It’s been a while since I’ve made a post. I really wanted to, but I haven’t had anything really interesting to talk about and I haven’t had much time what with WoW and all, so it seemed like I’d fallen off the face of the earth. Anyhow, I’ve been doing some more thinking again…
Something I’ve been wondering about for a long while is Bible translations. To see what I mean, open up your bible to the front, where it tells you the publishing details. You’ll probably find something like this:
The ESV text may be quoted (in written, visual, or electronic form) up to and inclusive of one thousand (1000) verses without express written permission of the publisher, providing that the verses quoted do not amount to a complete book of the Bible nor do the verse quoted account for 50 percent or more of the total text of the work in which they are quoted.
And so on and so forth. My question is why?
Think about what the publisher is saying. Crossway (or Zondervan, or Tyndale, or any other Christian publisher) is basically saying “We own the rights to this work, and we’re going to allow you to use portions of this work under these conditions, where ‘this work’ is ‘the Word of God’.” See the problem I have with it now?
I am essentially suggesting that the publishers should free the modern translations of the Bible. Of course, you may be wondering why I believe that it is absolutely necessary. I hold the same beliefs about other currently copyrighted material. This is not to say that copyright is bad, just that the current “protection” that copyright entails is currently immensely excessive.
Quoting
You may argue that the publishers are quite generous to allow us to quote a thousand whole verses for whatever purposes we may want. Yes, a thousand verses is a lot and I may never quote a thousand verses in a work. The publishers aren’t hurting anyone. Sounds familiar.
I believe that it’s wrong in principle for these publishers to be putting limits on how many times they allow you to quote the Bible. That’s a tad absurd, don’t you think? Oh no, I’ve quoted Jesus too many times in my book, and now Zondervan is going to sue me for copyright infringement!
KJV
Of course, we have one English translation that is currently in the public domain: the King James Version. We can copy the KJV to our hearts’ content. The problem with that is that most people today don’t particularly enjoy reading the KJV. The point of alternative translations is to make the Bible more accessible, and the fact that the KJV is the only English translation that is free does not help that cause.
Derivatives Works
There’s a great open source program called SWORD. It’s meant to be used as a Bible study tool that’s free for all and can be run on all platforms. The only problem is that it can only use the KJV since that’s the only free translation. As a result, its usefulness decreases sharply when prospective users find that the NIV is locked. A great project with a great goal becomes irrelevant.
Money
Translating the Bible costs money. Yes, it does, but just because a translation is free doesn’t mean that the publishers won’t make any money. Publishers can still sell books. Just look at the KJV, even without any extras and just the text, people still buy it. Publishers can free modern translations and still sell Bibles. The only reason for publishers not to release translations is because other publishers will publish them. In my mind, that is not a good enough reason to keep the translation locked away.
Bread
And so we face, in the twenty-first century, a very basic moral question. If you could make as many loaves of bread as it took to feed the world, by baking one loaf and pressing a button, how could you justify charging more for bread than the poorest people could afford to pay? If the marginal cost of bread is zero, then the competitive market price should be zero too. But leaving aside any question of microeconomic theory, the moral question, “What should be the price of what keeps someone else alive if it costs you nothing to provide it to them”, has only one unique answer. There is no moral justification for charging more for bread that costs nothing than the starving can pay. Every death from too little bread under those circumstances is murder. We just don’t know who to charge for the crime.
We live there now.
Eben Moglen, Software and Community in the Early 21st Century
“It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”
Jesus, Matthew 4:4 (ESV)
Right now, I could download the entire text of some translation and fill my 250 GB external drive with copies of it and it would cost me nothing but my computer and the few minutes the script would run. The cost to reproduce any sort of information now is so low that most of us could probably generate a few hundred in a day if we tried.
So why is the most important book ever kept under the control of a few publishers?
I like the KJV… how come no one likes KJV? So lonely…
“No one” likes KJV for the same reason “no one” likes Shakespeare.
Of course, I’m not saying the KJV sucks or anything, just that not everyone reads KJV and because of that, KJV shouldn’t be the only free translation.
This is a matter of quoting the TRANSLATION’s text & NOT being legally required to get the expressed written permission of the pubisher. One quoting anything more than 1k verses may be because of using it for another published work that may be *for profit* (ie. writting a book).
The publisher legally has the right to require you to ask them for permission to use the text in such large quantities–after all, the text is theirs. As much as the Bible is GOD’s Word, it is a translation that is the effort of the translators.
We should be rightly crediting the creators of any written work; I would think the Apostle Paul would want to be asked if it’d be ok for somebody to quote a large part of his letters.
I’m not sure what happens when somebody asks a Bible translation publisher like Crossway… but I doubt they would require a large amount of financial reimbursement – if any – for quoting more than 1k verses! It’s just a matter of legal courtesy… and as Christians, I cannot imagine somebody being so rude as to not being curteous :S
Legally, whether they allow me to quote x amount of verses or not, I am allowed to quote them under Fair Use provisions. What they don’t allow is using their work to create derivative works, which is where this would most impact.
Yes, the publisher has the right to restrict what you may or may not do with their translation, but what I’m asking is whether or not that is in everyone’s best interests. If it is, then fine. But if it isn’t, then there’s a problem, isn’t there?
Just because a translation is free doesn’t mean that the creators of the work receive no credit. Shakespeare’s works are free and he certainly receives due credit. Also, the KJV is free, and King James is obviously credited with that one. And both are still making money for their respective publishers. So in my mind, money or credit is not a problem when it comes to freeing a translation.
And actually, I think Crossway has been pretty good in this regard. I mean, they do have a wonderful website and they did let eBible use their translation.
On the other hand, to illustrate my argument, notice that eBible.com does not have the NIV or NLT. It wouldn’t harm Zondervan or Tyndale to let them use it, but, inexplicably, they don’t. It sure would help, but for whatever reason, the publishers don’t want to let them use it.
And this is essentially the heart of the argument. We have several really good translations, but none of them are free, so people can’t come and just use them for innovative things like eBible.com or whatnot, and that ultimately hurts more than it helps.