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Science

Dead Sea Scrolls Copyrighted? 29

Posted by michael from the truth-is-stranger-than... dept.
Dr Caleb writes: "We all know that no copyright has expired since the beginning of the 1900's, but what about 3000 B.C. ? 'It's like copyrighting scientific truth, like Einstein copyrighting 'e equals mc2,' Hausner said. 'These ancient texts are part of the scientific knowledge.' Apparently Elisha Qimron from Ben Gurion University puzzled together the bits and pieces of the scrolls, and has won copyright because he managed to infer the 40% that was missing."
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Dead Sea Scrolls Copyrighted? More

Dead Sea Scrolls Copyrighted?

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  • Please read the article before posting. (Score:3)

    by blameless ( 203912 ) on Friday September 01, 2000 @03:18AM (#812021)
    Qimron's copyright is only for the 40% he inferred. That's a no-brainer, isn't it?

    An excerpt from the article:

    Judge Yaakov Tirkel, writing for a unanimous three-judge panel, agreed that Qimron could not claim copyright on the scroll fragments, nor on those fragments that were pieced together by physical resemblance.

    However, the deduction of the 40 percent of the text that was missing emerged from Qimron's "creative depths," Tirkel said, and the scholar was therefore was entitled to the copyright.

    Therefore, Hausner's assertion that the scrolls are 'part of the scientific knowledge' is moot, because the scrolls are not covered under the copyright. Furthermore, his comparison with Einstein's not having copyrighted his theories does nothing to support his case. Einstein would have had just as much right to copyright his papers as any other author. Don't get me wrong, I don't think he should have, and I'm glad he didn't, but what reasonable person would argue that he didn't have the right to do so?

    Oh, while I'm ranting, what does 3000 B.C. have to do with anything?

    The Dead Sea Scrolls are believed to have been written around the time of Jesus, not 3000 years before his birth.

  • ludicrous (Score:5)

    by ChristTrekker ( 91442 ) on Friday September 01, 2000 @03:20AM (#812022)

    I think the title of this article is (somewhat) misleading. From reading the linked story it appears that the researcher only has copyright on certain deductions he made about the scrolls, and perhaps his translation. Well, duh! I don't have copyright on Homer's Iliad but if I write a scientific paper regarding the Iliad I have copyright on what I wrote. I don't see how this is any different.

    The knowledge contained on the Scrolls, or any other ancient text, should be considered in the public domain. Sure, the Israeli gov't may choose to restrict access to the physical scrolls, but I suppose that's their perogative. (Maybe they worry about the fragments being physically damaged.) However, if the only access the outside world is given is through this one man's research, which he has copyright over, I don't think that's right. What about peer review? What happens if he's biased, or just wrong? If what this story is saying (and I believe it is) is that this guy has copyrighted the only authorized translation, the only thing that other researchers can work from, then that's a problem.

    The scientist regrets the information being so open now. Aww, too bad. He can't keep it all to himself. Well, tough. I guess just as some businessmen are greedy for money, some scientists are greedy for knowledge and would like to deny anybody else a chance in order to aggrandize themselves. What happened to the idea of sharing information so that the common pool of knowledge could be increased by having more people work on the problem?

  • This seems a little odd but the way I thought of it is this. If I spend years upon years of hard study and research of an ancient language and translate it for everybody to read, then I should hold the copyright to my translation. It is my work after all, and if others wish to make their own translation of it, there is nothing to stop them. Simply simply copying and pasting my texts into a book and then selling it for profit is pirating my research. The scientists who are making all the fuss DID not even ask for permission to use the text. That would tic me off a little bit as well.

  • But Einstein's papers were copyrighted to him the moment he wrote them. Anything you create is automatically copyrighted to you.

    -thomas

    "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
  • You're right.

    I should have said "Furthermore, his comparison with Einstein's not having sued to protect the copyrights on his scientific papers does nothing to support his case. Einstein would have had just as much right to use the courts to protect his copyrights as any other author. "

  • To gain insight into this debate all you need to do is look to the bottom of your Slashdot page.

    All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-2000 OSDN.

    Now if the autor of the scrolls had so much insight why didn't he foresee to ad something like this to the bottom of each page?
  • Have you slashdotters forgot? Einstein worked for the belly of the beast, the patent office.

    I'm calling for the open source movement to boycott all of Einstein's theories, their practical applications, and any other theories or applications derived from his original work.

    I'm also starting an open source project called "Absolutly" that will attempt to do a clean room implementation of Relativity.
  • Your papers are not copyrighted to you at the moment you write them. The only right you have to those is to say that you had penned or typed them. What happens if you write down someone elses findings?

    I have heard that the easiest way to acutally have a legal copyright is to put the documents in an envelope and mail them to yourself. Go figure.

  • I think the important thing is to keep giving people incentive to work. Original Dead Sea Scrolls - obvious no copyright.

    Work inferring the difference? Sure. What to do if someone else comes to slightly different conclusion but uses his reasearch - I think that's the difference between copyright and patent - and he doesn't have a patent on his research, I'm sure. So I think this is great - incentive for his work, no barriers to future work...

