Permission to use a Bible?

Most translations allow a person to quote a maximum number of words if they make a reference to the particular translation.

 

What would happen if I decided to go above the maximum number of words that I was allowed to quote?

 

The Bible police would arrest you.


Seriously, copyright law would only effect you if you "published" this. If you did not follow their copyright rules (read them in the NIV, most NIV's have them posted right in the book, so do the NASB, each is different.)

If you publish it, and they find out about it, you could be sued in civil court for copyright infringement, which they could recover damages and that amount can be multiplied if they can prove you did it on purpose ignoring their copyright.

People get upset because big companies sue small companies because of the slightest infringement. Due to case law, they are pretty much REQUIRED to do this, or a larger company can infringe and claim that it went into the public domain because they let it slide.

In other words, if a company knows about infringement, and they ignore it, that can be used against them in court, if they ever do have to sue anybody for real infringement, regardless of how small the company is. (This law works the same with patents and trademarks.)

Again, the laws can be found at www.uspto.gov.

By the way, anything YOU write is technically protected under copyright law, even without a copyright notification or registering it with the USPTO. (This is a new change to the laws.) Registering it with the government; however, PROVES that you wrote it before a certain date. This is the reason books and songs are filed with the government.

Posting on this website is copyrighted by the owner of the site. In other words, we give him permission to use and own the information by posting here. But, if we want to copy a thread on another website, we must get permission from the owner of this site. If it was only what we ourselves wrote, the owner would probably have problems in enforcing it, but if you posted an entire thread somewhere, he would have legal grounds to sue.

Remember, copyright is a law, but it requires a lawsuit in "civil court" to obtain damages. The government will NOT arrest or sue you. The patent owner must file a suit against you.

Does all of that make sense? It can get very complex. The book for patent examination is in excess of 7000 pages thick and is updated about every six months.

 

Phillip, it's all just a ploy by those who push the KJVO myth. NO book is published for free; someone somewhere pays for it, and that includes Bibles, which are often bound & printed on the best & most expensive materials available. Those 'free' Gideon bibles are paid for by the Gideons themselves.

Thanx for explaining some of the USA copyright laws. While a cop, I sat in on two copyright trials, and during them, I learned that whatever one posts on public boards such as this is generally fair game for copyists if it isn't registered and marked as registered, that the law of free speech and Freedom of Info Act usually take precedence. However, that's entirely different from a book or article from which the author and publisher seek to make money. Publishers in every land where Bibles are made do so to make money. Nothing wrong with THAT. The AV 1611 had KJ's TAX STAMP, placed in it on the advice of KJ's financial minister, Sir Robt. Cecil. Both the king and his printer, Robert Barker, made money from the sales of AVs.

 

The point is, Jim, it's about a publisher's or an author's right to be the sole source for a given work. A look at the title pages of many copies of the KJV made by different printers will usually reveal some sorta copyright on something to do with each copy...the maps, the illustrations, the design of the cover, the concordance, the appendix, the dictionary, etc. The TEXT isn't copyrighted, but often, everything else within a given copy of the KJV is.

Many newer BVs are bought because of their text, which is still under copyright. it's not the fact that it's GOD'S word; it's the fact that the printer must turn a profit or he aint gonna print it, be it a BV or a porn work. In the "old days", someone may have labored to write the Scriptures by hand so as to have a copy to read to an audience when possible, while today, everything is printed, and for a price.

Nowadays, someone violating a copyright may hafta shell out some money, but in KJ's day, someone caught printing a pirate copy of the AV could have easily lost his freedom or his head.

 

av1611jim asked:

If I have that right, then there is something very WRONG with that notion. Who are these men that they can restrict the use of God's Book like that?

You mean the way James I made it illegal to publish the Bible without the Apocrypha, effectively legislating the Geneva Bible out of existence?

Careful where you point your finger, Jim.

 

4His_Glory said:

I don't think that every new translation is copyrighted because of greed and pride.

Current copyright law says that the simple act of making the translation means that copyright exists, unless you, as the translator, expressly waive copyright and place it into the public domain.

You do the work, you get first say in what happens to it, automatically.

 

It called violation of copyright. A person could be prosecuted for such things.

 

Not quite. It would be the same thing is a painter painted a home and someone else in a brochure falsely claimed the job as their's. That happened to me on some jobs. The man did get put in jail for stealing from people before he got far though. So I never pursued the claim I could have had.

If someone carves a carving the carving cannot be published using the carvers design and claimed as the carving's owner's own work. The design belongs to the person who did the original design work.

You cannot claim the work of another as your own without permission. It is customary to give credit to the person who did the original work. Many times permission must be given in writing. Recently I wanted to use a photo for a presentation and the owner of the photo gave me permission.

