Why "Open"
From Door43
The short answer
All around the world, people that were considered "unreached" as recently as a few months ago are now believers and want to grow in maturity as disciples of Christ. Many of these people do not have any discipleship resources in their language, such as the Bible, Bible studies, commentaries, study materials, etc.
Thousands of these resources exist in some common languages but they are of no use to speakers of other languages and copyright law prevents them from being translated and adapted for use in other cultures. (For an example of how ministry can be inadvertently limited by copyright restrictions, read this article.)
So, we are building discipleship tools that are designed from the outset to be free of charge but also give the freedom to use them for any ministry purpose, including translating, adapting, improving and redistributing their works to others. Instead of just giving them permission to use the discipleship tools, we are giving them the freedom to own them and make them theirs.
No royalties. No legal implications due to copyright law. We think the future of ministry is Open.
A slightly longer answer
Let's say a Christian in Europe writes a Bible study and publishes it on a website. His Bible study is automatically covered by a copyright that restricts all rights, without his needing to do anything to establish the copyright – it's the way copyrights work.
Now suppose a small Christian radio station in Africa is looking for discipleship training material to put on the air and they find the Bible study posted by the European Christian on the web. It is exactly what they want their listeners to hear (though they need to translate it and make some changes to the content in order to communicate clearly in their language and culture) and they want to air it on their station. But they have a problem.
They cannot legally translate, adapt and put the material on their station without first getting permission from the copyright holder. This task could prove to be impossible for any number of reasons, including:
- They may not be able to identify who holds the copyright in order to request permission.
- They may not be able to find contact information for the copyright holder.
- Communicating with the copyright holder may be across multiple time zones and may be stalled by linguistic and cultural barriers.
- Small ministries often do not have the legal expertise, funding or personnel to deal with the intricacies of International copyright law.
- Many copyright holders prefer to leverage their copyrighted materials to fund other ministries. Small overseas ministries are often not able to afford the royalties and some smaller language groups are unlikely to receive assistance from the copyright holder.
- Effective use of discipleship material often requires translating it and modifying it so that it is culturally relevant and communicates the intended message clearly. Many copyright holders are hesitant to allow this level of freedom.
Even when large ministry organizations with legal departments – speaking the same language, in the same culture, one phone call away – attempt to resolve copyright and licensing issues, it can take several months and a considerable paper trail to come to an agreement.
The bottom line is this: The obstacles preventing believers and ministries in other countries from gaining access to copyrighted material are so significant that it generally does not happen and ministry is hindered as a result.
Finding A Solution
The rise of digital technology and the Internet makes it easy and nearly instantaneous to create and distribute discipleship materials all over the world. Instead of using copyrights to limit how these materials can be used, we want to encourage their unlimited use in ministry for any reason, by anyone, anywhere, in any language.
To make this possible, we are working together with like-minded believers to help create discipleship materials that are released under a Creative Commons license (see Door43:Copyrights which pre-clears usage of the material according to the terms of the license used. A Creative Commons license does not replace the copyright or make the work public domain. Instead, it makes it very easy for anyone who encounters the discipleship material anywhere in the world to know exactly what they are legally permitted to do with the material without even needing to contact the copyright holder.
A copyright is always "all rights reserved", meaning that nothing is permitted unless it is specifically allowed by the copyright holder. By contrast, a Creative Commons license, when applied to a copyrighted work makes it "some rights reserved" and everything is permitted unless it specifically is not allowed by the copyright holder, as governed by the conditions of the Creative Commons license used.
In the example above, let's say the European Christian who wrote the Bible study had released it under a Creative Commons "Attribution-Share Alike" license (the same license we are using on this wiki, see Door43:Copyrights). When the staff of the Christian radio station in Africa found it on-line, they would easily be able to read the terms of use on the Creative Commons website (which is translated into many languages) and know that they have already been permitted by the copyright holder to use the Bible study for any purpose provided that
- they attribute it to the original creator (and provide a link to the original resource where possible).
- any modifications or translations of the material be released under the same license
They could put that Bible study on air in their own language that same day.
The bottom line is this: By removing copyright restrictions, ministry is advanced.
