Earlier this month, I mentioned that the RSV Catholic edition of the Bible was online. Thank goodness it is! Today I noticed via John Three Sixteen that the Virginia etext version of the non-Catholic RSV has now been removed because of the assertion of copyright by the NCCCUSA:We regret that we are unable to host the Revised Standard Version of the Bible on our website any longer. We were recently contacted by the National Council of Churches of Christ (http://www.ncccusa.org/), who own the copyright for the Revised Standard Version of the Bible in the USA. They have asked us to remove the text from our website, and we have complied with their request. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.The NCCCUSA owns the copyright to the RSV and the NRSV. It has a page for its Permissions Policy which seems to rule out the possibility of anyone publishing the texts online.
On the Bible menu page, it says:
The Bible Translation and Utilization program ministry seeks:Let's take a look at these three because they seem to be a fairly standard justification for preventing people from freely accessing texts online.
- to encourage the widest possible use of the NRSV and RSV in their various editions,
- to maintain the purity and integrity of these texts, and
- to provide a plan whereby all who profit financially from the use of the various editions of the NRSV and RSV will participate in the cost of further Bible translation and utilization under the NCC.
The first is in direct contradiction of the action that they have taken. By hounding the text off the etext website, this version of the Bible will be used less widely. Inferior versions that are not subject to copyright will be used instead because they are easier to access, copy, paste, search, and compare. The Virginia etext site offers a link to the King James Version - criticised in the preface to the RSV (as published by the NCCCUSA.)
The second is a spurious justification for taking texts offline. The myth is that if it is on the internet, anyone can interfere with the text and damage its integrity. In fact, if someone interferes with a text on the internet, others notice quickly and the vandal is discredited. The internet acts in favour of the integrity of texts. A good example is the immediate scrutiny of texts made available by the Vatican. Corrections to texts and translations are posted very rapidly by those who take an interest in the texts. Besides which, electronic texts can be easily checked for integrity - electronically.
The third seems also quite spurious to me. If a site is obviously making a profit out of the bible, by all means chase up some fees or something. But what seems to happen is that people who are not trying to make money (university etext resource providers, for example) are simply blown aside so that people who do make money can publish printed texts without any competition. This is short-sighted in the extreme. Profits on the internet do not come from the sale of content but from a high hit-count which can pay off in terms of advertising or other means of revenue - as Google realised some time ago. If the copyright holder of a Bible text want to generate revenue for further research, they need to provide a site with good resources and content worth reading.
The RSV Catholic edition is still online but I expect that will probably be hounded out in due course in another triumph for greater availability and integrity.
11 comments:
The University of Michigan has it available too at:
http://quod.lib.umich.edu/r/rsv/browse.html
That is too bad, I use to often use that site to access the RSV online.
I now use Logos Bible Software which has the RSV-CE along with a lot of other translations. Logos is great and the company is pretty Catholic friendly.
Steve Ray's daughters runs
bibletheology.com which offers great deals on various software.
The NRSV and RSV including the deutero-canonicals are available (with permission from the NCC) at http://bible.crosswalk.com/
One merely needs to set the preferences to include the Apocrypha... this will also include the Apocrypha in other translations where it is available including the AV/KJV.
Who owns the copyright for RSVCE? Doesn't Ignatius Press?
Sort of defeats the purpose of translating it, doesn't it?
Crosswalk lists the RSV among its Bible Study Resources at:
http://bible.crosswalk.com/
Thank you for this insightful post. The same could be said of so many resources for the liturgy, such as the NAB, the Psalms monopolized by the USCCB, the ICEL texts for the Mass, and many other things. It is a profound marketing error for these copyright holders to keep this material off line. Notice how much more influential is the 1912 edition of the Cath Encyclopedia than the new one: the former is online.
I can recall years ago begging the USCCB to put some of its music documents online or at least let others do so. Their response was no and no. Their excuse was that if others are permitted to put them up, the texts might contain inaccuracies. Finally they did put up "Music in Catholic Worship" but it contains many typos. For starters, the USCCB can't seem to decide if the document is called "Music in..." or "Music and..."
Copyright on liturgical texts poses problems concerning the mixing of Church and state: the Church here is relying on the state to enforce a monopoly with an implicit threat of coercion behind it. If we are serious about renouncing the temporal power, this would be a good place to start.
EWTN also has the RSV-Catholic Edition on their web site.
http://www.ewtn.com/devotionals/biblesearch.asp
Huw - the Catholic version of the Bible is not simply the Protestant version "plus apocrypha". Granted that will often serve well enough but it is not ideal.
Richard - yes, I understand that Ignatius now have the copyright for the RSVCE - at least I hope so and that there are no restrictions that would permit anyone to shoo it offline.
I always thought the Douay-Rheims (eg. Confraternity Edition) was still better than the Protestant based RSV because it is more accurate of Catholic tradition, so that is not a loss for me. True Catholic searcheable Bibles (English and Latin) may be downloaded from
http://vulsearch.sourceforge.net
Also, calling the sacred deuterocanonical books the "apocrypha" (i.e. false writings) is insulting to me and my faith.
Ted
Thank you so much for this Father- I always used the Virginia link - probably the first one I found years agao - and had noticed it had disappeared recently - very inconvenient. The link you provided to the Catholic version is much better and very welcome - used almost daily. Thank you again,
Amette
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