I posted a long comment on Duane's blog, but since I am unlikely to post anything else here in the next while, on holiday with intermittent Internet, I'll reproduce here in even more extended and focused form, as a post.
Copyright, which seems to mean the right to forbid others to copy, may or may not be theft. Actually, of course it is NOT theft, producers of creative works have the right to obtain a reasonable (or at least today an unreasonable, if they are sufficiently famous) income from their work.
But copyright certainly IS the antithesis of science, since any science worthy of the name is open to debate and criticism.
Education is more interesting. There are two extreme cases:
- There is a commercial form of education that exists to ration and control the supply of licenced practitioners of various professions - that sort must love copyright.
- Then there is education as the process of learning to share in the process of growing and nurturing knowledge - that sort detests copyright as its antihesis.
As for education, the question is: Is technology science or commerce?
Now let's consider the case of theological study or education. Is copyright right or wrong? Is theology science (in this post I have tried consistently to use "science" in it's European sense of an open and criticisable body of knowledge) or commerce?
I know where I stand :)
Labels: copyright, culture, education, technology
¶ 5:23 PM
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The finding of the ostracon was prophecied by scholars at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (on a page at http://qeiyafa.huji.ac.il/index.asp months before the event!
The image here shows a fragment of the writing, which chronicles in detail the finding and partial or false publications of its finding even giving often precise dates, all in a webpage copyrighted in 2007. This is a miracle! What a shame that the page does not continue beyond this month... then we'd all know what the ostracon reads even before it is deciphered ;) In the meanwhile I plan to wait for more information before I speculate too much...
Labels: archaeology, contrarian, copyright
¶ 9:58 AM
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Won't the translations be inaccurate?
Oh yes! But this is part of the attraction of the project, as well as being rendered in the mother tongue the out of copyright texts are also adapted (a little more than is usual in a translation – for all translations are also to some extent cultural adaptations) this makes them more useful. But it may mean that some sort of peer review process should be built in, to ensure that undesirable errors do not creep in. I doubt this needs to be formalised. Since the new “text” is semi-oral and since semi-oral cultures have a flexibility to adapt their texts, the pastor would rework and improve any chapter that their colleagues question.
How will we ensure that busy senior pastors actually find time to do the translating?
First, not a lot of time is needed, just read a chapter, then reread it a paragraph at a time and speak it in their mother tongue. Say two hours for a chapter, once they have done a couple during a training day, and done the first few more slowly on their own. Second, the laptop itself is a carrot. It stays under their authority as long as they produce an agreed number of chapters – becoming their possession after an agreed period. Third, the fact that they are producing this resource is a source of honour (mana etc.) and the fact that it is in their voice will also add to their authority in other things.
Senior pastors won't be able to master the unfamiliar technology!
How many senior pastors do you know who do not have children (and/or grandchildren, nieces, nephews...) in their household. How much training do you think those guys will need? But it is true not all will be able or willing to support the project. Many useful medicines cannot be tolerated by some patients, Penicillin is a well-known example, this does not stop their use among the rest of the population!
There will be a lot of new technology to break down and support!
Not a lot. Most of the distribution can be to existing mobile phones or MP3 players. So, for each district you are looking at one laptop (the OLPCs are designed to be rugged and if they are becoming the possession of the families there is an interest in protecting them) and perhaps several MP3 players (they are also very rugged and now quite cheap <$20 retail). You would naturally use the laptop model that is that is chosen for the national education system, or one for which support should be available. And anyway, how much does it cost under the old print system to get books to pastors? And they are culturally inappropriate books, in foreign languages!
This scheme gives the power to the local church!
Yes! Great isn't it :) Print allowed foreign missions, missionaries and ministries to produce “great” resources for the poor people people of the land. This way they get assisted to produce resources for themselves. If they start out doing Matthew Henry in Kisangali, how long do you think it will take before some pastors also produce their own “texts” dealing with locally raised issues? Where has print ever achieved that degree of localisation?
This scheme will reduce the motivation for literacy in places with low literacy rates :(
First, get your priorities right! What are you about? Helping people become clones of the West? Or deepening their understanding? Second, if you think this little project will have a bigger impact than radio, TV and mobile phones you have a higher view of its potential than I have ;) Literacy as we have known it for 500 years is under threat, but this project will not contribute much to the change, though it does work with it rather than resist... “Literacy” and “books” are not idols to be worshiped but a technology and skill that are no longer as dominant as they once were – do not make the dominant technology of the past a fetish object!
