| Is
the King James Bible Copyright? |
|
A standard internationally recognized copyright on any book lasts up to 100 years from publication, or the copyright term is for the writer's life plus 50 years.
Since the KJV was first published in 1611, if it had any copyright it would have expired and become public domain. And no new copyright can be issued.
The KJV was originally published in England with "Cum Privilegio" printed on it, this literally means "with privilege" or "right" it is believed to indicate it was published under a royal licence also called a "Crown Copyright". This gave the appointed royal printers the right to publish the KJV, but it has been historically documented that they did not excercise this right even in the first 100
years, therefore it can be assumed if not otherwise stated that the crown
copyright though asserted the rights are waived to ensure wide access and dissemination of the material.
As is much of the material under a crown copyright.
In the U.K the "Crown Copyright" of the Bible was often considered perpetual. So if it is applicable today this licence would only apply to Bible
publishers in the United Kingdom if the rights have not been waived. That is why the KJV Bible is classed internationally as public domain.
If your KJV has maps or notes, then it may have a copyright, but the text itself does not, since for a writing to become copyright it must be "substanially different" to any existing public domain or copyrighted material.
"To be copyrightable, a derivative work must be different enough from the original to be regarded as a 'new work' or must contain a substantial amount of new material. Making minor changes or additions of little substance to a pre-existing work will not qualify the work as a new version for copyright purposes." --The Derivative Copyright Law (partial).
Do not by confused with the The New King James Bible (NKJV) Which is copyrighted by Thomas Nelson Publishers. The NKJV is not a revision of the KJV, replacing archaic words for this is not enough difference from the original KJV to make the NKJV copyrightable. The NKJV is not even based on the same original manuscripts, it is a completely new translation with almost 60,000 word and textual differences. In the KJV there are only a couple of hundred words currently not used in English (wot, wist, etc), or words that have changed meaning.
There are 773,692 Words in the KJV Bible.
| |
| Get
"Random Bible Verses" on your site, Free!!! |
|
|
Using a unique Bible scripture generator for websites, we
provide fresh FREE Bible content that absolutely anyone can use to enhance their
site with the Word of God! The Bible verses are randomly selected from our database containing 1950 of the
most used and favourite Bible verses. To get a free customised Bible verse for
your site use the completely new Bible
Code Generator
| |
|
