[sword-devel] Config file for thml module

[Chris Little]

There are a couple of further complications to any copyright claim on 
CCEL content (at least content produced prior to their change of policy).

First, they were distributing all of that content clearly labeled as 
public domain. This is closely akin to copyfraud, if not necessarily the 
typical case. Once you've released a work into the public domain, you 
can't really retroactively claim copyright on it if you change your 
mind. You are only entitled to copyright protection for those portions 
of the work produced after you declared the work not to be PD.

More problematic and troubling is that CCEL is claiming copyright on 
content that was not produced by CCEL, being rather produced by third 
parties who believed they were contributing to the public domain. The 
percentage of volunteers who were actually producing markup may have 
been minuscule, but I know there were some, since I did occasional edits 
while they had their distributed proofreading & markup system in place. 
I also know that I was never asked to surrender my copyright on that 
markup to CCEL, meaning they're now claiming they hold a copyright on 
content that they didn't produce, but that they do believe deserves 
copyright protection. I wouldn't describe that as copyfraud either, but 
if I believed in protection of the particular sorts of markup that CCEL 
seems to, I would call that willful copyright violation. (Specifically, 
I don't believe mechanical translation of verse references to standard 
formats or reproduction of the presentational formatting seen in PD 
printed works qualifies for copyright protection under existing law.)

--Chris


On 11/28/2010 2:05 AM, Jonathan Morgan wrote:
> Hi David,
>
> See http://www.ccel.org/about/copyright.html.� CCEL are not claiming
> copyright on the text (which is public domain).� What they are claiming
> copyright on is the XML markup (references, sections, ...).� This XML
> markup is the version we would use in any of our modules.� While this
> kind of copyright claim is dubious, it is not in the same league as
> claiming the actual original text is copyrighted.
>
> Jon
>
> On Sun, Nov 28, 2010 at 2:12 AM, David Haslam <dfhmch at googlemail.com
> <mailto:dfhmch at googlemail.com>> wrote:
>
>
>     Chris,
>
>     If CCEL really are claiming copyright on PD works (etc), is it still
>     appropriate to include CCEL in the answer to this
>     http://crosswire.org/wiki/EnduserFAQ#Can_I_donate_to_your_ministry.3F FAQ
>     ?
>
>     cf. �http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyfraud Wikipedia page about
>     Copyfraud
>
>     Has anyone from CrossWire broached the subject with CCEL?
>
>     David
>     --
>     View this message in context:
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>
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