Re: KJV Bible - Crown Copyright in UK [was: Bug#338077: ITP: sword-text-kvj -- King James Version with Strongs Numbers and Morphology]
On Tue, Nov 08, 2005 at 06:03:45PM +0000, W. Borgert wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 08, 2005 at 06:16:52PM +0100, Lionel Elie Mamane wrote:
>> This makes the KJV of the bible non-free in GB and probably even
>> illegal to distribute at all in GB, unless the Crown gives a blanket
>> license for electronic distribution. Does it?
> ...
>> Please investigate this before uploading to Debian.
> According to Christian belief, the bible is the "word of God".
> According to Nietzsche (in 1882), "God is dead". So the author of
> the bible is dead since at least 120 years. How can the copyright
> still hold?
Your argument is flawed: G-od is the direct author of the *original*
version of *part* the Bible, namely the Pentateuch. The KJV is a
derivative work made in the early 1600s.
More seriously, the copyright still holds because of a special clause
for it in UK's 1998 Copyright Act (and all earlier copyright acts):
The Crown has (in the UK) a permanent copyright on it that will never
expire. (But Parliament can obviously pass new legislation that
abrogates it.)
--
Lionel
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