Christian Bell in Calvin College Chimes (no pun intended;) has a thought provoking piece on why "Copyright is fundamentally incompatible with Christian scholarship" saying, among other good provocative things:
The primary motivation of copyright is to protect two things: profit and pride. But neither of these are things that we ought to be racing to defend.He boldly asserts
In the former case, the motive is plain enough: copyright gives its author the exclusive right to sell and profit from his/her work. We have no direct quarrel with this motivation; what we do quarrel with is the whether or not profit is enough of a motivation to restrict the distribution of ideas. Profit is undoubtedly the most driving force behind the legislative and judicial focus on copyright; the distribution of copyrighted material is, after all, a multi-billion-dollar industry.
But more than profit, copyright is an umbrella of protection for the ego. It is well and good that copyright affords its author royalties, but the real profit from copyrighting your work is getting to hear your name mentioned when the work is reviewed. What could feel better?
The root of the problem is that our faith opposes the basic premise that copyright asserts.Amen! In Christian scholarship copyright is wrong, deeply theologically as well as morally wrong. So Bell's conclusion follows, it's simply this:
Our objection to copyright is a denial of the implicit premise of “ownership” in copyright. Christianity asserts strongly and unequivocally that no human person owns his or her own thoughts. Our entire scholastic and intellectual endeavor is made possible solely by the grace of God — this is one of the fundamental tenets of our faith.
This assertion challenges the justification for copyright’s existence, namely that it affords legal protection for its creator, under the auspices that a person — a human being — owns his or her thoughts and is the genesis of them. Christianity — yesterday, today and forever after — rejects this idea as a contemptuous idolatry. We know the real truth: it is the Divine Creator, not the human creator, to whom the credit and glory of our work is due.
It is a difficult thing to divorce our minds from the idea of copyright, but in good faith, that is exactly what we must do.
[to Del.icio.us]
So does this mean that I am immoral for counting on book royalties to pay my rent? What's wrong with getting paid for the work you do?
By 
EMC, at
September 10, 2005 11:23 AM
My quick answer is:
Nothing! But... is the current copyright system the best way to achieve both a decent living for authors, and reasonable access for everyone, also - in the context of discussing scholarship - most scholarship is actually paid for by institutions that employ the scholar, or written in people's "spare time"...
But mainly surely there's a better way to crack the decent living nut than this particular heavy-duty legal sledgehammer?
By Tim, at
September 10, 2005 12:15 PM
Very interesting post, Tim. I know that for myself, concern about "copyright" for my own work relates to the issue of "who gets credit," and that is an important issue not just for my own ego (which is not inconsiderable) but especially for tenure. It's very important to me that my local Rank, Tenure, and Promotion Committee give me credit for my work. Now maybe there is something wrong with that system! Ironically, the "motto" of my University is "Freely you have received; freely give." And yet the systemic realities press on us not to freely give, lest someone else get credit for our work or ideas. It's all fine and good for me to give credit to God ... but God doesn't need tenure, I do.
I'm going through the promotion process right now, and the process basically asks me to brag on myself, toot my own horn, do my works of righteousness before humans to be praised by them (ironically, even in religious terms--I'm supposed to describe, in terms that will impress the RTP Committee, my "service" activities, and also my "support for the Christian mission of the University"), choose your saying or metaphor. Nowhere does the promotion questionnaire invite me to "boast about my weaknesses." It is sobering to think that a system of credit and pride might lie at the very heart of what it takes to be hired and retained by a self-described "Christian university."
