The license called Creative Commons is increasingly popular as a way of publishing music, whether it is a free or paid download online or paid and commercially marketed physical edition. I've advocated the view that all liturgical texts be published under this license, as well as new works for use in liturgy. Here I would like to explain Creative Commons and why it is absolutely necessary.
Unlike conventional contracts with publishers, in which the composer or typesetter, signs away all rights, and can even find himself or herself having ask permission to perform his or her own works, and even pay for the right to reproduce them, under Creative Commons, the author retains the rights to the work. Also unlike conventional copyright arrangements, others are not prevented by force of law from doing the same with the work in question, provided that (under the attribution form of license) the authorship is noted.
Catholics are naturally suspicious of anything new, particularly as regards publishing so it is critical to note that Creative Commons is really not new. It is the same system of rights management that the Gospels were distributed under, and the chant was composed and written in the first millennium. It is the system under which the Liturgy of the Hours and the Mass were first published. It is the same system that Palestrina, Victoria, Josquin, and Di Lasso used in publishing their composition.
Much later, the same system was used by Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, and Brahms. All of them composed and published in age and place in which modern copyright as we understand it was unknown. For this reason, the influence of their original works could be spread far and wide. It was not caged behind some walls of exclusivity. Their work was a gift to the Church and the world. Everyone was free to distribute it, copy it, perform it, and borrow from themes for later composition.
Why the new name for an old system? The answer is that it is made necessary by strange developments in the modern copyright system. Copyright as we understand only became internationally enforceable in 1886. Before that, the first copyright system was born in England in 1709 following religious turmoil in which the sovereign power of the monarch was used to control what could and could not be published. On the Continent, copyright generally did not take hold until the 19th century, with the German territories as the freest nations.
In 1976, the U.S adopted a new law that both automatically puts a copyright on all publications, even without registration or notice, and enforces against the right to reproduce, create derivative work. to sell or rent copies, to perform, and the right even to display. The act was amended in 1995 to prevent even the right to perform a recording on digital audio. As for terms, copyright now cover the lifetime of the author plus seventy years. You do the math. It's shocking.
What this means for composers is astounding. If they sign a contract with a publisher, they can kiss their rights goodbye. They will be 70 years in the grave before the composition sees the light of day outside some exclusive agreement. Nor is there an easy workaround here. The reason Creative Commons is necessary is that this legislation is so restrictive that it takes a positive act of assertion to get around the problems that the nation-state has imposed. You can say "this is not copyright protected" but that raises a risk that someone else could take your work, copyright it, and prevent you from using it. This is why using the current system in order to restore the status quo ante is necessary in the first place. Hence, the innovation of Creative Commons as development by IP expert Lawrence Lessig. It uses the current system and finds the workaround.
If works are not published under Creative Commons, their dissemination is severely limited. The conventional copyright system establishes produces monopolies that permit firms such as GIA to charge royalties even on the Psalms, and punish anyone with fines and even jail for singing, printing, or displaying the Psalms.
It is a deeply tragic thing that the Grail Psalter, prepared by the monks of Conception Abbey, was sold under conventional copyright terms to GIA with a secret agreement, the contents of which are not being disclosed by anyone party to the agreement. What this means is that GIA will be in a position to take an arbitrary amount of money by force from Catholics in the pews just for the right to sing the Psalms. It is not at all clear that Conception understood what it was doing when it entered into this agreement, but it should go without saying that the Psalms are something that should be the common property of all Catholics. The way to achieve this is through Creative Common licensing. It is fully within the power of GIA to right now publish under this licensing system.
Now, let us clear up a main myth about copyright. It does not exist to protect the integrity of the text. The King James Bible is in the public domain and there is not threat to its integrity. The same is true of Douay-Rheims, the Book of Common Prayer, as well as nearly every other translation or liturgical text published before the 20th century. Integrity of texts is protected the old-fashioned way, by the private policing of communities of interest. The law does not do this. All the law does is prohibit anyone but the rights holder from copying or performing the work without permission and pay; that is to say, it establishes a form of monopoly that is a compete anachronism in the digital age.
The effect of copyright on liturgical materials often produces the opposite of protecting the integrity of texts. Composers and publishers of liturgical materials have gone so far as to eschew protected texts so they that will not have to pay royalties. A case in point in the Sanctus often used in parishes: "God of power, God of might." That is not an approved text, but the composer and publisher in so using it did not owe any royalties to ICEL for having used its approved text, "God of power and might."
Now, I've seen people attempt to justify copyright based on Catechism of the Catholic Church, such as 2405: "Goods of production - material or immaterial - such as land, factories, practical or artistic skills, oblige their possessors to employ them in ways that will benefit the greatest number." That strikes me as a passage that makes the case for Creative Commons, which does indeed benefit the greatest number. It says nothing about copyright. Then I've seen 2406 cited in defense of conventional copyright: "Political authority has the right and duty to regulate the legitimate exercise of the right to ownership for the sake of the common good." I don't how that applies either; in fact, it makes the opposite point.
As I've written many times, the right to property that is scarce by its nature (my cell phone, my house, my tie, my physical book) is also exclusively owned by nature, and cannot also be common property. But the material governed by "intellectual property" has a different nature. It is infinitely reproducible. It can be owned by the first creator/author/composer and this ownership can extend to the whole of humanity. The digital age has brought this point home to us in a huge way. Ideas have that feature of the Divine, the capacity for infinite duplication.
In this sense, what is called "intellectual property" is a complete artifice of legislation, one that the Church should have nothing to do with if only because it depends on a mix of Church and State that violates Dignitatis Humane: "This Vatican Council declares that the human person has a right to religious freedom. This freedom means that all men are to be immune from coercion on the part of individuals or of social groups and of any human power, in such wise that no one is to be forced to act in a manner contrary to his own beliefs, whether privately or publicly, whether alone or in association with others, within due limits.... it is necessary that religious freedom be everywhere provided with an effective constitutional guarantee and that respect be shown for the high duty and right of man freely to lead his religious life in society."
There might be other alternatives to Creative Commons. There is nothing magic about those terms. The same can be achieved by printing the words: "The right holder to this manuscript retains those rights and agrees to share them under any conditions with anyone and under any circumstances with no royalties owed, provided the original source is noted." Creative Commons is merely a short hand for saying the same thing.
Thus ends my short course, Creative Commons 101 for Catholics. Institutions like GIA and ICEL might think they can ignore this subject but events are going to overwhelm them, this much is guaranteed. It is not too late to do the right thing before the core moral problems of the current system become overwhelmingly obvious to the world.
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Monday, June 08, 2009
The Church's Ritual Texts Must Be Freed
The growing trend in scholarly publishing, particularly in the natural sciences and health, is to eschew exclusive copyright protection in favor of a model that permits widespread and instantaneous publication. This tend has the main players in the industry very unhappy because their business model depends heavily on owning a monopoly on the texts and dispersing them based on a fee-based system.
