COPYRIGHT LAW AND THE BIBLE | 2007-03-04
I hope you don't think I'm on a sermon jag this Sunday. Pain made a comment that made think in this direction. I hope no one takes my theology seriously. I am illustrating the development of Wordism and copyright law, which I have some qualifications to do.
I have not been elected Pope, though I came within a hundred votes every time.
So on to copyright law.
Almost anyone who does a lot of writing, as I hope you will, has concerns about copyright law. One of the jokes I tell goes this way:
"The Bible is the best selling book, by far, in all of history. In fact it is by far the best-selling book on earth every single year."
"If the Jews are such great businessmen, why the hell didn't they COPYRIGHT it?"
In other words, the idea of copyrighting the Bible was a joke to me.
Which shows how little I know about lawyers.
I found out recently why there are so many honest differences about the wording in the Bible Back when I was a by and snakes still had feet, "the Bible" where I came from meant the St. James Version. There was also a CATHOLIC Bible. But these were both far too old to have any copyright.
Then came The Revised Standard Version of the Bible, which my conservative kin referred to as "The Communist Bible." The Revised Standard Version came with a copyright. Strictly speaking, when you quoted it you were in violation of the law.
The law allows you what is called the "fair use" doctrine, which allows you to quote text without permission up to a certain number of words. "Fair use" makes provision for reviewers and so forth, but like all legal concepts, it is not nailed down specifically. You can't just take a chapter out of a famous author's book and use it to sell your anthology, for instance.
In the case of most copyrighted books you get permission or you get sued. But all over the web you will find comparisons of huge slabs of the Bible from different versions, most of which are still copyrighted. The fact is that the people holding the copyright COULD sue but they DON'T. After all, the ostensible purpose of retranslating The Book is to spread it.
All this is fairly recent news to me. It may be to some of you.