Labels: audio, bible, biblical.studies.online, copyright, digital, education, publication
¶ 7:32 PM
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If you want a free, objective way to check the reception in your area BEFORE you lock yourself with a specific carrier, you should really check out "Got Reception?" (http://www.gotreception.com).
By 
dave88, at
November 8, 2008 5:41 PM
Following on from my previous post The "book" of the future Theologians Without Borders has converted a comment to a stimulating post in Transferring Knowledge in a Desert of Books Jennifer Turner puts the experience of teaching in Africa where "libraries were very sparse, due both to shortage of funds and lack of materials in the local language" with the sight of an OLPC laptop, to generate the dream that we might "skip to the next generation of knowledge transfer" by putting a library on such a machine for village pastors. How about we put these two posts together, and then tweak the results a bit?
At selected centres (like theological colleges) someone provides a laptop stacked with out of copyright or e-texts for which permission had been given. Senior pastors with a good command of the "imperial" language (English, French or whatever) then read selected works a paragraph at a time into the built-in microphone, translating into their mother tongue as they go. It would not be an accurate translation, and it might well include explanation, but that would just make it more useful!
It is in the senior pastors' interest to help, because they get to base a laptop at their home (their kids will nag them into it) and the churches they are responsible for will respect them even more.
These audio books get loaded onto mobile phones (or MP3 players) for village pastors and others. The result semi-literate (and lets face it in much of the world village pastors are often either semi-literate or less than fluently literate) pastors get real solid stimulus and information for a fraction of the cost of print.
It is in the village pastors' interest to listen because they will seem better educated, without all the hassle and risk to their status involved in moving from partial to full literacy.
Do the maths! For a district with say 20 local churches:
- cost of one laptop, loaded with "books" $250
- plus 20 MP3 players @ $30 = $600
All we need are:
- enough people to catch the vision
- publishers of texts like the Africa Bible Commentary to be willing to see their print editions reach extended twenty-fold
- people to "sell" the idea to senior pastors
- a bunch of Western agencies to give up their fetish for print!
Labels: audio, bible, biblical.studies.online, copyright, digital, education, publication
¶ 11:30 AM
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So much more can be done with audio, esp. for people in oral societies. Print is good but it can stifled us, to some extent, in the West.
Thanks for posting this, Tim. I hope many catch the vision.
I just posted about "hearing" on BBB.
By 
Wayne Leman, at
October 24, 2008 12:05 PM
I might suggest working with TransWorld Radio and FEBA and the like instead. They have trained announcers working in many of the languages of Africa and anything they produce will be transmitted to a large population.
That proliferation of gadgets worries me...
By David Ker, at
October 24, 2008 12:23 PM
Thanks both!
David, I think minimal gadgets (one laptop per language and MP3 players where mobile phones are scarce), and do the radio stations actually transmit is tribal languages or just in the major trade languages? In Congo we had 5 trade languages but c250 mother tongues...
...and, anyway why not both and...
If only people would first publish with something like a CC license ;) so that adaptations were possible... still Matthew Henry tradapted (TM = adapted in the process of approximate quick and dirty translation) into Africa could be more appropriate than a modern print work translated accurately ;)
By Tim, at
October 24, 2008 12:37 PM
PS @David, if I read the statistics right 32% of Mozambicans mother tongue is not one of the several most-used languages in the country...
By Tim, at
October 24, 2008 12:40 PM
True, Mozambique is a special case with relatively few languages. I don't know what radio is like in a country with mucho languages. But my suspicion is that languages of wider influence are covered and possibly community radio transmits in the local dialects.
This is good stuff you're pondering and I hope you don't think I'm being disagreeable.
By David Ker, at
October 24, 2008 3:43 PM
I think Literacy Bridge aims to get suitable audio devices down to USD$5.
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By , at
October 24, 2008 3:46 PM
There are already several translation projects involving the Africa Bible Commentary. The French version for Francophone Africa will be released in early November 2008, and the Swahili translation will be ready in 2009. A Portuguese translation for Mozambique and Angola and an Amharic translation for North Africa are in progress. People are welcome to apply to the Board for translation rights into other languages.
These translations won't cover 600 languages, but they will cover a big chunk of Africa. And they will be fairly accurate translations vetted by experts in the language, which the recorded versions wouldn't be.
By , at
October 24, 2008 4:06 PM
Tim, see futurebible for anonymous' identity.
