Tuesday, April 12, 2005

Open Intellectual Licensing and its Impact on the Christian Church

One of the most fascinating and important legal initiatives of the last fifty years has arisen, at least in its popular form, from the field of computer science. This legal concept is that of "openness". What this concept is based upon is the fundamental belief that knowledge should be free. As humans and, more importantly, as Christians, we should desire to share all truth and knowledge with all of our fellow man. This concept first manifest itself, again - in its popular form, in Richard Stallman's General Public License often referred to as a "Copyleft."

The purpose of the General Public License, or GPL as it is commonly referred, is to aggressively promote intellectual freedom. This means that works that are licensed under the GPL are considered to be Open of Free. It is often said that this means "Free as in Freedom, not Free as in Beer." The bottom line of the GPL is that anyone may use something that is licensed under the GPL freely, as they see fit, they may add to it or modify it for their own use or for the use of others. People may learn from it, study it, tear it apart and, in fact, are encouraged to do so. What makes the GPL aggressive is that it states that any derivative works based upon something licensed under the GPL are also licensed under the GPL. Guaranteeing that those who benefit from open knowledge also contribute to open knowledge.

What the GPL does not do is prevent the sale of knowledge licensed under itself. This is where people often become confused. The purpose of the GPL is not to make all knowledge free to obtain but to make it free to share, to use and to expand upon. In the end, this almost always results in knowledge being free to obtain.

How does this affect Christian publishing? As Christians, we should evaluate the purposes with which we create, disseminate and deliver information and information about the Faith in particular. Our obvious example is the Bible. The Bible is, and always has been, free. The sources of the Bible are public domain and anyone is free to copy, distribute, sell, give away, read, etc. The Bible has always been this way. God did not write the Bible hoping to sell many copies and make a large franchise of Bible publishers. The Bible is free for all to use. Bible publishers are free to make money by packaging the Bible in handy formats for us and are free to include reference materials to add value. They are able to charge for their published copies of the Bible because they add value. But anyone is free to copy the Bible, to translate it themselves or to read it aloud for anyone to benefit from. This is important because those with financial resources can buy nicely packaged copies of important works while those without financial resources can obtain that same information - although often in less "convenient" formats. Authors who wish to expand on ideas or incorporate ideas can do so. Speakers may perform those works. People may share in the knowledge.

My point is not to go so far as to say that all written or spoken works should be licensed under an open license. Fiction, for example, that is designed only for entertainment purposes and not for the enlightenment of the reader should, most likely, remain under the traditional licenses that we are used to. But when the purpose of a work is to disseminate knowledge, the author of that work must consider the consequences of his or her actions in the choice of licensing of that work. If the purpose of writing is monetary gain, then by all means, traditional licensing is the obvious choice (although some publishers like the highly respective O'Reilly beg to differ) but if the purpose of a work is to give back to the human community, to make the world a better place or to do the good work of God, then shouldn't that knowledge be made free so as to better serve its purpose? One must, I believe, question the motives of a writer who writes about information claiming that it is given of God but believes that he or she has the write to keep that knowledge private and to charge others to hear it.

Charging to hear God's Word? If a church was to charge admission at the door instead of taking an offering, people would be outraged. If a minister or priest was to expect people to pay to hear a sermon, no one would come and listen. One of the primary purposes of the Church is to allow those who need to hear about God, his Son and his Word to have a place where they are free to hear his teachings. We would never think to exclude those who could not pay from hearing the Gospel, would we? Sure we might package up a number of sermons onto a CD and sell that - but we are selling convenience and packaging, the sermons where still free to hear. But we often forget that writers are doing exactly this. Claiming to be preaching insight into God's Word and yet reserving the knowledge for themselves and those that pay to hear it. Would Christ approve? Would it have been right for Jesus to have charged entrance to The Sermon on the Mount? Or more importantly, why would he have wanted to do so?

If a writer's heart is in the right place when writing about the Faith, wouldn't they demonstrate this by wanting the knowledge that God gave to them to be "free" so that all may benefit from it and not just those who can afford it?

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons License 2.0

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