[sword-devel] Copyrights and derivative works

[Stephen Denne]

Joel,

I currently have a concordance (for PalmOS) of the NIV available for
download. My investigation of the copyright laws have led me to believe that
a concordance is a collection of facts. A complete unabridged concordance
contains no creativity in the selection of facts, so is not a copyrightable
work.

My concordance program does not show the words in context, nor store word
order, so can not be used to rebuild the original work (even if you had the
source code & file structures). The most you could get would be a sequence
of collections of words, such as "and, beginning, created, earth, God,
heavens, In, the", "and, darkness, deep, earth, empty, formless, God,
hovering, Now, of, over, Spirit, surface, the, was, waters".

Additionally, because I restricted my concordances so much, you really need
to already have a copy of the original work to make use of the concordance.
Either because you've memorised so much of the scriptures from that version
that you wish to search for the words you've memorised, or because you wish
to look up the results in that version.

Stephen.
--
Datacute - Acute Information Revelation Tools
http://www.datacute.co.nz/


> -----Original Message-----
> From: sword-devel-admin@crosswire.org
> [mailto:sword-devel-admin@crosswire.org]On Behalf Of Joel Mawhorter
> Sent: Saturday, January 18, 2003 5:57 PM
> To: sword-devel@crosswire.org
> Subject: [sword-devel] Copyrights and derivative works
>
>
> Hi everyone,
>
> While the topics of copyrights and derivative works are fresh on
> everyone's
> mind I thought I would ask a question. Does anyone know what the
> U.S. laws
> are regarding producing a derative work based on a copyrighted work? For
> example, could I create a NIV concordence without the permission
> of the IBS?
>
> Any help on this would be greatly appreciated.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Joel
> _______________________________________________
> sword-devel mailing list
> sword-devel@crosswire.org
> http://www.crosswire.org/mailman/listinfo/sword-devel
>