- by email and/or Flickr messages with photographers whose work I have taken and used in slides for a sermon I preached which was videoed for a CareyMedia DVD. These are people I don't know, may never communicate with again, though they have enriched my life and work, so it is nice to thank them as well as prudent to ensure we have their permission (Does a CC no-commercial use license allow a non-profit sale of a work - my sermon - that includes the licensed image - in a slide?)
- on MSN (using Pidgin so that I could also potentially chat with one of you on Yahoo without yet another app open) with my son in the Isle of Man about his application for a job in Kenya encouraging microenterprise
- on Facebook with Jim West, about the mysterious disappearance sometimes of the identifications Oxford or Cambridge from the officers of SOTS online - I thought it was something to do with proteraenvy by those associated with "the other place", but apparently it is merely Facebook being "helpful"
- among the comments on my blog with Bob McD, about Hebrews' use of the Hebrew Bible
This sort of experience - and yours I suspect was similar but different - is a bit like sitting in the Carey staff room, with three conversations at once ranging from the mundane to the sublime and back again. But in the staffroom the conversations intertwine, and participants from one or the other move and realign. On the Internet they remain separate, only meeting in me, this is the centripetal tendency in Internet communication. Since "I" (and you, of course, dear reader, are also "I") am the centre the conversation is fragmented.
Ah, well, play time is over, it is 8:30 and time to start work...
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Deep stuff. Something about Twitter and Facebook allows a certain amount of eavesdropping which might be close to the staff room effect you mention. I confess that the babble sometimes even overwhelms me.
In a comment that to another post on ancient hebrew poetry I mention that in a radio interview that I listened to as a podcast from ABC (when will I start just saying an ABC podcast?) George Brooke from Manchester made the almost throwaway remark that some of the prayers from the DSS c/should be used in church today. John stes out to demonstrate this in his “Blessed is the one who does not forsake her in tribulation”: 4Q Beatitudes post.(thank you you are a star for making it available with a CC licence!)
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Speaking of the Dead Sea Scrolls, it seems like this time they really went and put their foot in their mouth...
http://www.nowpublic.com/dead_sea_scrolls_exhibit_misleads_public
http://www.nowpublic.com/dead_sea_scrolls_san_diego_natural_history_museum_update
By , at
July 12, 2007 6:59 PM
But isn't it nice that 60 years after being delivered from their womblike caves the Scrolls continue to provoke puzzlement and debate, to evoke wonder and excitement. I'm nearly sixty now, I do hope both the scrolls and I can continue to provoke and evoke for a few more years!
By Tim, at
July 13, 2007 6:10 AM
This post has been removed by a blog administrator.
Since:
- The issue is not going away any time soon.
- Problems financing online biblical content are similar.
- Although illegal copying of music is widespread it is publicly discussed seldom in Christian circles.
As background, here is how I understand our situation:
- Christian ministry needs to be paid for
- although amateur efforts are great professionals are needed too
- few churches can really employ musical originators
- Copying of recorded music is:
- endemic - can YOU be certain you have no "pirated" material on your MP3 player. or family computer
- technically easy - despite record companies flirting with dubious protection technologies (think Sony and "rootkits") in fact all they do is restrain the less determined or technically literate users from "pirating"
- culturally almost accepted1 (see 1 above, opinions are still quite split, but informal evidence suggests an inverse correlation of age and knowledge of, and respect for, copyright laws)
- No one has yet found a way to turn downloads into cash (dreams of advertising revenues may change this, but have yet to be proven viable for material other than blogs and other text-based sites dedicated to such a business model)
- The morality (and cultural desirability) of the notion of intellectual "property" is debatable2 .
I wish I knew! That is my point. I do not see a future where renewed private morality ensures that we all dutifully avoid "consuming" pirate music, videos etc.. DRM schemes will fail (they represent at best an ineffective sea wall against a storm tide). Advertising may succeed though as I wrote below:It is expensive to produce music and tour. How do you propose Christian musicians do this in a world that is used to paying for the products it consumes?
I think Keith's claim that we live in a "world that is used to paying for the products it consumes" is not true any longer for "intellectual products", at least when they are distributable online. And in such a world I begin to wonder if a return to some form of patronage (see "Subscription, advertising and appeals online") is the only answer. To some extent this is already our situation, churches support preachers and increasingly musicians, educational institutions support certain forms of publication (at least through research time, but increasingly through direct payment towards publication), companies sponsor sports teams and symphony orchestras...
...welcome to the new renaissance!
NB. Claude has posted again in "Christians and the Copyright Laws" on the specific issues of Christian music, I have not commented on that post here as this post is already too broad and I wanted to ficus on the financing of publishing (of music, and other intellectual "products") today.
