[B-Greek] GNT Copyright issues

Carl Conrad cwconrad2 at mac.com
Mon Mar 30 07:13:28 EDT 2009


This may be slightly off-topic, but surely it is a matter of concern  
to many B-Greekers and their ilk.

Attention has been called to the demise of zhubert.com owing to  
copyright questions concerning James Tauber's MorphGNT.

Aside from the convenience and ease of use for those wishing to  
consult the text of the GNT and LXX with lexical and concordance  
features a click away, B-Greekers found the facility to pick a Greek  
text and immediately convert it to the standard BG-transliterated text  
was very convenient. That has been supplied now by Tom Moore at
http://www.katabiblon.com/tools/perseus-hopperizer/
  = http://tinyurl.com/dzx7ae
and also by Frank Boumphrey at
http://biblegreek.net/tools/makegreek_bgreek.htm
= http://tinyurl.com/cc5pjl and

Frank Boumphrey has also made available the daily GNT passage  
resembling the zhubert.com utiliat at
http://biblegreek.net/dailypassage/reading.php?kjv=true
= http://tinyurl.com/cch5np

But the larger issue underlying the demise of zhubert.com continues to  
rankle (is that too strong a word?), the question being posed in such  
stark terms as "Can the Word of God be copyrighted?" (similar problems  
several years ago focused on the text of the Dead Sea Scrolls --  
whether they ought to be subject to copyright laws. I don't intend to  
discuss or invite a discussion of these issues on B-Greek, but I do  
wish to call attention to blogs offering useful discussion of the  
issues involved (and I suggest that those who wish to do so might  
offer their comments on those blog-sites and not in response to this  
message on B-Greek):

Tim Bulkeley at "Sans Blogue" has a March 29 entry entitled, "Gentle  
(though firm) wisdom on Bible copyright issues":
http://www.bigbible.org/blog/2009/03/gentle-though-firm-wisdom-on-bible.htm
= http://tinyurl.com/d9sebj

And Time points to two blog posts by Peter Kirk: "Copyrighting the  
Word of God 1" at:
http://www.qaya.org/blog/?p=1118
and "Copyrighting the Word of God 2" at:
http://www.qaya.org/blog/?p=1120

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)






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