Talk:Copyright

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Fair Use : Four prongs or five?

The section on Fair Use includes the phrase "four prong test", which is immediately followed by five bullet points! David Haslam 13:32, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Mended. David Haslam 20:05, 24 March 2009 (UTC)
Even better would have been to correct the five points to reflect the four prongs rather than uncritically decide that the problem was one of enumeration. --Osk 22:15, 6 February 2013 (MST)
Thanks. David Haslam 07:53, 7 February 2013 (MST)

Form letters

I suggest that the form letters be moved to a separate new page, so the main article length is reduced. David Haslam 13:42, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Done. David Haslam 19:54, 24 March 2009 (UTC)
If you use a tabbed browser, having each form letter open in a separate tab enables them to be compared very easily. This in itself may suggest further improvements to the wording. David Haslam 20:03, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Avoiding duplication in copyright lobbying

We need some sort of notification system to tell others at CrossWire when someone has initiated lobbying for a particular text, merely to avoid the embarrassment of having other volunteers duplicate the approach to the same copyright owners. David Haslam 17:04, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Form letter for Go Bible users

We need to draft a form letter template for Go Bible users. This will need to cover the subtle technical point that Go Bible is not a direct Frontend for the SWORD engine per se. The template should be worded in such a way that (if successfully lobbied) will result in obtaining permissions for distribution both as SWORD modules and as Go Bible applications for mobile phones. David Haslam 20:21, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

We can also use Go Bible as a "bargaining chip". Offer the copyright owners the development technical support to enable them to host a Go Bible version from their own website. Sometimes the offer of such free assistance can reap very positive progress in collaboration on SWORD module permissions. David Haslam 15:35, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

Why do we suggest offering to pay a small fee at this first approach?

The form letter templates all include the clause, "not only to pay a small fee to be able to use your work under .......". Why do we suggest offering to pay at this first approach? Wouldn't it be more sensible to leave this to subsequent correspondence? David Haslam 20:26, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

I have personally been involved in talking with two separate organisations, and I do not include that clause (to be more honest, I dislike form letters and change and tailor as much as I like to what I know of the organisation and what I am trying to achieve). My aim is to make the word of God freely available, and while I cannot do anything about what copyright holders choose to do with their copyright I am not going to suggest to them that they charge money because I am very sceptical of making money out of the word of God (you can justify it and I am not saying you can't, but I don't think most of the justification given is reasonable. This has been argued before and I hold a more extreme position than most people in the Crosswire community). -- Jmmorgan 12:57, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

SWORD CD ?

One of the paragraphs mentions a SWORD CD. There is no description of the SWORD CD in the CrossWire wiki. David Haslam 19:59, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

128-bit encryption

This is the only page in the wiki that mentions encryption. We could do with some more detailed description of how this works for protecting SWORD modules. Encryption is normally used to hide secrets, yet the text of any module is not intended to be secret but to be studied by everyone who purchases such a locked module! So what are we really trying to achieve by encryption here? Copy-protection is not the same as information security. And there is no such thing as security by obscurity. David Haslam 16:52, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

Crown copyright & the DMCA

Removed from article: "Even in the USA, under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the text of the KJV is protected by mutual treaties with the UK relating to copyright law." This is most probably false. Without reference to a knowledgeable source, it's not appropriate to pronounce it as if it were uncontroversial fact. Specifically, I propose that KJV printing in the UK is not restrained by copyright but by letters patent. While UK copyrights are observed within the US, there is no similar observation of UK letters patent. The KJV is in the public domain everywhere in the world. Printing restrictions within the UK are not caused by copyright law. They are caused by (effectively similar but unrelated) letters patent that restrict printing by fiat. The US won a war in 1783, one effect of which is that British royal fiat is not observed in the US. --Osk 22:31, 6 February 2013 (MST)

Mixed content

Sometimes a public domain text is published in an edition containing new copyright material interspersed within the main body of the work. This has been seen (for example) when a PD Bible translation has been republished with headings, footnotes, cross-references, linguistic markup and other features, none of which were present in the original work. In such cases, one must take great care before assuming that any of the work can be re-purposed, including what (in theory at least) was the original PD text. Better to find an alternative electronic source for the original PD text. David Haslam 07:52, 7 February 2013 (MST)

Form letters section is too narrow in terms of app coverage

Things have changed radically since this page was first made. Giving advice about form letters that's particular to only three front-end apps is no longer what we need. Making no mention of PocketSword or And-Bible makes no sense either, now that smart phones and tablets are so popular.

We could do with a standard form letter that briefly describes the wide range of apps we support, with the main focus on being requesting written permission to distribute the relevant content by CrossWire in the form of a SWORD module.

David Haslam (talk) 15:38, 11 October 2017 (MDT)