The fees that the big players charge are far above any standard pricing formula simply because they are the sole owners of the text from a legal standpoint. This system is at the breaking point for two reasons: authors don't like having their work buried, and the community of researchers needs to have the broadest possible access to the texts. As a result, the younger and more innovative writers and researchers are publishing through different and more innovative forms.
The details of this remarkable upheaval in scholarly publishing can be read in publications such as the Chronicle of Higher Education and many other online resources. It is but one signal of the new consciousness that has dawn on people in publishing and writing in the digital age, when the reality of the infinite reproducibility of text and images has become more clearly in focus.
In times past, it was easy to become confused over what precisely constituted the good in question when it came to a text. Was it the physical book itself or the matter it in that was being purchased? There was no need to ask that question until it became possible for the physical properties of a book to be separated in distribution from its actual content, and until it became possible for nearly everyone to enter into the once-coveted position of being a publisher. Today the contents of any book or journal can be transmitted instantly and reproduced infinitely and it is also possible for any living person to become a publisher with a few clicks of the mouse.
You might ask what this has to do with the ritual texts of the Church. Well, the problem is that the exact same issues confront the Catholic Church today. Its ritual texts continue to be locked in a copyright prison, and I'm not just talking about the layout or the graphics or physical books themselves. The International Commission on English in the Liturgy (ICEL) is charged with preparing new English translations of the Missale Romanum and has every intention of locking the texts themselves behind a copyright wall so that ICEL alone will be in a position to determine who can use the texts and under what conditions, when their use will be free and when they will charge for them.
The same is true of the Revised Grail Psalter that has been approved for use in the Mass. The rights to the texts will be administered by a for-profit company, the GIA, that itself will be the primary publisher/distributor of the Psalms, thus setting up a conflict of interest and the potential for a terrible legal thicket for composers and publishers.
Now compare the movement in scholarly/scientific circles with the situation of Catholic ritual texts. The scientists say that it is preposterous to limit access because lives are at stake. In many ways, the progress of science depends upon community-base efforts. The digital age permits global cooperation in knowledge seeking, and these tools should be employed for the good of humanity, and certainly the interests of a handful of old-line publishers should not be allowed to stand in the way of progress.
If this is true for science, how much more it is true for the ritual texts of the Catholic Church? The English-speaking sector of the Catholic Church is global and the numbers of laypeople, monks and nuns, composers, musicians, priests, and would-be small publishers add up to the many millions. They are all affected when an official text of the Church is made the private and legally-enforced domain of a single institution. The development of the liturgy is artificial constrained by monopolistic privilege for a few. We might say that people are being denied their essential rights as Catholics to freely use the indulgenced texts for our faith for purposes of public prayer. The world has moved on but the ritual texts of the Church are stucked back in some primitive proprietary state as if it were still in the 1920s.
To be sure, there has been some progress. Two things I will mention in particular. ICEL has agreed to permit its texts to be used for free within the context of digital media. This way you can post the Mass text or the Divine Office to your blog and not face legal reprisal from an arm of the Catholic Church. If this doesn't seem like much progress to you, consider that last year at this time, ICEL was still enforcing its old standards, pretending as if it were doing something good for the world by hammering people for daring to say "Lord, Have Mercy" on their Facebook accounts. In this sense, this is progress indeed.
The same is true for the Revised Grail Psalms. GIA has announced that it will permit the Psalms to be posted at no charge provided no more than one full Psalm is available at a single download link, and all rights are overtly named etc. etc. This might also sound rather restrictive but for GIA, a private publisher whose copyrights are its very lifeblood, this is a big step, and we should not fail to recognize it as such.
But can you see what is happening here? The exclusive arrangements are being liberalized provided that the material is given away for free, but the instant you step into the printed media for which money has to change hands in order for the good to be acquired, both ICEL and Grail are demanding some tribute be paid. This remains a serious problem. It says to composers that they are free to post but not free to attempt to sell their works without paying some unspecified royalty to GIA and ICEL. What that amount is in particular remains the sole judgment of the monopolist institution that possesses the state-enforced exclusive to the text.
What are the consequences of this restrictive policy in the digital age? People will continue to circulate compositions and books and publications in secret, fearing lawsuits and crackdown. Another tendency will be to eschew the use of the texts themselves. Here is an example. The monks of Our Lady of Spring Bank in Sparta, Wisconsin, have decided to post and publish the first large update to the Cistercian Psalter since 1948 – a massive job and one that absolutely requires open source texts. The Abbey obviously wants to avoid having to pay some private publisher for the right to print their own Psalter!
So instead of using the GIA's Revised Grail, it will go another path and use the Book of Common Prayer. Here is what a monk explains: "Why, you may ask, are Roman Catholic monks using an Anglican psalter? …[T]hose of you who have followed the discussion around the new Grail Psalter at The New Liturgical Movement and other sites know that there is an issue of copyright. The BCP psalms are in the public domain and can be downloaded, for free, from any number of sites."
So there you have it. The copyrighting and royalty-charging business for ritual texts is backfiring and will continue to do so. Far from protecting the integrity of those texts, it is causing people to turn to untaxed sources and eschew the official texts. This is wholly understandable. At the same time, it is rather heartbreaking for those who have worked so hard for so long—for example, the monks at Conception Abbey—on composing excellent texts only to have them drop down the black hole of intellectual property. That is exactly what is happening.
It is not too late for Grail, and it is certainly not to late for the forthcoming texts from ICEL. They need to be made open access. There is no other solution consistent with justice, sound economics, and, I would argue, even morality. No Church should lock its liturgy behind national laws that grant a special right to profit only to a few well established institutions. Dramatic change is needed, and soon.
If the scientists see a need for change, in the interest of serving humanity, surely the Church can see the need for change in the interest of serving the Owner of all things.
The fees that the big players charge are far above any standard pricing formula simply because they are the sole owners of the text from a legal standpoint. This system is at the breaking point for two reasons: authors don't like having their work buried, and the community of researchers needs to have the broadest possible access to the texts. As a result, the younger and more innovative writers and researchers are publishing through different and more innovative forms.
The details of this remarkable upheaval in scholarly publishing can be read in publications such as the Chronicle of Higher Education and many other online resources. It is but one signal of the new consciousness that has dawn on people in publishing and writing in the digital age, when the reality of the infinite reproducibility of text and images has become more clearly in focus.
In times past, it was easy to become confused over what precisely constituted the good in question when it came to a text. Was it the physical book itself or the matter it in that was being purchased? There was no need to ask that question until it became possible for the physical properties of a book to be separated in distribution from its actual content, and until it became possible for nearly everyone to enter into the once-coveted position of being a publisher. Today the contents of any book or journal can be transmitted instantly and reproduced infinitely and it is also possible for any living person to become a publisher with a few clicks of the mouse.
