The Catholic Church is alone among major Christian denominations to place its core ritual texts under copyright and charge royalties for their use. The texts of Episcopal, Lutheran, and Orthodox Churches are in the public domain, and free for anyone to print under any conditions. This encourages publishers to disseminate the texts, composers to use them for setting music, and website builders and bloggers to freely quote them in any form.
If the mission of the church is to spread the Gospel and evangelize for the faith, what possible rationale could there be for charging for the right to publish the ritual? ...
PS: See our past posts on toll access for Catholic liturgical texts.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 2/02/2009 04:07:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
