[sword-devel] Possible Solution to copyright problems

Stephen Denne sword-devel@crosswire.org
Tue, 10 Sep 2002 22:59:00 +1200


> why not set up a web page for user request of the locked modules....

To avoid annoying bible societies, I would not have an auto-emailer.
Registering the level of interest might be a good idea though.

> Maybe an appeal
> to their bank balance might be stronger than an appeal to their
> conscience?

There are presumably different kinds of copyright holders, amongst others,
you'd have:
1. Those who wish to retain their rights to royalties from their creation.
2. Those who wish that their creation is not altered (nor the altered
version passed off as the unaltered version)
3. Those who are working on something 'better' than what they've already
published, so don't really want the ''not as good' publication distributed.

I suspect that those holding copyrights & distribution licenses on texts
we'd wish to distribute for use with sword and related projects, are mostly
concerned with the authenticity of the text remaining. The problem here is a
problem with all digital media, if you've got the tools to read it, you can
envisage the tools to modify it.

Stephen. (who is not an expert on copyright)