[sword-devel] Dead Sea Scrolls copyright discussion

[Andrew T.]

I agree with Peter.  The original work and the derivative work are separate
cases.

On Mon, Sep 10, 2018 at 10:42 AM Peter von Kaehne <refdoc at gmx.net> wrote:

> On Mon, 2018-09-10 at 09:54 -0400, Tom Sullivan wrote:
> > First, take Matthew Henry's or Calvin's commentaries. They are way
> > out
> > of copyright to say the least. Now some publishers may add OCR text,
> > comments, footnotes, etc. These are copyrightable. Am I correct in
> > thinking that the original text itself could be safely made into a
> > module? Surely I am, for these modules are out there. Or am I
> > missing
> > something?
>
> Yes, the original text can be made a module, any later edition not,
> unless it without addition or editing simply copies an older public
> domain edition.
>
> With this in mind we will e.g. publish critical editions of the NT from
> Westcott Hort, but not the newest Aland.
>
> > Secondly, there are those who publish images of old works and
> > manuscripts. They claim copyright to the images in some cases. At
> > the
> > same time, if one does not publish the image, but only the bare
> > original
> > text, which is not copyrightable, that should be OK for a module. Am
> > I
> > correct? I should note that I have seen many cases of republished
> > old
> > works that have a copyright label, but it seems to me that they
> > copyright can only apply to the modern additions.
>
> While pictures are copyrightable, I presume using the pictures to
> transcribe the bare text would make a PD document. Our WLC is something
> of that kind. Someone somewhere put fingers on keyboard and typed the
> bare text in.
>
> > Thirdly, [..]
> > In other words, even if a module maker has a
> > legal
> > right, it may not be worth the risk in the view of the Sword
> > community.
> > Am I correct in my impression that this is a factor?
>
> Yes, this is a risk and yes this risk makes us double cautious. In
> general Bible publishers are kind folk and do not like to sue, but of
> course they could. FWIW the last time I had to pull a text due to
> erroneous publication as public domain I was uploading within days a
> new module with footnotes, crossreferences and the like, significantly
> improved upon the prior one which was text only. The Bible society in
> question had coupled their request to pull the old module with an offer
> of an improved text. But we still do not want to risk this.
>
> Peter
>
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