Permission to use a Bible?

All the hand ringing about someone makeing a profit off the publishing of a bible is pointless and silly! If you don't want them to make money, don't buy it! It is ethical to protect your own work, whatever it is and ethical to allow others to do the same of their work. It would be unethical to force someone to publish their work without being allowed to recover the costs involved in producing the work and make a profit from said work.

 

Jim, far as I know, the AV was the 2nd English Bible authorized by a king, and it was used to make a profit for both the printer, Robt. Barker, and the Crown, with the TAX STAMP. I believe that almost every earlier English BV was sold for profit, and in germany, the Luther Bible was certainly sold for profit.

Most of those who print Bibles are not Christians, and are simply NOT in the business of printing Bibles gratis, nor allowing copyrighted versions to be freely reproduced. No one gives away copies of older Bibles that have value to collectors. Like it or not, Jim, that's the way the cookie crumbles.

I have a KJV, from World Books Co. that was printed in CHINA. Someone somewhere made a handsome profit from it, and its fellow copies. And, yes, it's COPYRIGHTED. It has a unique concordance & set of maps. We must face it, most Bibles are copyrighted and may not be freely reproduced outside of its intended fair use.

 

You don't know any such thing Ransom.

Someone with "1611" in his screen name, grousing about copyright in any Bible but the KJV, has only one intention.

 

Excellent conclusion in your last post Jim!

Your friend,
Max

 

OK, back to first principles. av1611jim asked:

What bothers me is the fact that, evidently, one must get permission to use a Bible?

Since it isn't a fact, your fears and/or objections and/or criticism are built on a false premise. Therefore, what according to you is "evident," in fact assumes facts not in evidence, and hence your "bother" is completely without merit.

There, are you happy now? Am I being "honest" enough for you? Sheesh.

 

Well, it appears that av1611jim has PM'd me demanding that I stop calling him a liar (which by his own standards I never did), demanded that I cough up evidence for things I never asserted, and then put me on his ignore list so that he couldn't read the evidence even if I felt like sending it to him.

Consider my point made, Jim.

 

You left out the most important permission, that of Almighty God for use of the King James Bible!

 

Gottit, I believe GOD included a "permission slip" with every BV He allowed to be made in ANY language.

What sayest thou?

 

My Oxford KJV Wide Margin -printed 1993 in England has this.

"All rights in respect of the Authorised King James Version of the Holy Bible are vested in the Crown in the United Kingdom and controlled by the Royal Letters Patent. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording and otherwise, or stored in any retrieval system of any nature, without without written permission. "

It has not study helps, only centre notes.

Is that a copyright?

 

Yes it is C4K, I've posted the Crown laws several times myself but to no avail, so why bother.

It's a dead horse that folks just won't leave alone, resurrecting it every 2-3 months.

HankD

 

What then would happen if someone took the text of some popular version (say the NIV), changed some things in the text, then tried to pass it off as the original NIV? Does not a copyright also protect the text itself from being changed in this manner?

 

Thing is, Jim, in a perfect world, there'd be just one universal BV, easily read & understood by all, freely reproduced by whoever. However, in the real world, there are many imperfections, and while copyrighting the text of a BV may not seem kosher, that's the way things are, and I reckon we'll just hafta live with it for now.

 

Jim, make your own translation and then copyleft it. It will solve the problem.

http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/copyleft.html

 

Is it a danger for Bible translations not to have a copyright since an unscrupulous printer could publish the text with his own corruptions or corrections of that text?

William Tyndale encountered this problem when his text was printed as though it was still Tyndale's when it actually had many changes introduced by George Joyce.