looks like young mr. biggins (http://wikisource.org/wiki/User:Biggins) has
made an error in judgement.  looks like he is also leaving on a mission and
won't be back until 2006.

it appears to me that he made a copy of the 1981 version of the book of
mormon, WHICH IS UNDER COPYRIGHT and put it online.

this is simply against the law.

the 1830 version would be legal to put online.  in fact, it's been online
for quite a while under project guttenberg :
http://www.gutenberg.net/etext/17

so, what to do?

Josh Coates
http://www.jcoates.org

-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Michael Halcrow
Sent: Friday, October 08, 2004 5:01 AM
To: stuporglue; BYU Unix Users Group
Subject: Re: [uug] Edit the Book of Mormon


On Thu, Oct 07, 2004 at 10:56:41PM -0600, stuporglue wrote:
> All your favorite scriptures are now yours to edit. That's right. If
> there were ever commandments you didn't like, passages you thought
> should have been added, or texts that could be made clearer, you can
> now edit them yourselves!
> Edit now!
> The Book of Mormon: http://wikisource.org/wiki/The_Book_of_Mormon

The part that concerns me is at the bottom:

``Content is available under GNU Free Documentation License.''

Ummmmm... most of that content IS IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN.  You can't
apply a license to something without a copyright.  Are these people
trying to claim copyright over the Book of Mormon text that fell into
the public domain decades ago, and then trying to impose a set of
restrictions on that text (i.e., derivative works must fall under the
same conditions, license statement must accompany copies, etc.)?

The other part that concerns me are the chapter headings.  The Church
still holds a valid copyright over that text.  wikisource.org appears
to not only be violating the Church's copyright, but they are also
attempting to relicense the Church's works without its permission!

Note that I am not supporting copyright law; I'm just pointing out an
apparent violation of that law.

Mike


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