Copyright, Licesning, and Faith-Based Resources

screenshot of the World English Bible copyright and liscense agreement
The publicaion, use, and sharing of religious resources has been a rights issue for as far back as there has been a faith practice to transfer. One can make the call that God even enforced the first rights-management system when he declared that “I am ther Lord your God and you shall have no other gods before me. (Exodus 20:2)” Weighty in the respect of reverence, but also in the respect of exclusivity – if there is to be a faith towards a deity, then let your faith towards this one be exculsive and binding.

To that end, the faith world has seen all kinds of challenges to doctrine, dogma, and behavior. Going digital has rekindled some old arguments and founded some new ones. In 2009, we tried to add some sense to the challenge and change that digital contexts makes in regards to copyright/licesning biblical resources. It was one part of an on-going discussion, and one where there just isn’t a clear answer. Its been an intention to add to that article some items of relevance – with a ground literally shifting often. But thankfully, others are picking up the discussion, and the mounting challenges not so much for just having access, but having access that fits the context of digital use and ownership paradigms.

The licenses that govern the use of modern versions of the Bible in English grant very limited, arbitrary permissions for the use of the content. For instance, a person may be permitted to use 250 verses of the Bible (or 500 or 1,000, depending on the publisher) but only if they do not include a complete book of the Bible in their content. The amount of Biblical text they use is usually not allowed to exceed a certain percentage (often 25%, sometimes 50%) of the complete work. The table below lists current (at the time of writing) license restrictions on some common versions of the Bible in modern English. Note that “Max. Verses” refers to the maximum number of verses that may be used, “% of Total” refers to the maximum percentage of the text in the resource that may be Biblical text, and “Complete Book?” refers to whether or not a complete book of the Bible may be used in the resource.2

Version Max. Verses % of Total Complete Book?

CEB3 500 <25% No

ESV4 1,000 <50% No

HCSB5 250 <25% No

NASB6 500 <25% No

NET7 not specified <50% No

NIV8 500 <25% No

NKJV9 1,000 <50% No

Most licenses (though I am not aware of any exceptions) do not explicitly allow freedom beyond these specific permissions, meaning the restriction preventing the translation of the Biblical text has not been lifted. For use of the text that requires more than this—like including the complete text of a book of the Bible—the user must enter into a specific licensing agreement with the copyright holder of the Bible translation. These licensing agreements typically include the negotiations of royalties from the sale of the content back to the owner of the Bible translation.

Version	Max. Verses	% of Total	Complete Book?
CEB3	500	<25%	No
ESV4	1,000	<50%	No
HCSB5	250	<25%	No
NASB6	500	<25%	No
NET7	not specified	<50%	No
NIV8	500	<25%	No
NKJV9	1,000	<50%	No

Read the rest of The Urgent Need for An Open Liscensed Bible in English at Distant Shores Media

Besides being an updated guide, towards the current challenges publishers, participants, and readers have towards digital faith-based resources, it also speaks to the problem of why there is even a greater challenge to create non-English faith resources. Simply put, law and process hasn’t kept pace with technology and behavior.

…Imagine a Christian pastor in Tehran who uses his mobile phone Bible application to search for what the Bible says about “suffering for Christ.” The pastor does not know that the free Bible he is reading on his app is only free in exchange for data about how he uses it. In fact, he cannot even do a search for “suffering” on his phone without a network connection, because his free app with the “free of charge” Bible he is reading phones home to the web service with every search he makes. And when his app phones home to an American website (a Bible website, no less), it may well trip a filter in the Great Iranian Firewall. And maybe around 2am, the pastor gets to find out firsthand what it means to suffer for Christ. Because his app phoned home. Because “free of charge” comes with a tradeoff, when it is not also accompanied by “legal freedom” at the level of content…

While I do think that in some revolutionary ways this will be addressed in my lifetime, I am also very aware that the nature of faith, data, and information lends itself to be something held close and valued towards exclusion rather than shared towards posterity. Hopefully, there can not only be a change that works for all here, but one that compensates rightly all the levels of engagement that it takes to make these resources possible to the global faith community.