You might ask what this has to do with the ritual texts of the Church. Well, the problem is that the exact same issues confront the Catholic Church today. Its ritual texts continue to be locked in a copyright prison, and I'm not just talking about the layout or the graphics or physical books themselves. The International Commission on English in the Liturgy (ICEL) is charged with preparing new English translations of the Missale Romanum and has every intention of locking the texts themselves behind a copyright wall so that ICEL alone will be in a position to determine who can use the texts and under what conditions, when their use will be free and when they will charge for them.
The same is true of the Revised Grail Psalter that has been approved for use in the Mass. The rights to the texts will be administered by a for-profit company, the GIA, that itself will be the primary publisher/distributor of the Psalms, thus setting up a conflict of interest and the potential for a terrible legal thicket for composers and publishers.
Now compare the movement in scholarly/scientific circles with the situation of Catholic ritual texts. The scientists say that it is preposterous to limit access because lives are at stake. In many ways, the progress of science depends upon community-base efforts. The digital age permits global cooperation in knowledge seeking, and these tools should be employed for the good of humanity, and certainly the interests of a handful of old-line publishers should not be allowed to stand in the way of progress.
If this is true for science, how much more it is true for the ritual texts of the Catholic Church? The English-speaking sector of the Catholic Church is global and the numbers of laypeople, monks and nuns, composers, musicians, priests, and would-be small publishers add up to the many millions. They are all affected when an official text of the Church is made the private and legally-enforced domain of a single institution. The development of the liturgy is artificial constrained by monopolistic privilege for a few. We might say that people are being denied their essential rights as Catholics to freely use the indulgenced texts for our faith for purposes of public prayer. The world has moved on but the ritual texts of the Church are stucked back in some primitive proprietary state as if it were still in the 1920s.
To be sure, there has been some progress. Two things I will mention in particular. ICEL has agreed to permit its texts to be used for free within the context of digital media. This way you can post the Mass text or the Divine Office to your blog and not face legal reprisal from an arm of the Catholic Church. If this doesn't seem like much progress to you, consider that last year at this time, ICEL was still enforcing its old standards, pretending as if it were doing something good for the world by hammering people for daring to say "Lord, Have Mercy" on their Facebook accounts. In this sense, this is progress indeed.
The same is true for the Revised Grail Psalms. GIA has announced that it will permit the Psalms to be posted at no charge provided no more than one full Psalm is available at a single download link, and all rights are overtly named etc. etc. This might also sound rather restrictive but for GIA, a private publisher whose copyrights are its very lifeblood, this is a big step, and we should not fail to recognize it as such.
But can you see what is happening here? The exclusive arrangements are being liberalized provided that the material is given away for free, but the instant you step into the printed media for which money has to change hands in order for the good to be acquired, both ICEL and Grail are demanding some tribute be paid. This remains a serious problem. It says to composers that they are free to post but not free to attempt to sell their works without paying some unspecified royalty to GIA and ICEL. What that amount is in particular remains the sole judgment of the monopolist institution that possesses the state-enforced exclusive to the text.
What are the consequences of this restrictive policy in the digital age? People will continue to circulate compositions and books and publications in secret, fearing lawsuits and crackdown. Another tendency will be to eschew the use of the texts themselves. Here is an example. The monks of Our Lady of Spring Bank in Sparta, Wisconsin, have decided to post and publish the first large update to the Cistercian Psalter since 1948 – a massive job and one that absolutely requires open source texts. The Abbey obviously wants to avoid having to pay some private publisher for the right to print their own Psalter!
So instead of using the GIA's Revised Grail, it will go another path and use the Book of Common Prayer. Here is what a monk explains: "Why, you may ask, are Roman Catholic monks using an Anglican psalter? …[T]hose of you who have followed the discussion around the new Grail Psalter at The New Liturgical Movement and other sites know that there is an issue of copyright. The BCP psalms are in the public domain and can be downloaded, for free, from any number of sites."
So there you have it. The copyrighting and royalty-charging business for ritual texts is backfiring and will continue to do so. Far from protecting the integrity of those texts, it is causing people to turn to untaxed sources and eschew the official texts. This is wholly understandable. At the same time, it is rather heartbreaking for those who have worked so hard for so long—for example, the monks at Conception Abbey—on composing excellent texts only to have them drop down the black hole of intellectual property. That is exactly what is happening.
It is not too late for Grail, and it is certainly not to late for the forthcoming texts from ICEL. They need to be made open access. There is no other solution consistent with justice, sound economics, and, I would argue, even morality. No Church should lock its liturgy behind national laws that grant a special right to profit only to a few well established institutions. Dramatic change is needed, and soon.
If the scientists see a need for change, in the interest of serving humanity, surely the Church can see the need for change in the interest of serving the Owner of all things.
Tuesday, May 05, 2009
Grail Psalter Policy Announced
Ok, GIA has announced its policy on the use of the Grail Psalter, and, in general, with provisos, it appears that free digital distribution is possible. Indeed, the policy seems crafted specifically to permit Chabanel Psalms to continue to exist. It is not Creative Commons, it is still proprietary, it is still claiming royalties on indulgenced ritual texts, but, still, congratulations are due. I'm happy. Very much so! The document quoted belows was created April 29, 2009. The link is not clean (it is includes spaces) but still it includes the following:
Internet Access: The Revised Grail Psalms are available at www.giamusic.com/RGP. For websites of a religious or devotional nature that wish to include parts of the Text in their content, a link to the RGP website must be attached. Each of the psalms is on a separate link; devotional sites may conveniently link to whichever, and as many, psalms as they choose. For any site that operates on a subscription basis or charges fees, appropriate royalties will apply.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Update on the Grail Psalter
Many readers have written for an update on the controversy over the Revised Grail Psalter, as detailed in these posts.
The issue concerns its policies for publishing the Psalms - concerning permissions, royalties, digital distribution, and other matters. It matters because the Revised Grail has been approved by the USCCB for (exclusive?) use in liturgy, a document for which GIA (a for-profit company that is fiercely proprietary in its copyright claims) is now administering all rights. So all Catholics have an interest in the terms of use; it is the people in the pews who are ultimately stuck with the bill. There is also the very obvious conflict of interest to consider as regards permissions for other publishers.
GIA first began to receive questions in November of 2008. Ironically, one of the questioning parties is the Conception Abbey itself - the source of the translation! To date, GIA has answered no questions. They have further asked Conception to forward all questions to the GIA. Questioners are in turn told that there is no public position on these matters.
There are no further updates.
It strikes me that these sorts of questions are the ones that the USCCB should have asked before approving the Revised Grail Psalter.
