[sword-devel] Exclusive Rights Granting Crosswire License to Distribute

[Troy A. Griffitts]

Dear Andrew,

We previously had a volunteer manage and keep certain details of 
copyright information (contact, lead, etc.) up at:

http://crosswire.org/sword/copyright/

The volunteer has moved on to other things away from CrossWire and this 
site is no longer kept current so we don't link to these pages any longer.

Regarding the actual license agreements with publishers, these are not 
something that we would publish online.  Often publishers have 
agreements with many organizations and work out different agreements 
with different organizations.  Some pay fees; some do not.  We have had 
agreements where we have volunteers pay nominal fees to keep our 
agreements current.  Publisher expect this information to remain 
confidential.  This is typical.  For example, when Logos distributes a 
work freely or for a fee to an end user, they never publish their actual 
agreement with the publisher which states how much Logos pays per module 
or per annum for the rights to make material available to their users.  
It would violate the publisher's trust.  Granted, the majority of our 
agreements probably have nothing anyone would mind being made public, 
but I am not willing to make those judgments.  If a publisher challenges 
our right to distribute their text, I will certainly make our agreement 
available to them, but not to end users who challenge our right to 
distribute a work.  If they feel they have legitimate reasons for 
doubting we have permission, they should inform the publisher who can 
take action if they also feel the same. I'm not encouraging you to 
inform publishers that we might not have the right to distribute 
modules; in fact, most of this thread has been because we are highly 
sensitive to honor publisher agreements.

We give publishers a choice of what they would like displayed to the end 
user.  We ask them to choose from our list here:

http://crosswire.org/wiki/DevTools:conf_Files#DistributionLicense

They feel this is clear:

*Copyrighted; Permission to distribute granted to CrossWire
*
No other public distribution should be made.  I understand your heart to 
help by publicly making a text available to a developer, and also for 
the mirrors.  I appreciate your desire to help. Please know that when it 
comes to violating copyright, we desire to avoid even the appearance of 
evil.  A work available on a public website (for any purpose, however 
good) which is not authorized by the publisher of the text, is against 
our policy.  I appreciate that you've removed the text and are working 
to be sure you are no longer mirroring our other content which is 
licensed by us exclusively for distribution by CrossWire.  This is most 
appreciated, and I hope this is all simply a misunderstanding and that 
wounds can heal and we can share in positive work together.

Troy




On 01/06/2013 04:40 PM, Andrew Thule wrote:
> Since this has been a controversial topic recently (and since 
> accusations have made the matter personal), can Crosswire please post 
> (to the wiki) the terms of its licensing agreements with each 
> Copyright holder (on a module by module basis) so that its licensing 
> rights are known and transparent to all?
>
> Since Crosswire is asserting these rights it must be prove it actually 
> posses them and outline what they are (or it must forfeit the right to 
> exercise them).  Since it is holding module developers accountable to 
> its licensing terms, it must make the license public, for the sake of 
> transparency.
>
> Thanks.
>
> ~A
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> sword-devel mailing list: sword-devel at crosswire.org
> http://www.crosswire.org/mailman/listinfo/sword-devel
> Instructions to unsubscribe/change your settings at above page





-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://www.crosswire.org/pipermail/sword-devel/attachments/20130106/f8ecffcf/attachment-0001.html>