[sword-devel] Fwd: AW: Sword Project

[Daniel Glassey]

On 30 Jan 2003 at 11:44, Patrick Narkinsky sent forth the message:
 
> 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.
> 
> 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.)

I wrote:
> > even if you have bought the text for one software program that gives
> > you no rights at all to use it on any others  

ok, saying 'no rights' was excessive

But I did also say:
> > P.S. If you can export the texts from these programs you can also
> > (depending on 'fair use' and copyright laws where you are) export
> > the text out of "Translator's workplace"/"Paratext" and create a
> > sword module for personal use only that should not be redistributed.
> > We have tools that will create a sword module from a plain text file
> > in a certain format.

You can legally (in at least some countries, maybe all) transform the 
content yourself.

;)
Daniel