Then again, is not part of the definition of religion that of a system that’s exclusive not just in application, but in information shared?

Book Fairs, eBooks, and Conversations Worth Having

Was reading some good news the other week from our friends in Egypt who were talking about a book fair they were having, and it indeed is a good thing to have these. Besides a moment of being able to swap, share, and purchase books across authors and subjects you might have normally come across, its another aspect of sharing something that God’s given you with someone who might not have had access to the same materials.

Of course, that got me thinking on the lines of electronic books, ebooks, and how we’d probably not hear too much about book fairs where people are swaping, sharing, and purchasing these. The model for ebooks doesn’t seem to make something like this happen easily. Then again, there is the lending feature that some ebook services offer, and that does point to something that could be done here.

I thought a bit further, and my thoughts asked about my experiences and the testimonies with the Kiosk Evangelism Project, Door43, and Open Church. These are all projects which aim to make available some of the depth of locally- and globally-produced text, audio, and video material using technologies developed in and around the Internet. What if these kinds of projects could be extended to the idea of a eBook book fair? What could that look like?

First, there’d have to be some kind of library of content. If I’m thinking like the Kiosk Evangelism Project, then that should definitely be a few Seagate GoFlex Satellites configured in a room, with numbered SSIDs (for example [book fair name] a-d #1, [book fair name] e-j #2, etc.). This would enable those participating to at least be able to identify from their connected devices that content is available. I’d also have some kind of moderator there with a central laptop (?) that has all of the content on that device which would be used to transfer content to those persons who have devices which aren’t able to connect to the GoFlex units. I’d probably opt to have them organized by subject, rather than author, with that central laptop admin being the “librarian” – helping with searches, connecting to the LAN, etc.

Second, I’d have the GoFlex units labeled on a table with chairs and snacks around them. I’d probably do something fun like a scavenger hunt or something like a “speed dating” effect where people only sit in a space for a little bit of time. I’d encourage them to talk with each other about what they are downloading, what they like, and what they don’t. Probably having some kind of survey to be filled out afterwards (low tech with paper, high tech via SMS).

Lastly, I’d turn it into something of a traveling book fair and connect with the local worship centers and schools asking them to have prepared resources they’d like for people to be able to download and read. From the main laptop, I’d want to provision the libraries with that material before the book fair gets started. And (if possible) give them some kind of report (EpiSurveyor) towards what people downloaded and if there were any reported problems with that content (low tech paper, or high tech SMS again).

Thinking about this more, one could actually skip the LAN server piece, and just hand out memory cards with random selections to each table of people, do a once-over on how to share the content via Bluetooth or card swapping, and make a ebook fair happen on the level of each table. But, then ask people to remember a marker that was on their card and move to another table after a certain amount of time. At the end of the session, the memory card they have in hand is what they get to keep and they are just asked to do the same kind of sharing with friends/family/co-workers.

It feels like this would be a good way to show that our mobile/connected devices can be included within these kinds of social situations. We’d also see something of a different conversation when some people might decide to download some books but request others in print. In this way we can serve two kinds of readers, while electronically having the audio and video files that speak to those who might prefer something less textual.

What are your thoughts? Any reason why this wouldn’t be a good idea? Or, would anyone be interested in trying to make this happen (connect with us and let’s see what can happen)?

Raising the Bar for Bible Apps

logos bible app screenshot We come down pretty hard on Bible apps here at MMM. Either they aren’t focused enough, or they have so many features that people get lost in using them (a product focus issue). Nevertheless, there’s always room to talk about what they do well and what can improve from there.

What Mobile Bible Apps Do Well

Its well agreed, even when comparing leading Bible apps to other eBook readers/applications, that Bible applications are well developed for their target. From the handling of notes, to offering different views to compare content. Bible apps seem to run in the lead in respect to having the kind of user experience (UX) that is responsive to many of the needs of the Bible reader.

