While many aspects of national copyright laws have been standardized through international copyright agreements, copyright laws vary by country. Some countries require certain copyright formalities to establishing copyright, but most recognize copyright in any completed work, without formal registration. Generally, copyright is enforced as a civil matter, though some jurisdictions do apply criminal sanctions.
Simultaneously, businesses with great economic dependence upon copyright, such as those in the music business, have advocated the extension and expansion of copyright and sought additional legal and technological enforcement. Many modern Bible translations are copyrighted, and thus place restrictions on the extent to which you can quote or reprint passages from them. Publishers retain rights to their translations because producing a Bible translation is an enormously extensive and expensive project.
A single translation can represent years of work by hundreds of scholars, theologians, and editors, all of whom need to be reimbursed for their work. By retaining their copyright to the translation and asking you to respect that copyright, publishers are able to pay their translators and ensure continued translation work.
This means that downloading or distributing the entire text of a copyrighted Bible translation is not permitted. Fortunately, most publishers do allow you to quote passages from their translations within a reasonable limit. You can find general copyright information at the bottom of all the passage pages, and more complete copyright and re-use information by clicking on a specific Bible version on this page: www.
For specific information on individual versions, please contact the publisher directly. If you are looking for a Bible without any copyright restrictions at all, you do have several options. Some older Bible translations are in the public domain and may be freely reprinted, quoted, and copied without any restrictions at all; the King James Version is the most well-known of these. And if you have the skills and dedication, there is nothing stopping you from creating your own Bible translation—there are online projects dedicated to doing just that!
To sum up, Bible versions are copyrighted to make sure that translators are fairly reimbursed for their hard work. Most copyrighted Bible versions have relatively lenient quoting rules that should cover most common situations.
Finally, another site which looks at this issue offers more background material. Here are some parts of that page:. The Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts of the Bible are public domain and a cornerstone of our cultural heritage. But it turns out that even the critical text is protected by copyright laws.
For the general public, this is no great loss as there are plenty of unrestricted options and the licences for most translations allow for the most common uses of the texts. But all of this has serious implications for scholars who honor the wishes of the Bible publishers. However, we have a duty to comply with the licences of our translations so that the hard-working folks who produce them can afford to keep laboring.
In the United States, Copyright law has two basic categories — protected works and public domain. The article goes on to say that some modern Bible translations seek to make things much easier in this regard.
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Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra June 23, Article continues below. This database is available on Github. Of the non-public domain translations, the NET Bible has the most liberal licence for copying passages - you can read its licence. You can copy, but not alter or distribute commercially. If you wish to have complete freedom to act without legal restriction then you need a public domain translation. There are a number of translations which are out of copyright due to age.
These are in the public domain, but their language tends to be archaic and their scholarship dates from before our modern knowledge of manuscripts etc. Other people have mentioned the World English Bible, which is a revision of the old ASV and has been released into the public domain. This is attempting to create a modern English translation which is completely free of copyright restriction, so that you can use it however you feel appropriate.
Cambridge University holds the copyright to the King James version through a centuries-long series of transfers of ownership rights , but only in the United Kingdom. I think the King James version can be freely quoted in books published in the U. Source: The Queen's Printer's Patent. Also see Wikipedia for a long article on why Cambridge holds the King James copyright.
King James Version Wikipedia. The Open English Bible project aims to create the first modern English translation of the Bible which is completely free of copyright restrictions and available without cost for any purpose.
The OEB has no restrictions on what its readers and users can do with it for both good and bad. You may quote it, publish it in part or full, on their blogs, in your churches, remix it, reword it, correct its egregious translation mistakes or indeed add your own. Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more.
What major translations of the Bible are in the Public Domain? Ask Question. Asked 8 years, 5 months ago. Active 1 year, 1 month ago. Viewed k times. Given this, what significant translations of the Bible can I actually quote at length? Improve this question. Community Bot 1.
Affable Geek Affable Geek It's unlikely that you'll need to quite the entire Bible in any scholarly setting. And quoting any copyrighted work for the purpose of commentary or scholarly discourse is perfectly acceptable. So, for any purpose on this site, I think any translation is acceptable to quote. And before anyone says, "This would be better on Politics. SE," a certain moderator I'm very close to there says, "I want it on C.
Stop using your connections to get what you want!!! The cost of copyright permission is determined for each individual publication. The cost is decided on the grounds of the number of scriptural passages that are quoted, as well as the percentage of the product that consists of scriptural quotes. The copyright fees are based, thereafter, on the selling price of the specific publication.
Under what circumstances is it unnecessary to apply for copyright permission? The Bible Society of South Africa gladly offers permission to authors and publishers to quote up to five hundred verses from the Bible in any format written, visual, electronic, or audio. Copyright must still, however, be acknowledged on the verso page of the publication.
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