    Now if he actually sued people who made different interpretations of some parts but agreed with him in others, I'd be pretty pissed at him.

    And his little dog too.

  • From the horse's mouth: The copyright in the work of authorship immediately becomes the property of the author who created the work. [loc.gov]

    The operative word there is created.

    Writing down someone else's findings is reproduction, not creation.

    If you mail yourself copyrighted material (music recording, words on paper, or whatever), you're proving when it was created, providing you don't open the envelope. The postmark shows the date you mailed it, and since you couldn't mail it before you created it, you must have created it before the date on the postmark. That way, if you have to go to court to defend your copyright, you have a document from the Federal Government that shows when you authored the work, presumably before somebody ripped you off.

    Sounds sketchy, but it's cheaper than a lawyer.
  • Although overjoyed that the case was over -- Eisenman's lawyer said an appeal was unlikely -- Qimron said he has regrets about the access others now have to the scrolls. He said it robbed scholars such as himself of the leisurely pace they once enjoyed. "Now there are a lot of people, and they work in haste to beat each other to publication," he said. "That's not proper."

    Although IANAResearcher or Doctorate student or anything, I can sympathize with mr. Qimron's (wow, he even has a Trekkie-ish name) point. These days, there's a lot of money invested in grants, patents, scholarships and the like, and therefore there's a "first to publish, first to get the goods" attitude in several scientific circles.

    Although I sincerely hope mr. Qimron is not doing this for the money, I can see why he would think that a copyright on his works could work towards doing research at a slower pace, and doing it "by the book" instead of cutting corners in order to be first, and not doing enough background research... no, wait, that's Slashdot submissions. Sorry.

    Nah, I'm just kidding, but you get my point. If there's something worse than "First Post!" comments in Slashdost, I think it would be "First Article!" submissions to more serious science publications.

    On the other hand, if it's all for the monetary gain, we could always start an Open Scrolls Movement. Anyone'd like to try and develop DeDSS?
  • 1) the four bibles I own all have copyright notices
    2) So does my trasnlation of Beowulf
    3) If I spent X years traslating something and then some pissant goes and quotes, makes money off of it, and doesn't give me a dime i'd be pissed to.
    4) There is a copy of the scrolls on Microfich @ USC.

  • Please take out your Bible and turn to the book of John, Chapter 3, Verse 16...




    The Bible is a registered trademark of Elisha Qimron, and cannot be redistributed without his express written consent.

  • Publishing in Academia (Score:3)

    by hengist ( 71116 ) on Friday September 01, 2000 @06:00PM (#812034)
    Alright, time to throw in my $.02 worth...

    Publishing in academia is a bit of a nasty area, to be honest. I'm a PhD candidate, and this is what I have observed about publishing in my field (mostly artificial neural networks, with a little bit of software engineering).

    In academia, it is very much "publish or perish". One of the first things other researchers will ask you when discussing your future is "how many publications do you have?". Full time academic staff have to maintain a certain level of publishing quality and quantity to retain their tenure, and research grants are also strongly influenced by the publishing record of the applicants.

    Unfortunately, this can lead to some abuses of the publishing system. I have heard of people being bullied into putting a supervisor's name onto a paper, even though the supervisor didn't contribute anything to the paper. Stories also circulate about reviewers that reject papers, then publish the same material as their own work. Then there are the papers that are simply fraudulent, making claims that cannot be substantiated or are simply bogus.

    From my own experience of publishing, I can say that copyright of a paper rests in the first instance with the authors. When the paper is published, copyright is usually transferred to the publishers (I recently sent off a copyright transfer form for a conference paper).

    In the case of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the copyright was only awarded for the 40% the Israeli researcher inferred, not the rest of the information in the scrolls. Furthermore, the American editors used a paper without the author's permission, including it into their own work without informing the author. In my opinion, this is almost as bad an abuse as the examples I cited above. I his position, I would be after their blood too.

  • Better turn off your computer, bud, 'cause Einstein's theories provided the basis of the research into electronics :)
  • If you were to do this you would want to send it through registered post with some kind of seal on the envelope. But then if your ideas are worth a damn then they're worth the cash it takes to get a form for a statutory declaration and have it signed by a justice of the peace. Better, do this and have a lawyer look after it, or have the document housed in a secure storage facility (there are plenty around) where all transactions are documented.

    Providing a modicum of protection for your IP doesn't have to be expensive. Standing to the challenge when someone violates your rights as creator can be, but then i think you'll agree you're a whole lot better off if you have the documentation to prove you're the owner.
  • > > Qimron said he has regrets about the access others now have to the scrolls. He said it robbed scholars such as himself of the leisurely pace they once enjoyed. "Now there are a lot of people, and they work in haste to beat each other to publication," he said. "That's not proper."

    Poor guy. They only sat on the scrolls for fifty fuckin years. A whole generation of Biblical and Judaica scholars wrote their dissertations, did their life's work, and retired, all without ever getting to see the only new primary source material for their field of study that's come around in the last, oh, 80 generations or so.

