[sword-devel] Fwd: AW: Sword Project

[Jerry Hastings]

>On Thursday, January 30, 2003, at 06:45  AM, Daniel Glassey wrote:
>
>>Unfortunately (as far as I understand it) the way that software and
>>bible translations works is that even if you have bought the text for
>>one software program that gives you no rights at all to use it on any
>>others. At the moment we have no rights at all to distribute these
>>texts so they remain locked.

At 11:44 AM 1/30/2003 -0500, Patrick Narkinsky wrote:
>That's probably debatable. In the Betamax case, the supremes ruled that 
>fair use did include "time shifting". More recently, a judge ruled based 
>on that case that MP3 players were legal -- that the user had the right to 
>transfer his music from one medium to another. This seems to me to be a 
>very similar issue, and I would certainly consider that I had the right to 
>transform my content from one Bible program to another (even if I might 
>NOT have the right, based on owning an NRSV, to use another program's NRSV 
>module. As we saw with the whole online Bible mess, sometimes Bible 
>modules are not what they are described as.)
>
>Patrick

In the Betamax case "time shifting" was something the user did, not 
something a provider did. Also, in the R.I.A.A. v. Diamond Multimedia case 
"space shifting" was something the user did and not something a provider 
did. In other words, the user could either time shift or space shift his 
legally acquired copy to another time or space, for his own personal use. 
Neither case says a third party can provide the time or space shifted 
copies. So, what Daniel said, "we have no rights at all to distribute these 
texts," is probably correct. Even if a user has the right to use the copies 
we probably don't have the right to provide them. Also, there are other 
laws that make things even more complicated. Many digital works now have 
access controls and copy controls. The DMCA makes it illegal to circumvent 
an access control to make a copy. I don't think there is any provision in 
the DMCA for time or space shifting. Hopefully this law will not last, but 
who wants the trouble now.

See: http://www.eff.org/cafe/drmgame/copyright-faq.html#sharing
and: http://www.eff.org/cafe/drmgame/copyright-faq.html#DMCA .

Jerry