The issue concerns its policies for publishing the Psalms - concerning permissions, royalties, digital distribution, and other matters. It matters because the Revised Grail has been approved by the USCCB for (exclusive?) use in liturgy, a document for which GIA (a for-profit company that is fiercely proprietary in its copyright claims) is now administering all rights. So all Catholics have an interest in the terms of use; it is the people in the pews who are ultimately stuck with the bill. There is also the very obvious conflict of interest to consider as regards permissions for other publishers.
GIA first began to receive questions in November of 2008. Ironically, one of the questioning parties is the Conception Abbey itself - the source of the translation! To date, GIA has answered no questions. They have further asked Conception to forward all questions to the GIA. Questioners are in turn told that there is no public position on these matters.
There are no further updates.
It strikes me that these sorts of questions are the ones that the USCCB should have asked before approving the Revised Grail Psalter.
Monday, December 22, 2008
Jeffrey Tucker on: The legal issue that the USCCB needs to face
I won't go over the problems again with regard to the "intellectual monopoly" on the Revised Grail Psalter, one which originates in the Grail UK and is continued by Conception Abbey in the U.S.. If Rome approves this new translation for the English Psalter for Mass, the rights will be administered by HarperRow in the UK and the GIA in the US, two profit-making companies that have every corporate incentive to charge high prices for the use of the Psalms and to use coercion to prevent their publication and posting by other individuals and companies.
This type of institutional arrangement has led to stagnation and legal battles in the private sector, but matters are even more weighty when such tethered texts are mandated for liturgical use. The faith is supposed to be evangelistic and outward looking, not bound up with the Elizabethan invention of intellectual property law. If this translation is approved and mandated, many composers and bloggers will find themselves on the hotseat, treated as pirates and thieves who are stealing text, when in fact they are only seeking to use their talents to serve God and the Church.
The problem is becoming a serious matter in the private sector, and major rethinking is taking place. For anyone curious about the subject, I strongly recommend the book Against Intellectual Monopoly by Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine, published just this year. The book should be required reading for all Bishops involved with approving liturgical texts.
Sadly, as this 1994 transcript of the USCCB meeting on the Grail Psalms demonstrates, the issue isn't even on the radar screen. There is no evidence anywhere in this 31-page document that issues of IP are even known to those in the position to make decisions. There is much on the plate these days, and the issues regarding liturgical reform and language are never ending. But in the long run, having the liturgy tied up in these kinds of legal thickets will be devastating for the reform movement in a digital age. Let the education begin.
This type of institutional arrangement has led to stagnation and legal battles in the private sector, but matters are even more weighty when such tethered texts are mandated for liturgical use. The faith is supposed to be evangelistic and outward looking, not bound up with the Elizabethan invention of intellectual property law. If this translation is approved and mandated, many composers and bloggers will find themselves on the hotseat, treated as pirates and thieves who are stealing text, when in fact they are only seeking to use their talents to serve God and the Church.
The problem is becoming a serious matter in the private sector, and major rethinking is taking place. For anyone curious about the subject, I strongly recommend the book Against Intellectual Monopoly by Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine, published just this year. The book should be required reading for all Bishops involved with approving liturgical texts.
Sadly, as this 1994 transcript of the USCCB meeting on the Grail Psalms demonstrates, the issue isn't even on the radar screen. There is no evidence anywhere in this 31-page document that issues of IP are even known to those in the position to make decisions. There is much on the plate these days, and the issues regarding liturgical reform and language are never ending. But in the long run, having the liturgy tied up in these kinds of legal thickets will be devastating for the reform movement in a digital age. Let the education begin.
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Jeffrey Tucker on: Grail Psalms: A Path Forward
From the instant that the USCCB announced that the Revised Grail Psalter would become the new standard for Psalms in the ordinary form of the Mass, musicians in the UK privately issued warnings along the lines of “welcome to our Hell.”
The problem is not the translations of the Psalms, which are said to be an improvement over what is in use today in the U.S. The problem has to do with the law, copyright, permissions, expenses, enforcement—and the problems are so pervasive in the UK that one of the least spoken about aspects of liturgical life in the UK is the proliferation of samizdat Psalms.
What are samizdat Psalms? These are Psalm settings written by composers attached to parishes and cathedrals, by composers and directors who are required to use the Grail text but cannot bear to sing the musical settings published by the mainstream publishers. They write their own, but understandably fail to jump through the copyright hoops and pay the exorbitant fees associated with the texts themselves. So they are copied, handed out, kept under wraps, delivered from parish to parish in brown envelopes, and spoken about in hushed tones. It’s like a sector of an underground Church.
The same situation could happen in the U.S. when the Revised Grail becomes official here too. The Psalm that are currently made available online will be forced down. The settings made available by independent composers will have to go underground. The job of setting the Psalms to music will fall to the “Big Three” music publishers who provide the mainstream fare today. Incredibly, one of those publishers, a for-profit company, has actually been named as the literary agent to decide the terms and conditions under which people can publish the Psalms.
What this means is that access to the Psalms of David, the very core of Catholic hymnody and the basis of Christian music since the early Church, will be wholly subject to the decision making of a private company working in league with the civic authority that enforces copyright with fines and jail. It will be courts, judges, lawyers, and a profit-driven firm—not the Church and not Catholics—who will be in charge of the terms under which the Psalms that you will be required to sing can be distributed.
How did this incredible situation come to be? It begins in the early 1960s, when a group of lay women that made up a group called The Grail (of England) came forward with Psalms for Catholic use in the vernacular. It was a radical project at the time since it happened before the Mass was reformed. But it was a good entrepreneurial choice since the demand for them emerged in 1969 with the new Mass. They have been in use in the UK.
Now to the ownership question. The Grail used a copyright convention at the time to retain exclusive rights to them, and they handed them over to the publishing giant HarperCollins to manage the rights. In those days, not much thought was put into the problems of treating the Mass as the “intellectual property” of a private entity. Everyone was dependent on the mainstream publishers. There was no means of digital delivery. Even photocopies were cumbersome. But all that began to change in the years ahead. Today, an infinite number of versions of any text can be delivered without degrading the integrity of the original. For a Church devoted to bringing its faith to as many as possible and a Church with a special mission to the poor, digital delivery and on-demand printing is a dream.
But the dream could not be so long as copyright conventions were obeyed. On the contrary, access to The Grail took the same route as many short-sighted private lobbying arms in the private sector. They regarded any digital copying or on-demand publishing as a mortal threat to their financial well being. Instead of celebrating the spreading of the Gospel, they treated the proliferation of sacred texts as “piracy.” This will strike anyone as a grave perversion until you consider this background and the grave choice of the Grail to copyright their works and put a corporate giant in charge.