    > On the other hand, if it's all for the monetary gain, we could always start an Open Scrolls Movement. Anyone'd like to try and develop DeDSS?

    I think the only reason the scrolls finally did get published is because some geek took the published word index and reverse engineered it to come up with a very close approximation of the actual scrolls. Then everyone rushed to publish what they had been sitting on for 50 years, since the rug had been jerked out from under them and other people could start playing too.

    Maybe more like DeCSS than you realized with your joke.

    --
  • > Please take out your Bible® and turn to the book of John, Chapter 3, Verse 16...

    Is that the one that says -
    Go ye unto all the world and tell them that this message is brought to you by The Coca Cola Company.
    ?
    --
  • I'm also starting an open source project called "Absolutly" that will attempt to do a clean room implementation of Relativity.

    Unless you add the missing "e" to "Absolutly", a certain vodka company will end up owning you, anyway. I say, ditch relativity altogether; it's affecting my warp drive project badly.

  • Having used both the poor-man's copyright and the real copyright I can attest to the fact that it's really not that expensive, but it is irritating. Don't send your only copy, for sure. The idiots lost my first check for $20 and I had to send them another, which held up the process for quite awhile, but I finally got it. The total cost in money was about $30, which is cheaper than twenty minutes with a lawyer, and probably cheaper than a secure storage facility. And I don't have to make any monthly or yearly payments. The cost in irritation was minor.

    Of course, no publisher ever bit, but that's another story. Presumably, you can go to the Library of Congress and look up a title called The Worldwrights by yours truly and it will be there.

  • Einstein worked in the Swiss patent office. And that was one hundred years ago. And don't you wish he was working in the US patent office today? At the very least his critical thinking skills would be of use, even if his technical knowledge was out of date. The people who passed the one-click patent through couldn't reason their way out of a wet paper bag. . .
  • I have heard that the easiest way to acutally have a legal copyright is to put the documents in an envelope and mail them to yourself. Go figure.

    Actually I remember reading somewhere (and I wish I could remember where it was) that this doesn't really hold up in court. Too easy to fake. You could just send a non-sealed envelope through the mail and then seal a document in it later and then try and claim copyright over something that might not be yours. It's not that hard to copyright something anyway, and as someone else here pointed out, not that expensive.

  • I think it would be a good think to copyright Moses's work.

    Hate to point this out, but Moses never wrote anything in the Bible. Some anonymous scribe did (A.C., a long tradition).

  • Similarly the bible is public domain.

    The sources may be lost but u can do waht u want with your own copy.
  • I have heard that the easiest way to acutally have a legal copyright is to put the documents in an envelope and mail them to yourself. Go figure.

    Actually, you have to seal a copy in an envelope and send it by registered mail to yourself. Then don't open it. The date on the post-mark, plus the fact that it is unopened, proves that the contents were written on or before that date. This can then be used in court as evidence that you wrote it first.

    Show me a fossil of a half evolved eye

  • One guy puts out a paper, somebody else appropriates it and publishes it in another book without asking the original author. This is (up to this point) a pretty straight-forward example of copyright violation.

    The only twist is that the published paper was (at the time) the only available copy of the milleniums-old document. I rather doubt that the paper indicated which parts of the document were actually in the scrolls and which parts were interpolated.

    As an act of civil disobedience, I can say that the (illegal) publication could be viewed as a bold act -- They did, at least, force the release of the originals. Despite the boldness of their action, they still need to to accept the cost of the action.

    As for the Qimron's complaints about the 'cost' of forcing people to rush to publish, I think that the it gets firmly into the realm of the open-source debates ... The rights couple of well paid hacks to a monopoly on knowlege -- in the presumption that the annointed know better than the masses --- vs. the "thousands of eyes" premise that letting anybody and everybody see the original might allow for insights that the annointed would not have had, might not have wanted, or simply might not have cared about.

    In the religious world, knowing that such-and-such sentance was not in the original, but was -- simply made up by the interpolator can make a big difference to the level of authority that that piece of text will recieve.

  • "For God so loved Elisha Qimron that he gave him the Dead Sea Scrolls."

    --The Gospel According to Qimron, chapter 3 verse 16
  • What I gathered from the article is that the court is upholding the translation as copyrighted, not the original text.

    While this is an unfortunate turn, it's no different than what bible translators do today. If you open your New International Version, you'll see a copyright notice, and it's not the Holy Spirit's... :D

  • Since the scrolls are being deciphered, albeit very slowly, this is a copyright which probably will eventually expire or at least become meaningless. Several scholars have postulated over the contents of various scrolls which exist, a few details are available from but are mostly held privledged by the translations team. Since this is speculative or deductive work, I don't see why there is a problem with a copyright on it. When (if) the real version becomes available no one will care about this copyrighted version. It will be fully supplanted by the real text, or perhaps different versions of the same material. If there never is another version of this material released then I would feel that strictly enforcing the copyright would be less than helpful to research. Presumably, appropriate citation form or longer acknowledgement, would be adequate copyright enforcement.

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