The Word of God as Private Property

You would think that the Word of God, by definition, is something that belongs to all of humankind — or at least that the proponents of His Word would want to give it to all of God’s children, as a gift, so that they could follow the right path in life.

 Wrong.

In my informal survey of the field, I now count three distinct instances in which the guardians of one or another religion have claimed copyright protection for their particular scriptures. The latest religion to claim private ownership in God’s Word is the Catholic Church. The Guardian (London) reports (January 23, 2006): “A row has broken out in Rome about whether the speeches and writings of Pope Benedict should be freely available to everyone or subject to copyright.” The whole brouhaha arose when a Milan publishing house was forced to pay £10,000 — a 15 percent royalty — to reprint 30 lines from the Pope Benedict’s first speech.

It seems that the Vatican was regarding the Pope’s utterances as under-leveraged assets. It had transferred copyrights on papal texts to its own publishing house, Libreria Editrice Vaticana, which then proceeded to require anyone who uses papal texts to obtain permission and pay fees to reproduce any papal texts of the past 50 years.

The Guardian quotes Vittorio Messori, who co-authored two books with two popes: “I am perplexed. The Church is an organization that exists to spread the word of God and levying a duty on those words, putting a smell of money on it, seems to me to be a very negative thing.” Interestingly, even the Union of Catholic Booksellers and Publishers has complained about the Vatican’s copyright policy.

To me, the most fascinating question posed here is whether works created by non-humans — i.e., God — can be entitled to copyright protection. After all, if copyright is a property right intended to provide an incentive to produce creative works, is God — and his earthy representatives — eligible to protect His Word as private property? Isn’t IP law either gratuitous or, in its way, blasphemous, when applied to the work of transcendent beings?

Amazingly, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals had occasion to address this issue in a 1997 case, Urantia Foundation v. Maaherra (114 F.3d 955). The Urantia Foundation claimed a copyright in the Urantia Book, a massive text that its adherents claim was authored by “non-human spiritual beings” channeled by a “conduit” and refined by a special commission of people. As the court described it, “This is a copyright dispute between parties who believe the copyrighted work, the Urantia Book, was authored by celestial beings and transcribed, compiled and collected by mere mortals.”

The Foundation copyrighted the book in 1956, and renewed it in 1983. The trouble began in 1990, when the Urantia Foundation learned that Kristen Maaherra, an Arizona resident, was distributing the book and her own “study aid” on computer disks, for free.

Since Maaherra did not dispute that she was copying the book, the only question before the court was whether the Foundation owned a valid copyright. Or more to the point, can a book written by non-humans be protected under copyright law? Was the 1983 copyright renewal of the Urantia Book invalid because the author was a celestial being?

In the end, the Ninth Circuit conceded that “copyright laws, of course, do not expressly require ‘human’ authorship….” But then it went on to uphold the Foundation’s copyright and its infringement complaint.

Judge Schroeder explained that even Divine Works are inflected with some element of human creativity, which therefore makes them eligible for copyright protection: “We agree with Maaherra….that it is not creations of divine beings that the copyright laws were intended to protect, and that in this case some element of human creativity must have occurred in order for the Book to be copyrightable….At the very least, for a worldly entity to be guilty of infringing a copyright, that entity must have copied something created by another worldly entity.” That standard was apparently met in this case.

In reviewing the Urantia case, one wag later wrote: “Tell me if I’m reading too much into it, but isn’t that a holding that God has no standing on copyright issues? Isn’t the Ninth Circuit hanging out a sign on the area of intellectual property that says, ‘Divine beings need not apply’?”

There is a third case, from a few years ago, in which the Church of Scientology tried to prevent Google from linking to the websites of critics who were using copyrighted Scientology works and trademarks (e.g, the word “Dianetics”) without authorization. The explicit point was to suppress dissent and “prevent anyone from practicing in a non-orthodox manner or engaging in some distorted use of Mr. Hubbard’s writings.” But since L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, did not make divine claims for himself, or at least not in this case, this example may differ from the Vatican and Urantia copyrights.

While these episodes can be played for cheap ridicule, but I think they point to a larger, more troubling point — that even many sincere believers in God’s Word are now trying to lock it up as private property. The essence of private property is the right to exclude — yet God’s Word (at least as I have always understood it) is about absolute love and inclusion. I guess that’s precisely what is being contested.