Biblical Hebrew Forum

["JAMES CHRISTIAN READ" <JCR128 AT student.apu.ac.uk>]

Sourceforge policy does not allow non open source 
software to be stored in its distribution service. 
If it's on sourceforge you can use it.

The zephania markup language itself is released on a 
GNU gpl licence which means you are allowed to make 
money from it but you must always release the source 
code for anything you make from it.

The aleppo-text within the zephania xml file is just 
data and as such is distributed without license, which 
means you are limitlessly free to do want you want with 
it (I'm not a lawyer so verify this for yourselves). 
You cannot copyright the data because 

a) the data belongs to Moses et al and they released it 
without limits or in the words of the xml coverage tag
'provide the bible to the world'

b) The data itself does not contain any kind of critical
analysis data such as textual variants which anyone 
can claim a right to owning (as far as I have seen).

c) The aleppo text is also distributed as a sword module 
(Again on GPL licence, I think)

d) The encoding is UTF-8 which doesn't belong to 
anybody so no proprietary encoding grounds could be 
claimed either

Mecho-Mamre's webpage has this to say on the matter:

'All of the material in this site is copyrighted.  We are often asked how we 
can claim a copyright in a public domain book like The Bible.  While it is 
quite true that no one can have a copyright that excludes all others from 
preparing their own unique copy of the Bible or other public domain works for 
copyright protection, our Bibles and other materials are not exactly like any 
others and are fully protected by copyright laws in all countries.  If you 
want to prepare your own unique Bible or other Torah materials for the Web, 
we are open to giving help and advice toward that end.'

When the zephania xml states that it is 'based' on the 
mechon-mamre text I take it on good faith that it does 
not represent an exact copy of their text and that 
therefore mechon-mamre could not claim any breach of 
copyright.

James C. Read
UK








-----Original Message-----
From: Peter Kirk <peter AT qaya.org>
To: JCR128 AT student.apu.ac.uk
Date: Mon, 24 Jul 2006 13:58:01 +0100
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew]  tanakh in hebrew and copyright rules

On 24/07/2006 12:38, JAMES CHRISTIAN READ wrote:
> http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=89078&package_id=93753
>
> The above link is probably more useful than the previous 
> link I posted as this one takes you directly to hebrew 
> texts. 
>
> The aleppo, the WLC and a modern hebrew text are all there.
>
>   
Thanks for these links. But as the Aleppo text is based on the 
copyrighted Mechon Mamre there is clearly no guarantee that these texts 
are in fact free of copyright encumbrances. As for the "Biblia 
Hebraica", the French notes to this say (when the character encoding is 
changed to "Western (ISO-8859-1)"): "You are not the owner of this text. 
It belongs to humanity." (So far, so good.) "You are authorised to copy 
freely the biblical text and use it according to your needs, such as for 
an example or a citation, including in a commercial publication; but it 
must not contain only the biblical text. ... You are not authorised to 
SELL an edition of the biblical text or of a part of the text." (But the 
transcribers aren't the owners of this text either, so what gives them 
the right to authorise and not authorise what can be done with it?)

-- 
Peter Kirk
E-mail:  peter AT qaya.org
Blog:    http://speakertruth.blogspot.com/
Website: http://www.qaya.org/


tee that these texts 
are in fact free of copyright encumbrances. As for the "Biblia 
Hebraica", the French notes to this say (when the character encoding is 
changed to "Western (ISO-8859-1)"): "You are not the owner of this text. 
It belongs to humanity." (So far, so good.) "You are authorised to copy 
freely the biblical text and use it according to your needs, such as for 
an example or a citation, including in a commercial publication; but it 
must not contain only the biblical text. ... You are not authorised to
SELL an edition of the biblical text or of a part of the text." (But the
transcribers aren't the owners of this text either, so what gives them
the right to authorise and not authorise what can be done with it?)

--
Peter Kirk
E-mail:  peter AT qaya.org
Blog:    http://speakertruth.blogspot.com/
Web