 

If true; (I doubt his act caused the Geneva to fade) then King James I & VI was just as wrong as the publishers today.

Jim </font>[/QUOTE]The efforts of the leaders of the church of England such as Archbishop Matthew Parker,
King James I, Archbishop George Abbot, and Archbishop William Laud were responsible for
keeping English believers from being able to obtain copies of the Geneva Bible safely.

Archbishop Matthew Parker, who was responsible for the making of the Bishops' Bible, had prevented the Geneva Bible from being printed in England until his death. Archbishop Parker with the Church of England's High Commission Court had persecuted the translators of the Geneva Bible.

Archbishop George Abbot, made archbishop by King James I and under his authority, was the one that issued the order in 1615 that forbid the sale of Bibles without the Apocrypha. Again around 1618 during the reign of King James I, the Geneva Bible could not be printed in England.

Then during the reign of Charles I (son of James I), Archbishop William Laud issued a decree around 1637 that made the selling, binding, or importation of the Geneva Bible a high-commission crime. Laud would even order copies of the Geneva Bible burned.

Even with these powerful forces against it, the Geneva Bible was still the best loved and most widely-read English Bible from its publication in 1560 and thru the reigns of James I and Charles I.

David Norton indicated that "in fair competition" with the Geneva Bible, the KJV "would probably have lost, but its supporters had foul means at their disposal" (HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH BIBLE, p. 91).

 

av1611jim asked:

Did King James decree that nobody could use the AV except with his permission? I don't think that is historically correct.

Yes, he did. He gave one printer, Robert Barker, a monopoly on printing Bibles. The title page of the New Testament of the 1611 AV contains the words "Cum Privilegio," which means "with privilege" and is the equivalent of a copyright.

 

Av1611jim, in answer to your question (and I'm giving you the law, not necessarily what is right or what is wrong ethically), each translation is different as we well know. There is no such thing as a perfect word-for-word translation so if I translate the Greek and you translate the Greek we will have two books saying the same thing (assuming our translation is accurate), but using different sentence structure and different words. Because of this reason, it becomes a NEW derivative work which CAN be copyrighted. Robycop also mentions the book itself. The layout, the preface, the maps, notes that have been added, dictionary, everything including the cover design is capable of being covered with a copyright and/or trademark (for example Zondervon's trademark symbol is a trademark, including their name itself).

These certainly do not stop you from using the book. You buy the book, you pay for that privilege. But, you cannot turn around, reproduce it and start selling identical Bibles.

You may sell the one you have as "used" since you OWN that copy and own it physically. You just cannot print more.

 

av1611jim:

Did He limit the use of the KJV to the exclusion of all others? I don't think so. He may have limited the publication of it, but can you prove that he said nobody can use any other?

In a day when the majority of people could not read for themselves, and did not own their own copy of the Scriptures and the only time they heard the Bible was when it was read in the church, effectively, by decreeing that only the AV was to be used in the churches, that is effectively exactly what he did.

Or can you prove that he said nobody can use the AV w/o his permission?

Who cares? No one has argued that you need special permission to use an NIV, NASB, or any other modern translation of the Word of God. This alleged "argument" appears to be a figment of your own active fantasy life, nothing more.

PM me with your response please.

Why? Are you embarrassed that you started this thread with an obvious falsehood, by claiming as "fact" that you need permission to use a Bible? I sure would be . . .

 

Jim, the key words are "USE" & "profit". You may preach ALL the Scriptures from any copyrighted BV, or READ IT ALOUD to an audience cover-to-cover if you wish. You may teach all of it to a class. This all comes under the "FAIR USE" act, which allows one to use a Bible in its indended manner. A comparison would be that students often reproduce much of the material found in their schoolbooks because that's part of the fair use of such schoolbooks. often, this involves copyrighted stories printed in literature schoolbooks with the copyright holders' permissions.


What you CANNOT do is use it for PROFIT without permission of the copyright holder. In your original post, your material is taken from an ad where someone is selling something for profit that quotes from the copyrighted BVs it names. If that work also quotes from the KJV, its publisher would need permission from the British holders of the KJV copyrights before it could be sold in England.

In conclusion, one needs the permission from a copyright holder to reproduce his/her copyrighted work in any other publication that's sold, or whose distribution could potentially weaken the sales of the copyrighted work. This is neither sinful nor harmful; in fact, it provides legal remedies against those who would make pirate and inaccurate editions of any copyrighted Bible version.

Meanwhile, feel free to use any copyrighted BV in the intended uses for Bibles without fear of breaking the law.

 

For my brethren who repeatedly tried to turn this into yet another roundy-round on the KJVo thing;

We all know that was YOUR intention, Jim, you don't fake it very well.