Peter Kirk also has an interesting and careful discussion "Is breach of copyright theft?" which is well worth adding to your reading on this topic! In a comment on his own post Peter refers to "Copyrights and Copying: Why the Laws Should Be Changed" by Vern Poythress concluding:
I am still in the middle of the first semester marking crisis, and so reading Poythress and further comment will have to wait!
what might happen if the restrictions on copying were loosened.
Not quite, he can look at what happens in the many countries in the world (mostly towards the East) where such restrictions, even if existing in theory, are in practice not enforced and ignored by almost everyone. I used to live in such a country. But his speculations seem reasonably accurate about what things were like there: life went on, but intellectual work tended to depend on sponsorship.
1. How culturally acceptable it is may be debated, "pirating" intellectual property is evidently illegal in most countries, but the ubquity and scale of copying (here I offer the increase in plagiarism in student essays as hard evidence) suggests that culture and law are at odds here. [return]
2. The notion of "intellectual property is modern, it was introduced to protect "authors" from publishers. It is now used mainly to protect publishers from the public. It is culturally vital that ideas (including artistic "ideas") get remixed. The concept of property relates to physical objects, "intellectual property is immaterial. Yet "authors" need to derive a living from their work, unless all creativity is to be a spare time activity. [return]
Labels: copyright
¶ 3:24 PM
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It's interesting to watch the fringes of the music industry. More than a few 'indie' type artists are making a living by giving away their music, and selling 'value-added' bits like live shows, or early previews of their music. Of course, this depends on being the sort of musician that people will pay to see in person, but the idea's there.
Others are selling things by escrow -- they'll take, say, $5 donations, and if they get to a predefined amount they'll go ahead and finish producing whatever the work is, with copies to those who 'donated'. If they don't raise enough money, the cash gets returned to the donors, and the work goes back on the shelf.
Also, in certain sectors piracy is largely tolerated -- Adobe seems to not mind too much about students pirating Photoshop (businesses is another matter altogether), because those students are then getting creative jobs, where their employers will buy photoshop for them, partly because it's the standard, but partly because they already know it.
But yes, interesting questions.
By Matt W, at
June 26, 2007 5:03 PM
few churches can really employ musical originators
Maybe few churches do employ them. But plenty of churches seem to employ pastors who find time to write books, and mostly don't depend on income from them (Rick Warren may be an exception). Also quite a lot of churches employ worship leaders. If a reasonable number of churches would employ worship leaders who also write original songs, and encourage them to do so, then these songs could be made available freely. Why don't churches do this? Perhaps because they pay the worship leader so little that he or she has to rely on sales of music. But if churches really believed in their worship leaders, they would pay them enough that the songs could be distributed free. In the long run it would be to their advantage, because having a well known worship leader attracts a larger congregation and so more tithe money; also the church (rather than the worship leader) can profit by staging concerts.
By Peter Kirk, at
June 26, 2007 10:00 PM
In the Netherlands we have the same problem. Some time ago I wrote an article about this problem and supposed to introduce "open source" music, free to use for no commercial events.
By J. P. van de Giessen, at
June 27, 2007 5:48 AM
Tim,
The problem will not go away because many people don't see anything wrong with taking what belongs to another person. You are busy with markings (grading for Americans). I finished my grading but now I am very busy with editing the Self-Study report.
I a few days, when I finish editing the Self-Study Report, I will respond to Peter’s post and comment on the article by Vern Poythress. I believe this article deserves a response. If you read it, tell me what you think of the article.
Claude Mariottini
Because, while as currently structured breach of copyright is theft, it is also true that as it currently operates the "intellectual property" ideology combines with the worst features of capitalism to become the means by which "stars" and record companies, make excess profit, young struggling artists are NOT supported and the Christian message becomes a commercial "product" to be packaged and sold - quite literally. To my mind selling the gospel is sin - and that is worse than theft, for theft is merely a crime!
I am deeply saddened when I hear of copyright Bibles, that people cannot copy to disseminate, I am equally sad when I hear of Christian Musicians who make more than a good living out of
"selling" the gospel, just like the worst TV Evangelists. Next thing Pastor X will copyright his sermons, and how long before Disney trademarks the term "Gospel".
So, I agree with what you say, but I wish people would say and do more to help undo this sad
commercialisation of what should be good news for everyone!