Footnotes, cross-references, and some even integrate image support better than you’d see on the Nook, Kindle, or other electronic reading devices. Add to that, an large body of content (usually priced appropriately), and you basically have a niche in mobile Bible apps that can pretty much sustain itself – for a little while longer at least.

And then you just have availability. Just look at our Bible apps listing – there’s at least one Bible app (and therefore several Bibles and other religious literature) available for nearly any mobile device. There are even SMS and audio-only options for those folks that would prefer something a bit more responsive to those reading and learning styles. I’ve been around mobile devices and software for a very long time, I don’t know of any genre outside of games that covers such a diverse range of devices and usage types.

What Mobile Bible Apps Don’t Do So Well

Where mobile Bible apps falter, and this is true for just about anything attached to the publishing world, is in two specific areas: access and consistency.

In respect to access, we still have the situation with Bible applications that content is locked to specific applications. Though we are getting better with this – just recently, we saw the release of Simple Bible Pro for HP webOS devices which uses Laridian’s licensed content. Instead of a situation such as a single vendor needing to making an application for (and then support) various mobile platforms, another company has made the application, and there was some cross-licensing able to be done here. This doesn’t happen enough, and therefore Bible software companies are dealing with access the hard way – building platform-centric silos. And in most cases aren’t even taking advantage of respective platform strengths when doing so.

Then there’s consistency. I’ll let Kevin Purcell from Christian Computing Magazine take it form here:

…While all of these are good apps, they have one thing in common. They lag behind their iPad/iPhone counterparts running on iOS in features and sometimes in stability. Let’s take Olive Tree Bible Reader as an example. The iOS version is rock solid and has a lot of great features. It has split screen capability and markup features like book bookmarks and notes. The most recent stable Android version only recently added some of these features, but not all of the iOS features are present yet. Logos has a good iOS app. They haven’t even re-leased an Android version yet, but do have a public beta (see link above). Their beta is little more than a book reader. You cannot compare translations, there is no Passage Guide or Word Study Guide and like the iOS version it has no note taking feature, bookmarking or highlighting. Laridian’s Android app is an alpha, not even a beta. I downloaded it and they have a great start, but it is definitely missing most of the great features of the iPhone version…

Read the rest of his July 2011 article (PDF)

Feature parity is important whether you are doing simple reading, or diving into a more in-depth study with your community. This aspect really hits folks who move to another mobile device and have gotten used ot a specific feature.

How Then to Raise the Bar

This is the part where you make the call. Being that mobile Bible apps have this base, where do they need to improve or become better in your perspective? Let’s hear what you have to say, and maybe the voices can get some of these excellent companies to consider tweaking their offerings in that direction.

The Strain and Pain of Sharing

Have had a few conversations recently where me and a few close friends were talking about topics in Scripture. In one case, there was a sermon of a friend that we were taking a look at. In the other case, a bro and I were talking about a passage in a book (print) that he owned and I didn’t. In both cases, sharing our perspectives was exciting and infuritating.

First Sermon Feedback

In the first instance, a friend asked me to take a look and give feedback to her first written sermon. It was short and didn’t need much but to be placed in an email right? Well you see, this was also something being submitted to a professor for a class she was teaching. And at least because I received it inline via email, I understood that the system that she was using to submit the paper wasn’t able to facilitate people outside of that network/school looking at the same digital copy that the professor saw.

So, I got a copy via email, and therefore replied via email. No highlighting, no hyperlinks to other resources, just a plain text reply. Another friend came into the feedback loop and his replies were of course in other emails, some private to her and another shared with us all. But again, the conversation was all out of wack with anyone involved needing to mentally manage different threads of the conversation.

Chafer and Systematic Theology

Another brother and I were on Google Talk talking and he mentioned about a portion of Chafer’s Systematic Theology that he was investigating. The passage was familiar to me from my youth and I asked if there was a snippet available for me to take a look at that would be able to help me see things as he read them – thereby keeping my experiences from being primary in how I’m viewing his points. I asked for him to send me the snippet – surly the Bible software that he was using was able to do that much.

