[sword-devel] Some questions re: a locked module

[Chris Little]

On Sun, 30 Nov 2003, David's Mailing List and Spam Receiver wrote:

> Where are the OLB copyrights registered? Perhaps Mr. Pierce believes he has 
> these rights because the country these copyrights are held in actually has 
> laws that allow such copyrights?

There are really two copyrights at issue here.  The first is for the 
modules themselves (Gill, etc.).  The second is for the OLB CDs.

To my knowledge, Larry has never actually attempted registering a 
copyright on the modules themselves in any country.

He has stated that his OLB CDs are copyrighted with the US Copyright 
Office.  This is quite reasonable.  It protects his CDs from wholesale 
copying & resale by protecting the collection itself.  In other words, the 
CDs are protected, but their contents are not (aside from things like his 
program that he holds separate copyright on).

To be honest, I'm not sure what purpose registering a copyright has (other 
than helping to fund the Copyright Office :).

Larry is up in Canada, but did register at least that one work in the US.  
And, in any case, we only need concern ourselves with US law since that's 
where CrossWire is physically and we've probably got the most draconian 
copyright laws here anyway.  It's unlikely that the kind of work Larry did 
on Gill, etc. would ever warrant changes to the law that would result in 
protection since they don't create any new value and they're (for the most 
part) sweat-of-the-brow stuff that has been explicitly disallowed as a 
basis for copyright.

--Chris