In the US, the revision that has been approved by the USCCB was done by Conception Abbey. Again, everyone says that the revision is excellent. But they too turned to literary agents rather than using their sense of the faith to determine how to treat issues of intellectual property. The literary agents cobbled together a deal with another corporate giant, GIA, to become the gatekeeper to the Psalms. Under the law, the original Grail is still held in England, but the changes to the text can be copyrighted separately as “new matter.”
Nothing stands in the way of the GIA charging exorbitant fees for the printing of these Psalms. Nothing stands in the way of a decision to restrict access to themselves and others with whom they make special deals. If the managers of the rights see fit to treat everyone else as a pirate, they are free to unleash lawyers, courts, and judges—the entirely coercive apparatus of the state in defense of their private ownership of the Psalms that are part of Mass.
Nor is it hyperbole to speak of jails and prisons: every few weeks, the news reports carries announcements of judges sentencing people to months and years in prison for doing what musicians will be forbidden from doing in our future.
Obviously, this is a disgusting problem, one that should have nothing to do with the faith, the Mass, and the Psalms. What can be done? The answer is obvious and urgent. The Conception Abbey should immediately pull out of their deal with GIA. It should cut all ties with the literary agent who negotiated this deal. It should put their Psalms into a Creative Commons license to prevent anyone from copyrighting their text. This is a way of giving it to the whole Church and the world.
Conception of course is only responsible for new matter. What about the Grail itself? It is also critically important that this institution immediately end all connection with HarperCollins. It too should remove all its copyright claims to the text. It can put them into public domain as a free gift to the Church and the world. Only fear and greed stand in the way of this proper choice.
I know that this proposal will upset many plans. There is a lot of money at stake, and I would venture a reasonable guess that lots of money has been passed around to make the USCCB-GIA-Conception-Grail-Harper deal come together. They expect huge revenue in the years ahead, all of which comes out of the pockets of worshipping Catholics. Even so, there is a never a bad time to do what is right. Morality and justice should prevail. The Psalms must be set free for the whole Church.
The problem is not the translations of the Psalms, which are said to be an improvement over what is in use today in the U.S. The problem has to do with the law, copyright, permissions, expenses, enforcement—and the problems are so pervasive in the UK that one of the least spoken about aspects of liturgical life in the UK is the proliferation of samizdat Psalms.
What are samizdat Psalms? These are Psalm settings written by composers attached to parishes and cathedrals, by composers and directors who are required to use the Grail text but cannot bear to sing the musical settings published by the mainstream publishers. They write their own, but understandably fail to jump through the copyright hoops and pay the exorbitant fees associated with the texts themselves. So they are copied, handed out, kept under wraps, delivered from parish to parish in brown envelopes, and spoken about in hushed tones. It’s like a sector of an underground Church.
The same situation could happen in the U.S. when the Revised Grail becomes official here too. The Psalm that are currently made available online will be forced down. The settings made available by independent composers will have to go underground. The job of setting the Psalms to music will fall to the “Big Three” music publishers who provide the mainstream fare today. Incredibly, one of those publishers, a for-profit company, has actually been named as the literary agent to decide the terms and conditions under which people can publish the Psalms.
What this means is that access to the Psalms of David, the very core of Catholic hymnody and the basis of Christian music since the early Church, will be wholly subject to the decision making of a private company working in league with the civic authority that enforces copyright with fines and jail. It will be courts, judges, lawyers, and a profit-driven firm—not the Church and not Catholics—who will be in charge of the terms under which the Psalms that you will be required to sing can be distributed.
How did this incredible situation come to be? It begins in the early 1960s, when a group of lay women that made up a group called The Grail (of England) came forward with Psalms for Catholic use in the vernacular. It was a radical project at the time since it happened before the Mass was reformed. But it was a good entrepreneurial choice since the demand for them emerged in 1969 with the new Mass. They have been in use in the UK.
Now to the ownership question. The Grail used a copyright convention at the time to retain exclusive rights to them, and they handed them over to the publishing giant HarperCollins to manage the rights. In those days, not much thought was put into the problems of treating the Mass as the “intellectual property” of a private entity. Everyone was dependent on the mainstream publishers. There was no means of digital delivery. Even photocopies were cumbersome. But all that began to change in the years ahead. Today, an infinite number of versions of any text can be delivered without degrading the integrity of the original. For a Church devoted to bringing its faith to as many as possible and a Church with a special mission to the poor, digital delivery and on-demand printing is a dream.
But the dream could not be so long as copyright conventions were obeyed. On the contrary, access to The Grail took the same route as many short-sighted private lobbying arms in the private sector. They regarded any digital copying or on-demand publishing as a mortal threat to their financial well being. Instead of celebrating the spreading of the Gospel, they treated the proliferation of sacred texts as “piracy.” This will strike anyone as a grave perversion until you consider this background and the grave choice of the Grail to copyright their works and put a corporate giant in charge.
In the US, the revision that has been approved by the USCCB was done by Conception Abbey. Again, everyone says that the revision is excellent. But they too turned to literary agents rather than using their sense of the faith to determine how to treat issues of intellectual property. The literary agents cobbled together a deal with another corporate giant, GIA, to become the gatekeeper to the Psalms. Under the law, the original Grail is still held in England, but the changes to the text can be copyrighted separately as “new matter.”
Nothing stands in the way of the GIA charging exorbitant fees for the printing of these Psalms. Nothing stands in the way of a decision to restrict access to themselves and others with whom they make special deals. If the managers of the rights see fit to treat everyone else as a pirate, they are free to unleash lawyers, courts, and judges—the entirely coercive apparatus of the state in defense of their private ownership of the Psalms that are part of Mass.
Nor is it hyperbole to speak of jails and prisons: every few weeks, the news reports carries announcements of judges sentencing people to months and years in prison for doing what musicians will be forbidden from doing in our future.
Obviously, this is a disgusting problem, one that should have nothing to do with the faith, the Mass, and the Psalms. What can be done? The answer is obvious and urgent. The Conception Abbey should immediately pull out of their deal with GIA. It should cut all ties with the literary agent who negotiated this deal. It should put their Psalms into a Creative Commons license to prevent anyone from copyrighting their text. This is a way of giving it to the whole Church and the world.
Conception of course is only responsible for new matter. What about the Grail itself? It is also critically important that this institution immediately end all connection with HarperCollins. It too should remove all its copyright claims to the text. It can put them into public domain as a free gift to the Church and the world. Only fear and greed stand in the way of this proper choice.
I know that this proposal will upset many plans. There is a lot of money at stake, and I would venture a reasonable guess that lots of money has been passed around to make the USCCB-GIA-Conception-Grail-Harper deal come together. They expect huge revenue in the years ahead, all of which comes out of the pockets of worshipping Catholics. Even so, there is a never a bad time to do what is right. Morality and justice should prevail. The Psalms must be set free for the whole Church.