For one, it wasn’t. He sent me the snippet in a Google Doc. This takes the text out of the publisher’s environment, and now we are discussing the text in a manner that neither the publisher, developer of the Bible software company, or even my bro, could easily refer to that later when we resume the discussion. He’ll have to have two apps open (browser and the Bible app) and I’ll be in the browser looking only at the snippet of text.

Exciting and Infuriating

This is a problem. There’s way too much of a strain on people to have to share anything. And the pain we ignore because “this is the only way we know how to do it.”

Don’t get me wrong, it was great to be chatting with two people in two different time zones, and across multiple devices, on the depth of life to be uncovered in Scripture. If anything, this reaffirms that digital and connected spaces are great areas with which to do these kinds of conversations and studies.

But man, to have to slice-and-dice content, to have closed systems or processes that don’t allow authors to be able to re-resource their works to other audiences, that’s painful. Books like Chafer’s Systematic Theology should be operating in an open and easily source-findable environment so that people can access a snippet but not deprive publishers, developers, and authors of their compensation. I think of Amazon’s Kindle or Google Books, where you can send someone directly to a page, or a snippet of text, but they will not get the whole book without paying for it. There is no excuse that some of the larger tomes of knowledge aren’t done this way.

It was also great to be on IM and Google Docs with a brother on this. This makes sense for too many reasons, and why my friend’s school might not have allowed for something like this. We were in the same document, and I could highlight and link to reasons for my comment. They could see the changes, make adjustments, and then just leave it there for other eyes to see, or even for the professor to see how they came to their conculsions after not just sourcing textual references, but real persons that can be “googled.” What about that kind of discussion and learning isn’t where we should be?

But that’s not the case. We deal with attachments, document formats, publisher’s rights on viewing versus sharing, and reader applications which might not be compatible with the book that I’m using. Aren’t we done with striving in a direction that doesn’t take advantage of the tools that are before us? Or, are we not motivated enough to change the behaviors that have somehow ensnared us?

What’s Ahead for 2011

2010 was one amazing, hectic, and transforming year. In respect to mobile, the world seems to have begun hitting a stride seeing mobile as something more than a flash in the pan. That’s always been the view from MMM. Mobile intersects with digital faith behaviors, and enables us to send and receive a lens of faith that’s a bit different, a bit fresher. Chances are, in 2011, you’ll refine some behaviors and push a bit more. How could that look in 2011? Let’s take a look first at mobile, then at what’s in store for MMM.

A Mobile Lens for 2011

Mobile will continue to push towards the front of technology, health, educational, and policy conversations in 2011. What will be most interesting is the overlap. As we talked about some last year, contextualization and cross-functional knowledge will play a bigger part in understanding the role of mobile and the impacts to digital faith behaviors. Those individuals and groups that pollinate their mobile perspectives with multiple arenas will remain ahead of trends and applications.

In hardware, we are still looking at more of the same from basic devices (slates, candybar, tablet, some clamshells). Storage and processor technology is again on the verge of stepping up a generation, but battery power isn’t. We should see a few more attempts with device and network intelligence on devices, but only at the highest model ranges. Look at what you see as high-end right now, it will be low/mid-range by the fall.

Price points for devices will come down to orughly $100USD for a smartphone sans contract (currently $130-150). This will continue the transformation of some (mobile savvy) developed markets towards being largely populated with new smartphones. That said, feature phones will continue to sell huge in most markets – and the 2nd owner market should also grow. Service prices will hold steady for a bit longer before we start seeing more tiers in data service offerings with larger carriers. Keep an eye on SIM cards, these might be changing – and not just in size.

Software will continue to go the route of paying attention to user experience and smoother user interface design, though we will get some attention paid to optimization and information security. I wish I could say that users will care about security, but situations such as WikiLeaks shows us that this will remain governmental and enterprise conversations.

