Re: quran license

[Mete Kural <metekural at yahoo dot com>]

I have a few comments here.
The copyright laws may change from country to country.
I think one of the countries with the strictest
copyright laws is the USA. So if you satisfy the US
copyright laws, I think you should be fine in most of
the world. And in the US, translations of religious
texts may be copyrighted. So one cannot conclude that
since a translation of the Quran is a derivative work
from a public work - Arabic Quran, hence God's word -
it cannot be copyrighted. You will find the copyright
notice on many modern translations (since copyright
expires a certain amount of years after the author's
death).

My 2 cents..

Mete

--- Mohammad DAMT <md at mt dot web dot id> wrote:
> Finally our lawyer friend Erwin Sundoro <sundoro at
> hotmail dot com> 
> suggested an addendum to LGPL and disclaimer for
> libquran and data 
> files. He said that Quran can't be licensed as
> nobody is holding it's 
> copyright. And a license can't be published if there
> is no copyright. 
> Even if the data files are translation of the
> original text, since a 
> translation can be considered as a derivative work
> of the original text.
> 
> If there's no license we can't put restrictions in
> data files. One of 
> his idea is to provide a "certified" data files. We
> can use GPG or 
> simply MD5 hash to make a data file certified. The
> GPG signature or MD5 
> then published in Quran section in Arabeyes website.
> If data files 
> installed in user's computer are not having same
> signature/hash then we 
> (Arabeyes) are not responsible for that copy.
> 
> and this is his addendum to LGPL and a disclaimer:
> <!-- START -->
> Arabeyes team's libquran ("LIBQURAN") is protected
> under the terms and 
> conditions of GNU Lesser General Public License
> ("LGPL") including its 
> own addendum and disclaimer set herein.
>    1 ADDENDUM
> ==========
> As a general rule, LIBQURAN is solely designed and
> designated to be 
> used with certified texts and audio files of Holy
> Quran ("Certified 
> Holy Quran") as provided by Arabeyes contributors.
> During its development process, Arabeyes team had
> found some reports 
> regarding the distribution of LIBQURAN with another
> altered version of 
> Holy Quran ("Altered Version") which were never
> released by Arabeyes 
> teams.
> TO prevent any similar occurence in the near future,
> Arabeyes team 
> maintains a repository containing the aforementioned
> Certified Holy 
> Quran in its server which can be downloaded in
> http://www.arabeyes.org/
> repository
> As we cannot evade the so-called human error factor
> in the process of 
> providing
> the Certified Holy Quran, several text and/or audio
> revisions of the 
> Certified Holy Quran may take place somewhere in the
> future, which 
> shall be notified in our repository page. Please
> always consult our 
> repository page for the latest version.
>   2 DISCLAIMER
> ============
> Arabeyes team hereby disclaim any responsibility and
> the usagebility of 
> any Altered Version and/or any uncertified Holy
> Quran with the 
> LIBQURAN. You are highly
> suggested to confirm the authenticity of your Holy
> Quran by visiting 
> http://www.arabeyes.org/asdfasdfsadf and complete
> the verifying process 
> as instructed.
> 
> <!-- END -->
> 
> Any comments/suggestions are welcome, and please Cc
> to Mr Sundoro as he 
> is not on the list. If nobody objects, I will put
> this addendum and 
> disclaimer on the source code and the website.
> 
> --
> Mohammad DAMT <mdamt at bisnisweb dot com>
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