Monday, November 24, 2008
Jeffrey Tucker on: Core Questions about the Psalter
The decision by the US Catholic Bishops to approve the Revised Grail Psalter for text of Psalms at Mass pleased some and upset others. The main concern that led to the approval is the quality of the translations. They are said to be better but no published version yet exists.
As important as this is, another legal aspect of the chosen Psalms could end up being more significant. These Psalms are currency tied up in a publishing cartel that involves major profit-making companies who will be printing these for Catholic parishes at a major profit while prohibiting anyone else from quoting them or printing them. In the course of approving these Psalms, the Bishops have approved this publishing cartel arrangement as well, one that that could cost average Catholics many millions of dollars over time, and also entrench poor quality music in our parish.
The government grant of copyright protection belongs to The Grail in the UK, while the Conception Abbey in the US owns the copyright to whatever changes they made to prepare this for the new release. The most significant part here is that GIA Publications has been named as the worldwide agent for administering permissions.
The GIA is a for-profit music publisher that makes its revenue through music sales to US parishes, and which bears a great deal of responsibility for the sad state of music in the Catholic Church today. It would be naïve to believe that GIA will not favor itself in its administrative policies over the Psalms.
GIA, Conception, and The Grail, have been unwilling to give anything beyond perfunctory, legally-driven replies to inquiries on the exact nature of the arrangement, the financial exchanges that may have taken place, and the eventual policies on permissions and printing of the Psalms.
Normally these types of arrangements are the business of private enterprise. Consumers are free to buy or not to buy. But with the USCCB having approved these Psalms, it becomes the business of every Catholic in the United States and beyond to know more about what these arrangements are. Otherwise there could be dire consequences for non-GIA publishers, for independent composers, for every parish that is trying to save its resources by downloading liturgical materials, and also for the quality of music in our parishes.
The bottom line is that it amounts to a conflict of interest for the most powerful, for-profit Catholic publisher to be given a legal monopoly of ownership rights over the text of the Mass that belongs to all Catholics, and permitting that private company to charge fees for access to what has been the very foundation of Christian liturgical prayer since the Apostolic Age.
Two myths need to be exploded because they keep coming up. Some people think that the purpose of copyright is to protect the integrity of the texts. In fact, copyright does nothing to protect the integrity of the text. The people who use the text themselves have the strongest interest in maintaining its integrity. Millions of liturgical manuscripts are out of copyright protection and this has not compromised them. In fact, the reverse is true. Material printed before the Second Vatican Council is largely unprotected, including the 1962 Mass itself, and it has not been corrupted. For that matter, leaving a text to the public domain helps assures its integrity because it creates a thriving market for accuracy.
Second, some people think that the purpose of copyright is to make sure that people who use the text acknowledge its source. This is also nonsense. Source acknowledgeable can be guaranteed through source private-sector devices as the Creation Commons Attribution license, such as that invoked by the freely downloadable Psalms at ChabanelPsalms.org. No coercion is involved in this arrangement. No government monopolies are granted. And there is no problem.
Let us be clear that the sole purpose of putting a liturgical text under copyright protection with a private, for-profit company is rent extraction from those who use them. It is to get money, and exclude non-payers from the list of approved producers. Its purpose, its sole purpose, is to get you to pay that monopoly rights holder, which in this case is GIA, Conception, and The Grail.
Another point might be argued, that Conception and The Grail are entitled to earn money from its creations. If so, it is possible to sell the product of that work to an institution such as the US Bishops, with a one-time payment. It is not necessary that religious institution received a 100-year stream of income collected from the pockets of average Catholics. In any case, whatever happened to the idea of a monastery serving the Church?
The Bishops, GIA, Conception, and The Grail need to be required to be completely open and accurate and honest in answering the following questions:
1. What precisely are the legal terms under which GIA plans to give permission to people to print these Psalms? In the past, even some lowly bloggers have been beat up by The Grail for daring to quote Psalms without permission on their private blogs. They have charged up to 10% of proceeds for publishers. GIA will naturally have the incentive to charge high prices to keep others out of the market.
2. They have pledged “equitable and efficient” distribution policies but the only terms under which this could occur is to put the Psalm into Creative Commons so that they can be used for free. Will they consider this?
,
3. What precisely were the financial arrangements made between The Grail, Conception, and GIA to being about this cartel? What kind of revenue do they expect to earn over the coming years?
4. Was any money involved in the decision of the USCCB to embrace this translation of the Psalms? GIA is in a position to pay a high price to have its Psalms proclaimed as appropriate to the liturgy. Did they happen to offer the USCCB a donation to see this result come about? A clear, clear statement of “no” is the only morally satisfactory answer.
5. In what way does the arrangement as currently constitute avoid the sin of simony, which the Catholic Encyclopedia defines as: “a deliberate intention of buying or selling for a temporal price such things as are spiritual of annexed unto spirituals.” This, of course, needs to be qualified: there is nothing wrong with allocating scarce goods such as books and materials. But the translations themselves are not scarce goods. To charge for the use of the text itself would be an injustice. It is bad enough that ICEL maintains a copyright but they have at least granted free online rights; moreoever, ICEL is not a for-profit capitalist company. GIA is a different animal entirely.
Catholics in this country are financially strapped enough as it is, trying to keep their buildings in good repair and their schools running. They don’t need to be charged money for access to their own Mass texts.
All Catholics have a strong interest in getting answers to these questions now.
As important as this is, another legal aspect of the chosen Psalms could end up being more significant. These Psalms are currency tied up in a publishing cartel that involves major profit-making companies who will be printing these for Catholic parishes at a major profit while prohibiting anyone else from quoting them or printing them. In the course of approving these Psalms, the Bishops have approved this publishing cartel arrangement as well, one that that could cost average Catholics many millions of dollars over time, and also entrench poor quality music in our parish.
The government grant of copyright protection belongs to The Grail in the UK, while the Conception Abbey in the US owns the copyright to whatever changes they made to prepare this for the new release. The most significant part here is that GIA Publications has been named as the worldwide agent for administering permissions.
The GIA is a for-profit music publisher that makes its revenue through music sales to US parishes, and which bears a great deal of responsibility for the sad state of music in the Catholic Church today. It would be naïve to believe that GIA will not favor itself in its administrative policies over the Psalms.
GIA, Conception, and The Grail, have been unwilling to give anything beyond perfunctory, legally-driven replies to inquiries on the exact nature of the arrangement, the financial exchanges that may have taken place, and the eventual policies on permissions and printing of the Psalms.
Normally these types of arrangements are the business of private enterprise. Consumers are free to buy or not to buy. But with the USCCB having approved these Psalms, it becomes the business of every Catholic in the United States and beyond to know more about what these arrangements are. Otherwise there could be dire consequences for non-GIA publishers, for independent composers, for every parish that is trying to save its resources by downloading liturgical materials, and also for the quality of music in our parishes.