Looks like we are on the verge of some jumps in the amount and attention paid to audio and multi-lingual approaches. However, the easiest paths for developing these solutions will continue to be with web-dependent data and transaction services.

Open source will continue as an area of opportunity and frequent barrier in software and business development. Religious content is one of the heaviest areas where DRM and antiquated processes remain, and so the change here to more fluid models is still some time off. We will see more attempts like the Kiosk Evangelism Project and The Evangelical Exegetical Commentary that will push some open source behaviors forward – the catch being with regional and legal issues which don’t change so quickly.

Mobile applications will continue to dominate the conversation in smartphone-heavy markets. Mobile web will pick up steam after Q1 and newer devices will further blurr the line between web and native applications. Would be nice to see a bible software company lead in this area – Logos’s Biblia was a great stepping stone to this.

We will see people more empowered with mobile to create their own solutions through more app-wizard-like programs and processes. I’m not sure if it will come from the faith-based space or outside, but I can see a few groups doing more with mashup-technologies that empower individuals to create solutions, instead of waiting for a larger network to be the solution.

MMM in 2011

With 3/4 a year under the belt as MMM as Antoine’s primary focus – and the addition of two voices for regional and development interests, there’s been a lot of learning and pushing taking place. Here’s some of what you can expect from in 2011.

Reorganizing the Mobile Bibles page
More development of the mobile ministry definition and its applicable areas
Adding additional contributors, with a goal of 1-2 primary contributors from outside our majority US/UK audience*
Creating more opportunities for speaking/consulting engagements for our primary contributors
Structuring a mobile ministry course offering around the Digital Disciples effort
Redesigning the site

If you will, all of this is simply building on the core so that the depth of content hits on as many applications of mobile and digital faith explorations as possible.

2011 aims to be filled with a lot more sending and receiving of Christ in mobile and we invite you to be a part of the signal. Connect with MMM and let’s continue to enable the Body to see the intersection of faith and mobile technology.

*If you are interested in being a contributor to MMM, make your request known via the Contact Form. Include links to sample writing pieces, up to three (3) areas of focus/interest, and how often you’d be contributing by writing. Those who can write in a language besides English are heavily preferred, though all applicants are equally considered.

The Future of Bible Software

2010 Future Trends Series: Bible Software | Bible Publishing | Physical Bibles

It was a lot of years ago, but MMM rightly predicted and noted how Bible apps were going to go mobile and why this was a suitable area for companies and developers in this space to pay attention to. Now, let’s take our gaze to the future a bit, what could be next?

Know Your Past

The old paradigm was simple: developers licensed content from publishers; then crafted a user interface and added varying degrees of value to that content offering. This was usually done by creating a reader” to which this specifically licensed content, and the value-added abilities were wrapped into.

This worked well even in the beginning stages of the Internet. With smaller pipes, and few persons able to afford what amounted to a “extended licensed” content (license went from publishers to developer, and then content was made available to the user), it made sense that connected features (email, notes, send to blog, etc.) would appear also within these “readers.”

PDAs and Mobile Pioneering

Then we had those PDAs. Applications followed the PC paradigm of use by offering a reader and downloadable content. Some of these applications would even sync with desktop counterparts so that bookmarks or notes could be shared (remember, initially PDAs weren’t wireless-data capable except for a few isolated and very expensive models).

From PDAs we started to see the Nokia Communicators and Palm Treos of the world start moving users to this idea of constant connectivity. Bible apps for mobiles started to adapt – first in general user interface design, and then slowly in the adoption of mobile/web features.

From Mobile Boom to Realizations

Then came the boom known as iPhone, and this greater acceptance that people were more apt to want to read their Bible or have Biblical content on their devices before consulting a desktop, and even a dedicated application. An explosion of mobile websites and mobile apps for iOS, Android, Symbian, Blackberry, webOS, and Windows Mobile showered the mainstream marketplace. For most it seemed that this model pioneered with having a reader app that people would read licensed content would work.

