Every Sunday millions of church-goers hold two books in their hands, a Bible and a hymnal. Lately, I’ve been increasingly bothered by what I see within. Every hymn (except those where both the words and music are public domain) ends with a copyright statement. Similarly, the NIV translation of the Bible includes a complicated copyright statement.
In my opinion, Bibles should in no way be copyrighted. One shouldn’t insist that the word of God have a price attached. While I see no problem with some publishers charging for Bible - after all, it is nice to recoup some of their investment in materials - people who wish to duplicate Bibles and disseminate them freely shouldn’t be bound by Zondervan’s copyright.
I feel much the same way about the hymnal. If a hymn is particularly inspiring and can bring people closer to God when singing it, I feel it would be wrong to hinder its spread.
According to Acts, the early Christians held everything in common. Now, even a few modern Christians would say that that is filthy communism and should not be encouraged. But divine things, the elements that every Sunday allow us to praise God, should belong to the community of Christians with no restrictions.
I don’t it’s the Bibles per se that are copyrighted, it’s the specific versions which include individual translations and annotations. IOW, you can translate an annotate your own version from original texts and sell them all you want but you can’t profit from someone else’ translation and notes.
As to the hymns, the choice to copyright is up to the individual composers and lyricists, not the churches which use them. I understand your point in theory but how do you convince a songwriter to give up any potential income from his/her work?
AFAIK one cannot copy and distribute the NIV without Zondervan’s permission whether there is profit involved or not. (As asserted in the file-sharing debates thread, copyright isn’t about profit, it’s about limiting all copying.)
Besides, Bible translations are often based on the idea of progress. The NIV was undertaken because many Church leaders and paleographers believed that the extant Bible translations were lacking in some way. Many Christians believe that the NIV is the finest Bible translation around today and want to get it out to the (English-speaking) peoples of the world. Why should they be told “Sorry, you can’t spread this well-translated gospel, you’ll have to make your own.”
The songwriters are supposedly Christian and should know that freely disseminating the word of God is more important than a secure income.
Diogenes has it right. It’s the old “intellectual property” discussion in a new light – if I spend a year attempting to render the Hebrew of Isaiah into language that is both true to the original and clear to the modern English reader, I deserve repayment for my time. Likewise, if I write the music or lyrics to a song which people wish to sing, and therefore have the music and lyrics reprinted in a book to sing from, I deserve royalties from my time and effort spent writing it.
Many Christian songwriters do contribute their royalties to charitable causes, as it happens. The outfit that holds the copyright to Betty Carr Pulkingham’s work and the other musical folks from her church is, IIRC, a not-for-profit devoted to charitable efforts of a Christian sort in the greater Houston area.
It is only proper, and a part of his oath, that a doctor attempt to heal you of your illnesses and injuries. But I assume you would not expect him to do it for free.
But the notion of intellectual property did not exist among the early Christians (and in the ancient world in general). Acts suggests that we should take the behavior of the earliest Christian communities as a model. Why then should we inject the foreign notion of ownership into our churches?
I think in the ideal Christian community this would be done for free.
You’re probably missing something else in the hymnal concerning copyrights, UnuMondo. For example, my church’s hymnal has the following statement on the copyright page:
Because, like it or not, it costs money to translate and publish a Bible.
According to the Zondervan site, the NIV took about a decade or so to translate and prepare for publication. You can’t just turn this over to someone and say, “translate this”. It takes a lot of scholarship and discussion to publish a new version. I don’t know if the people who were on the translation committee were paid for their actual work, but I’d be willing to bet that their expenses were covered.
Second, it still costs money to bind and distribute books of any kind. Christian or not, paper isn’t free, the printing press isn’t free, the binding machine and supplies aren’t free, and getting the book into bookstores isn’t free. Zondervan, who made the capital investment, simply wants to make sure its work isn’t undercut by being distributed willy-nilly. Hence the copyright.
Alcoholics Anonymous went through this a few years ago, when the copyright on the original Big Book expired. There appeared copies that weren’t authorized by AA’s General Service Office. They didn’t need to be; the book was in the public domain. But the unauthorized copies didn’t help AA’s coffers; AA relies on its publishing enterprise to help fund its operations. A similar situation would arise if Zondervan (or any other religious publisher) gave up its copyright. Money they’d make selling their books would dry up if they allowed others to freely republish them. That’s money that they wouldn’t be able to spend developing other materials or using for other purposes.
There is also the idea of control over the use of the Hymn.
Say I write a hymn - while I might want it used in many places, I might not want it used in a group that I don’t agree with theologically. I might not want it used in certain settings (say a play where Christianity is being mocked). I might not want it printed on a roll of toilet paper. I might not want it printed and sold in a nice pamphlet form by Robin - who realizes that this is a great way to make a huge profit. Copyright protection allows me to stop people from misusing the hymn in those ways.
It also allows me to control derivatives - if I have spent a lot of time thinking and praying about the words of my hymn, I might feel very strongly about the non-inclusive language in my hymn (and I can, with copyright protection insist that it not be changed to inclusive language.) I might feel strongly about verse 3. And with protection, I can stop someone from re-writing it to make it “better.”
Amarinth is right: The scholars that make translations put in a lot of work, and have the right to be able to control how that work is reproduced and changed. Their names are in the preface.
UnuMondo, see Paul in 1 Cor 9 about the right of a minister to make a decent living.
Hmmm. If it truly is the word of God, then no human being can lay claim to it.
Human beings laying claims to these things play further into the hands of atheists. Some people say organized religion is simply big business. Reading about this stuff seems to reflect that.
The money made goes largely to making new and better translations, and bringing the word of God to every corner of the earth. I don’t hold the any grudge agaist the translators for copyrighting.