The bottom line is that it amounts to a conflict of interest for the most powerful, for-profit Catholic publisher to be given a legal monopoly of ownership rights over the text of the Mass that belongs to all Catholics, and permitting that private company to charge fees for access to what has been the very foundation of Christian liturgical prayer since the Apostolic Age.
Two myths need to be exploded because they keep coming up. Some people think that the purpose of copyright is to protect the integrity of the texts. In fact, copyright does nothing to protect the integrity of the text. The people who use the text themselves have the strongest interest in maintaining its integrity. Millions of liturgical manuscripts are out of copyright protection and this has not compromised them. In fact, the reverse is true. Material printed before the Second Vatican Council is largely unprotected, including the 1962 Mass itself, and it has not been corrupted. For that matter, leaving a text to the public domain helps assures its integrity because it creates a thriving market for accuracy.
Second, some people think that the purpose of copyright is to make sure that people who use the text acknowledge its source. This is also nonsense. Source acknowledgeable can be guaranteed through source private-sector devices as the Creation Commons Attribution license, such as that invoked by the freely downloadable Psalms at ChabanelPsalms.org. No coercion is involved in this arrangement. No government monopolies are granted. And there is no problem.
Let us be clear that the sole purpose of putting a liturgical text under copyright protection with a private, for-profit company is rent extraction from those who use them. It is to get money, and exclude non-payers from the list of approved producers. Its purpose, its sole purpose, is to get you to pay that monopoly rights holder, which in this case is GIA, Conception, and The Grail.
Another point might be argued, that Conception and The Grail are entitled to earn money from its creations. If so, it is possible to sell the product of that work to an institution such as the US Bishops, with a one-time payment. It is not necessary that religious institution received a 100-year stream of income collected from the pockets of average Catholics. In any case, whatever happened to the idea of a monastery serving the Church?
The Bishops, GIA, Conception, and The Grail need to be required to be completely open and accurate and honest in answering the following questions:
1. What precisely are the legal terms under which GIA plans to give permission to people to print these Psalms? In the past, even some lowly bloggers have been beat up by The Grail for daring to quote Psalms without permission on their private blogs. They have charged up to 10% of proceeds for publishers. GIA will naturally have the incentive to charge high prices to keep others out of the market.
2. They have pledged “equitable and efficient” distribution policies but the only terms under which this could occur is to put the Psalm into Creative Commons so that they can be used for free. Will they consider this?
,
3. What precisely were the financial arrangements made between The Grail, Conception, and GIA to being about this cartel? What kind of revenue do they expect to earn over the coming years?
4. Was any money involved in the decision of the USCCB to embrace this translation of the Psalms? GIA is in a position to pay a high price to have its Psalms proclaimed as appropriate to the liturgy. Did they happen to offer the USCCB a donation to see this result come about? A clear, clear statement of “no” is the only morally satisfactory answer.
5. In what way does the arrangement as currently constitute avoid the sin of simony, which the Catholic Encyclopedia defines as: “a deliberate intention of buying or selling for a temporal price such things as are spiritual of annexed unto spirituals.” This, of course, needs to be qualified: there is nothing wrong with allocating scarce goods such as books and materials. But the translations themselves are not scarce goods. To charge for the use of the text itself would be an injustice. It is bad enough that ICEL maintains a copyright but they have at least granted free online rights; moreoever, ICEL is not a for-profit capitalist company. GIA is a different animal entirely.
Catholics in this country are financially strapped enough as it is, trying to keep their buildings in good repair and their schools running. They don’t need to be charged money for access to their own Mass texts.
All Catholics have a strong interest in getting answers to these questions now.
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Jeffrey Tucker on: GIA, Revised Grail Psalter, and Open Access
The GIA has answered my query posted here. Rather than review the details, I'll just reprint the correspondence. In sum, it is good news that the policies on text access have not been finalized. It is not good news, however, that GIA is citing the postconciliar precedent of closed texts without mentioning the change in ICEL policy that now permits the Mass texts to be posted online without legal penalty.
Here is my answer:
Dear Mr. Tucker,
Thank you for your inquiries about policies governing licensing and the use of the Revised Grail Psalter. Firstly, it should be made clear that GIA does not set policy in this regard, but functions as the literary agent for the joint copyright holders who retain all rights.
I am happy to report that the copyright holders are committed to making this text available on terms consistent with the licensing of liturgical texts ever since the introduction of the vernacular to the liturgy. Specific details of the licensing policies, however, are still being refined.
The text, of course, will be released in accordance with the requirements of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. In the meantime, we await the local imprimatur and the Vatican recognitio, the latter of which could theoretically call for further revisions.
Sincerely,
Michael Boschert
Permissions Editor
GIA Publications, Inc.
7404 S. Mason Ave.
Chicago, IL 60638
1-800-GIA-1358, ext. 62
Here is my answer:
Yes, I understand how publishers and agents work with copyright holders. There can be contracts involved that can restrict access to texts that are closed for decades. Under these conditions, anyone who blogs a Psalm could face legal penalties. Clearly this will not do.
The best news of your note is that the licensing policies are still not finalized. I do hope that you will insist on permitting completely open access to all these texts, lest artistic development be impeded and the rights of Catholics to their own liturgical texts be unjustly restricted.
In this regard, "the licensing of liturgical texts ever since the introduction of the vernacular to the liturgy" does not set a precedent that is suitable in the digital age. ICEL has been clear on its new policy: its texts "may be reproduced in a non-commercial site ("Site") on the global computer network commonly known as the internet without obtaining written or oral permission."
At minimum, this should also be the policy with regard to the Revised Grail Psalter. It is also a serious problem that publishers may not use the ICEL texts today without paying royalties (this is in contrast to the Book of Common Prayer, which is wholly public domain). Permitting open access to the Grail will also mean that any publisher--not just the GIA and not just those who are heavily capitalized--can use the Psalm texts to produce and sell music, which will allow maximum artistic freedom.
When will you have final word on your policy? For those interested in influencing the outcome, where can we write to express the need for openness? After all, surely those of us in the pews who are most strongly affected by these policies--and ultimately end up paying the price for restrictions--should have some voice in how matters turn out.
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Jeffrey Tucker on: A Serious Issue on the Revised Grail Psalter
Whatever the merits of this translation, which has apparently not been made public, there is a problem with what to do about the Psalms that are already composed for use at Mass. Better translations are always helpful, but we really don't need yet another mandatory upheaval. This is cause for concern, but nothing compared with the issue I now must raise.
I had vaguely recalled some horrible copyright issue associated with the Grail, such that websites that posted the text were harassed and forced to remove them, but I could never get a precise fix what this situation was, and with the swirl of translations and revisions coming out year after year, it has been a bit of a blur.