But, something happened as data became looked at as more than just accessible anytime. A type of user workflow began to rise to the surface. It wasn’t so much that people were not using their desktop Bible readers and websites, but they no longer were using these screens in isolation from their mobile screens. Searches, notes, and bookmarks needed to appear on all of these screen equally, without the intervening of a syncing conduit (after all, everything was connected to the web already). These workflows and behaviors weren’t really new, but the abilities of the technology along with the flexibility of the delivery conduit made these behaviors easier to see and adopt.

The understanding and shaping of Biblical data even began changing. What was once understood on the print side as glyphs and manuscripts became chopped and reorganized alongside Unicode languages, metadata schemes, database types, and even the constraints of physical devices (displays, inputs, etc.) and their presentation layers.

To add to the fun, people also embarked on changes of their own. Now, Bible reading wasn’t just a personal affair driven by devotions and reading plans, the idea of going social set in. Doing more with your Bible included engaging within virtual communities, affixing a Biblical context to social activities. The Bible and biblical data was just as much about the devices and data as it was the behaviors and actions of people once they assimilated it. And so instead of just a group of trained (technically and linguistically) users as the primary userbase, we started to see various communities arise as accessible user types, collecting more around the social actions, but using software and services in a shared manner (for ex., YouVersion and Facebook communities).

So What’s the Future to Behold

A common theme emerges when you look back at this summarized history of Bible software, we go from technical abilities, to social activities, to new technical abilities, to richer social activities. What is to be gained from biblical software now then, it does seem as if all that’s left is to live it, right?

I can see a few distinct software changes coming to biblical software and the faith community at large. On the software side, we should begin to see more consolidation in terms of the larger companies in this space. Don’t be surprised for more announcements similar to the one forged with Zondervan Publishing and Olive Tree. It makes a lot of sense for publishers and software houses to align their resources as they are building and mining on the same data.

Look for a few companies to take an approach similar to Logos and their Biblia.API project. The benefit of an API is that you can stack data into new kinds of applications or services. For example, if you are a missionary who lives in your car (so to speak), it would make a lot of sense to map your GPS device’s POI database to passages you might have preached or privately held for devotions. Imagine possibilities also where augmented reality services allow you to embed a Scripture on a virtual location, but you are able to interact with it in the physical world. These and other possibilities are doable.

Also, we should expect the loosening of English as the primary language of our Biblical communities. Even as I write this, there are more mobile web users in China alone than there is the total population of persons in the US. English definitely served as the world’s language when there was only the G7. There’s the G20 now, and you can bet that all languages will have to be given space on the world’s stage for communication and interaction.

More of this thinking has been expounded in our post about trends coming in the next 10 years (also, see presentation deck).

Imagine This

Imagine this, a future Bible software application isn’t an application at all, but a validation key brokered between you, the developer who holds the API, and the publisher who owns the content. Your license enables you to read the content via whatever reader or browser you choose, and you have a limited license to share it with certain people or through specific regions. The developer, as part of their service agreement with you, gives you access to a panel where you can purchase additional API capabilities or upload your own contributions. And the publisher also has a panel, to which you can offer feedback, purchase additional licenses, and view the analytical data that goes into their marketing and research efforts.

In my opinion, we aren’t that far off from this happening. Will you as a user, developer, or publisher be ready to make the next change in offering or engaging with your Bible/biblical software. The idea of owning content, managing apps, and even browsing is changing. What I describe might not be the future realized, but it does point to what are some of the likely outcomes.

For those of you invested in the future of Bible software, I hope this helps to address your current plans for what’s next.

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
« Apr
			1	2	3	4
5	6	7	8	9	10	11
12	13	14	15	16	17	18
19	20	21	22	23	24	25
26	27	28	29	30	31

Mobile Ministry Magazine

Asking questions, presenting approaches, and experiments at the intersection of faith and mobile

Tag Archives: DRM

Copyright, Licesning, and Faith-Based Resources

Raising the Bar for Bible Apps

What’s Ahead for 2011

The Future of Bible Software