Until Christians (whether musicians or not) learn to opt out of the diabolic system of fame, pride and wealth that has crippled the Church in the Western world, and is decimating our reach into our neighbourhoods, Christian music will remain an "industry" and "Christian music" will continue to be protected by complex and restrictive DRM mechanisms, and will continue to be stolen.
Labels: copyright
¶ 9:25 AM
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It is expensive to produce music and tour. How do you propose Christian musicians do this in a world that is used to paying for the products it consumes?
By Keith, at
June 21, 2007 5:33 PM
Perhaps by trusting God? I know more non-Christians with more faith then this: who give away their music, etc, etc.
Since when was the cost of something a limiting factor in any ministry that someone truely believes they are called to.
The greatest problem is that we have bought into the actual notion of 'not sharing' - which is essentially the legal framework that copyright provide. It might be worth learning something from the people who use Copyright to enforce sharing: Creative Commons, Open Source, Free Software, etc.
By Dwayne, at
November 13, 2007 9:20 AM
Dwayne,
I tend to agree with you. I try to give away as much as I can of what I write and speak. BUT I am fortunate, someone pays my salary, and it is enough to live on reasonably comfortably. There is a real problem with funding the production (except where it is done part time in "spare time") of material that is given away. Famous names can do it, like bands do by making money on gigs, but most writers and musicians can't. So, the issue is how we (i.e. the church or the academy) fund such things.
By Tim, at
November 13, 2007 9:32 AM
Labels: audio, copyright, internet
¶ 12:28 PM
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Art and life in a world of influence and dubbing
Lethem reminds us how Blues, Jazz and literature all exist through an "open source" style adapting and adopting by one artist of what others have done. Yet these artforms are merely well known examples where this phenomenon is overt and often recognised. They are examples of all art. If you enjoy reading and thinking, read the piece!
Gradually Lethem moves on to copyright, noting the early copyright battles over photography (another art that evidently only works by framing existing material in a new way):
Was the photographer stealing from the person or building whose photograph he shot, pirating something of private and certifiable value? Those early decisions went in favor of the pirates. Just as Walt Disney could take inspiration from Buster Keaton's Steamboat Bill, Jr., the Brothers Grimm, or the existence of real mice, the photographer should be free to capture an image without compensating the source. The world that meets our eye through the lens of a camera was judged to be, with minor exceptions, a sort of public commons, where a cat may look at a king.Introducing the delightful image that we are all born backwards into this world, experiencing the past through the present:
The world is a home littered with pop-culture products and their emblems. I also came of age swamped by parodies that stood for originals yet mysterious to me—I knew Monkees before Beatles, Belmondo before Bogart, and “remember” the movie Summer of '42 from a Mad magazine satire, though I've still never seen the film itself. I'm not alone in having been born backward into an incoherent realm of texts, products, and images, the commercial and cultural environment with which we've both supplemented and blotted out our natural world.In such a world the iniquities of "copyright" are clear:
The idea that culture can be property—intellectual property—is used to justify everything from attempts to force the Girl Scouts to pay royalties for singing songs around campfires to the infringement suit brought by the estate of Margaret Mitchell against the publishers of Alice Randall's The Wind Done Gone. Corporations like Celera Genomics have filed for patents for human genes, while the Recording Industry Association of America has sued music downloaders for copyright infringement, reaching out-of-court settlements for thousands of dollars with defendants as young as twelve.Meanwhile back in the classroom
Students who - perhaps rightly in view of the experiences Lethem evokes - see reuse as thoroughly legitimate and teachers who strive to hold them to the rules of academic rigour, which include "proper citation", perhaps need to step back and ask why academics cite while artists remix.
Academics cite because the scholarly guild, like any guild worth the name, is built on community, tradition and authority. Citing sources is not as some non-Western students assume another example of Western individualism and private property running rampant across their lives, but rather the desire to document how one's ideas are built upon the work of others. It is precisely community that drives citation. Failure to record one's dept is not merely theft of ideas (from a member of the same guild!) but also lack of respect for the honour of another, and so dishonouring to the writer who fails to acknowledge that debt.
The three levels of citation:
- page reference and quotation marks: for words that are being added to your remix
- page reference: where particular ideas but not the other author's wording are being used
- mention in a bibliography: for all works that were useful
So, the academic sin of plagiarism remains a sin - even in the world that we enter backwards, where all our best thoughts and words are remixing the ideas and expressions of others - because it fails the rules of the scholarly guild and lacks respect for other members of the guild and fails to support them.
Plagiarism is individualistic theft, just as copyright is!
Labels: copyright, open.biblical.studies, plagiarism
¶ 12:37 PM
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