It was in the combox of this site that someone directed me here, to find the following statement which clarifies and crystalizes the emerging problem:
The copyright on the new psalter is held jointly by the Conception Abbey and The Grail. GIA Publications, Inc., is proud to serve as the worldwide agent and pledges to administer the rights in an efficient and impartial manner. The first publication of the new text will occur in the form of a book containing the complete text and will be available as soon as the formal imprimatur is received.
Think of what this means. A private, commercial publisher--whose budget and financial dealings is entirely hidden from public view because it is said to be a religious nonprofit--has struck a deal with another huge institution that has the power to mandate the text that all Catholics in the United States use at Mass. This private publisher will control the rights to use the text, charging whatever price they deem suitable and preventing independent composers from setting the Psalms for Mass.
I wrote the GIA as follows:
My question concerns your policies for the newly chosen Revised Grail Psalter. Many composers are setting the Psalms to music and posting the results online for distribution at no charge. As the agent for the copyright holder, you have publicly promised "efficient and impartial" rights administration. Does this include the rights of composers to set the Psalms and post them for free download? Certainly that would be efficient and impartial. Please clarify your precise policy.
and received the following answer:
Thank you for your email. I have forwarded it to our Permissions department, who will review it and contact you with their response.
Thank you once again,
Eric Downs
GIA Publications, Inc.
phone: 800-442-1358 ext. 27
fax: 708-496-3828
custserv@giamusic.com
That was Friday. I haven't heard back. I will of course post the answer as soon as I get it. In any case, it is not too early to raise alarm bells about what this new-found power of GIA could portend.
1. The USCCB has chosen a text controlled by one private publisher, at the expense of every other Catholic publisher (one can surmise what OCP, LitPress, and others think about this decision). This company is already bragging that it will use its status to be first to market with the officially published book.
2. All money to pay the royalty fees will be paid by Catholic parishes and other publishers, which raises barriers to entry into the market and gives a monopolistic privilege to GIA over everyone else. The money paid for these royalties comes directly out of the pockets of faithful Catholics in the pews, who will be charged money just for the privilege of singing the Psalms. That alone is enough of an outrage to inspire protest. But there is more:
3. There will be no public accounting for what GIA will do with the money. We will never know. Will it be thousands or millions?
4. This is a major threat to Catholic composers, who might be prevented from posting their Psalm settings online for paid or even free download, without jumping through whatever hoops the GIA wants to set up, and of course this institution will have every incentive to hold the hoops high if only to reinforce its own monopolistic position as rights administrator to the text. Anyone who thinks that the GIA won't favor its own composers over independent composers is woefully naive about the publishing business.
5. The existing Psalm settings coming from the likes of GIA are not varied enough to warrant holding a monopoly, which is why sites such as the Chabanel Psalms, which already garners vast web traffic, and not only because the Psalms there are free for the taking. It is also because they are dignified and fitting for liturgy - and consistently so. You won't bump into any Samba settings there or settings that sound like 1970s rock ballads, for example.
6. GIA will clearly favor having Catholics buy their Psalms rather than download them for free, so the question is what is GIA going to do about this? As far as I can tell, GIA is in the position of shutting down anyone who posts Psalms for download, as well as charging high enough fees to exclude smaller and less well-heeled publishers. Just who is going to police the GIA in this regard? Are we just supposed to trust them with this power? I don't think this is a good idea.
7. It is of interest to know precisely what kind of financial arrangements that the USCCB has made with GIA in order to bring this result about. Did the GIA pay the USCCB in some form or any form to bring this result about? If not, a flat denial would be a good way to start. If there was some sort of arrangement, Catholics have a right to know what it was. After all, the USCCB has no money that it didn't gain from the voluntary gifts of Catholics in the pews. Everyone has an interest in knowing more about this.
8. What would be the downside of having the USCCB purchase the whole rights to these Psalms (from the monastery, for example) and making them public domain, free for anyone to use? Of course people will say: but what about the money needed to compensate the translators? But consider that we are talking about a monastery here, and surely a one-time payment should cover whatever justice requires. In any case, from my read of the situation, the fiduciary beneficiary of this scheme is not going to be the monastery. It is going to be GIA, which had nothing at all to do with translating the Psalms.
9. It is an awful enough situation that ICEL demands the retention of copyright over the text of the Mass. ICEL has been at least gracious enough to say that people are free to post the texts online at no charge and to set the ordinary chants to music and post those for free download. ICEL is not a profit-making corporation with a massive commercial presence. GIA is a different animal entirely. It is astonishing that the USCCB would permit such a massive company to own and control the monopoly to the Psalms - the very foundation of all Christian song.
10. We must never forget that the very idea of copyright is an invention of positive law, enforced by the state at the point of a gun. The world came to know of such a thing first under the rule of Queen Elizabeth in England, who used the copyright power as a tool for enforcing religious adherence to the Church of England. It is a striking fact that today the Book of Common Prayer uses no copyright protection, for the simple reason that we live in a different age that respects of the rights of religious liberty and encourages wide access to service texts. Meanwhile, we see the Catholic Church making use of these state institution to variously include and exclude people from the field of religious publication and composition. This has done grave damage to the liturgy, since it has enshrined a kind of establishment that has not been accommodating through the years. It is long overdue for the Catholic Church to detach itself from the old forms for enforcement and embrace the new world of digital and rivalrous publication and composition, so that at least people with an interest in improving the liturgy can have a voice in the distribution and shape of the texts of Mass.
This of it: A private company using a legal monopoly to sell at a profit the Psalms we are mandated to sing and using the state to crack down on all who attempt to compete or give them away for free. The GIA and the USCCB are playing with fire here. The Reformation was prompted by injustices less egregious. All Catholics must stand up and insist that this must not be allowed to happen. If the Church is going to authorize the Revised Grail, access must be efficient and impartial in the only way it can be: the rights to the texts must be completely open access.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
JT on: One Question Only on the Revised Grail Psalter
CNS reports that "The U.S. bishops chose the Revised Grail Psalter produced by the monks of Conception Abbey in Missouri over the Revised New American Bible translation of the Book of Psalms for liturgical use in the United States."
I vaguely recall that as good as the translation is, the text is tied up in some sort of draconian copyright quagmire, such that no one cannot utter a phrase without shelling out the big bucks. Does anyone know? Much depends on this. If there is liberality, this is great news. If it is proprietary, it only reinforces the current penchant on the part of publishers to sell the Mass at a price via a coercive institution.
Can someone comment?
I vaguely recall that as good as the translation is, the text is tied up in some sort of draconian copyright quagmire, such that no one cannot utter a phrase without shelling out the big bucks. Does anyone know? Much depends on this. If there is liberality, this is great news. If it is proprietary, it only reinforces the current penchant on the part of publishers to sell the Mass at a price via a coercive institution.
Can someone comment?
