Amazon, Kindle and Bible copyrights

The ever-strange Washington Times carries commentary on Amazon’s Kindle e-book reader. Fred Reed raises the question about the problems of selling e-book content that is in the public domain. While it’s within Amazon’s business model to sell an “e” edition of a work published by a company, what happens when one charges for a work in the public domain?

From the article:

Kindle is close to being mass marketable. However, the economics seem hazardous for Amazon. The company makes money, legitimately enough, by selling physical books that are out of copyright. If you want your child to read “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,” Amazon will sell you a copy. I don’t know what proportion of a bookseller’s income derives from the sale of books in the public domain, but it has to be considerable — the Bible, the classics and so on.

Reed glosses over the concept that the Bible is in the public domain. It is not. Particular translations of the Bible have copyrights applied to them. The (New) Revised Standard Version is held in copyright by the National Council of Churches. The English Standard Version is held by a division of Good News Publishers. The New American Bible by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Specific publishings of study Bibles are also held in copyright. My HarperCollins Study Bible is the NRSV. The Biblical text is copyright by the NCC and the support material held by HaperCollins, itself a holding of News Corporation.

In the US, only the King James Version is held in the public domain. For the UK, the King James Version is held in perpetual Crown Copyright and not public domain. I’m no copyright expert and won’t touch this one with a ten-foot pole.
So, don’t worry about Amazon raking in money based on Kindle “e” editions of the Bible. They will be paying out big bucks to the publishers and holding companies for the right to distribute particular translations and editions.

Christians closing the digital divide in Minneapolis

The Minnesota Daily reports that the Digital Inclusion Fund has offered $200,000 in grants to offer “new users of technology who historically might not have had access, such as immigrants and low-income families.” One of the grants, in the amount of $30,000, has gone to the (Roman Catholic) Church of St. Philip. This parish has started the Patchwork Quilt Digital Divide Initiative, that supports the World Community Grid, FightAIDS@home, and works locally with the poor to offer access to computers and the internet.

Access to the internet has become less a luxury and more of a utility. The telephone also made this transition. Once a curiosity for the well-off home, the telephone has become such a standard utility that receiving emergency 911 services depends on it. Not having a telephone number shuts one off from finding employment and housing and from participating in society at large.

The internet has not yet made this leap from technology to utility, but it’s getting closer. The digital divide comes from the high cost of entry. A new telephone can cost as little as $10 and basic access is about $30 per month. Even used computers cost far more than $10 and basic dial-up Internet access starts at $10 per month in addition to the cost of the phone line. Plenty of people are left out of this equation.

Many children do not attend schools that have computers or can teach computer literacy. Many schools do not provide access to the internet.  Presently the United States is a country that depends on computers as much as we depend on cars and we soon will depend on the internet as a utility like telephones, electricity and water.

Neglecting the social and economic issues around technology is a moral failure. This makes the Church of St. Philip’s efforts all the more refreshing.