise restrictions or limits specified under present copyright law concerning what is normally termed fair use.

58:15

There are tests which may be applied in court to determine whether a given quotation might overstep the boundaries of fair use, but this would force a Christian to risk infringement merely to freely utilize the word of God in the manner which seems most appropriate.

58:31

Secular courts should never have to rule in regard to fair use of biblical texts.

58:37

The publishers should immediately drop all appended restrictions regarding the use of their translations which they have chosen to add to their copyright notices.

58:48

By lording their exclusive copyright over all else, contemporary publishers now presume to dictate to their readers the precise limits under which their edition of the word of God may be utilized.

59:00

The situation has degenerated to such a degree that one can even find false claims of copyright being issued for no other reason except in attempt to obtain control and or remuneration for what does not legitimately belong to the publisher.

59:17

This writer personally finds such restrictions abhorrent, and in attempt to further stifle the true fair use of God's holy word.

59:27

Conclusion In summary, for nearly a century, copyright legislation has been subtly but effectively applied, misused, and abused in regard to the word of God in order to chain the bible to a new pulpit, differing in kind, but not in essence, from the restrictive practice so loudly decried in the middle ages.

59:48

While the contemporary difference can be described in terms of dollars and cents, the net effect is identical.

59:55

The free and unhindered access by God's people to the revealed truth of his word is restricted once more, this time not by the ecclesiastical hierarchy, but by the chains of copyright and financial ransom as demanded by the proprietary publishers.

01:00:13

Has God's word of a sudden ceased to be the intellectual property of God's people? Must it now remain under the peculiar control of executives, scholars, and lawyers? In contrast, I find it commendable that Richard Francis Weymouth, when creating his own original translation entitled The New Testament in Modern Speech 1929, permitted that work to be published with no notice or claim of copyright, even though it would have been legally possible for him to have done so.

01:00:43

In comparison with all other modern versions, Weymouth's magnanimous gesture passes almost unnoticed, yet a great spiritual benefit is derived from quietly performing one's work and releasing it solely to the glory of God with no anticipation of personal profit or remuneration.

01:01:02

Such equality is sadly lacking among the contemporary commercial publishers, and even within the Bible societies themselves who are constituted expressly for the wide and economical distribution of the word of God.

01:01:17

The abuses noted have a common link, and that is the desire to create profitable merchandise out of the word of God.

01:01:28

Such is nothing less than a deceitful handling of that very word which condemns such a practice.

01:01:36

The judgment of God in regard to the profiteers is no different than that which Jesus and Paul declared so long ago.

01:01:44

John 2.16 Take these things from here, do not make my Father's house a house of merchandise.

01:01:51

2 Corinthians 2.17 We are not as the many, making merchandise of the word of God.

01:01:58

2 Corinthians 4.2 We have renounced the hidden things of shame, not walking in craftiness or handling the word of God deceitfully.

01:02:09

There is no need for negotiation concerning the contemporary bondage of the word.

01:02:15

It already exists, and there seems to be no sign that such abuse will diminish.

01:02:21

Legislation and royalty fees to the contrary, and notwithstanding the legal chains and bonds which modern editors and publishers have attempted to impose, our almighty God once and for all has declared that the word of God is not bound.

01:02:39

2 Timothy 2.9 And only from this perspective can anything truly be accomplished solely for the glory of God.

01:02:49

Amen.

01:02:50

A couple more footnotes to end this paper.

01:02:53

One of the most blatant claims of false copyright can be seen in the Holy Bible King James Version published by Zondervan, which states on the inside title page, Copyright 1995 by Zondervan Publishing House, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

01:03:08

All rights reserved.

01:03:10

Even though the entire book contains only the title page, table of contents, listing the biblical books in alphabetical order, and the entire public domain KJV text, unaltered, without note or comment.

01:03:24

There is nothing copyrightable in the entire product.

01:03:27

Attorney and professor Paul J.

01:03:29

Held speaks directly to this point in Paul J.

01:03:32

Held, Payment Demands for Spurious Copyrights for Causes for Action in the Journal of Intellectual Property Law, 1994.

01:03:42

Held concludes, Unless publishers are made to bear the cost of their misrepresentations, they will have no incentive to remove false copyright notices from the works they sell, nor will they have any incentive to cease the sort of intimidation consumers confront whenever they seek to photocopy a text.

01:04:04

Successful actions brought on the grounds of breach of warranty, unjust enrichment, fraud, and false advertising might help stem the tide of misrepresentation and confusion.

01:04:18

This is especially true if courts exercise their prerogative to award punitive and other augmented damages and attorney's fees.

01:04:28

Until the publishing industry is jolted into compliance with sound public policy, consumers will continue to be induced to part with their money by spurious claims of copyright.

01:04:41

And finally, it is noteworthy that the Muslims tend to consider the text of the Quran as public domain, and this even in translation.

01:04:52

Whereas some commercial translations of the Quran are copyrighted and restricted by publishers in much the same manner as English Bible translations, other translations, such as that by M.H.

01:05:03

Shakir, claim no copyright on the translation, and specifically state that their publishing house is a non-profit religious organization devoted to the dissemination of authentic knowledge concerning Islam through the sale and free distribution of copies of Holy Quran and its translation.

01:05:21

This parallels that which the Bible societies are supposedly thought to emulate, but with significant differences of opinion regarding the text considered to be sacred.

01:05:33

Similarly, the translation based upon but not identical to that of J.M.

01:05:37

Rodwell from the 19th century, the Quran, also claims no copyright despite a modernization of language and syntax in a manner paralleling that of the NKJV and NASV.