Book of Common Prayer and KJV

[Tuberous Chairs]

The King James translation of the Bible (also known as the KJV, the Authorised Version or the AV), and the Book of Common Prayer, are under Royal Prerogative in the United Kingdom. This is not technically the same as copyright but works in much the same way. It means that, while they are public domain in almost all other countries, readers from the UK are not allowed to read them on LibriVox. What I wondered is, if we asked for permission to record them on Legamus and were granted it (as I believe would be likely), would it be OK for UK citizens to record them here? LibriVox recordings say that all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. A version with UK readers would not be in the public domain so we could not say that, but, on Legamus, we have the power to adjust the wording of the copyright statement to be suitable for the situation.

What do others think?

[SweetPea]

I'm confused. Are you saying that the King James Version of the Bible is not PD in Europe????

[Tuberous Chairs]

It's not PD in the United Kingdom but is PD in the rest of Europe.

[Hokuspokus]

Hm, good question.
It depends on what the royal authorities demand. If they give permission to record and publish it under a CC licence (like non commercial, no derivation), I think we could do it here. In general we allow other than CC0 only for solos but with these very special cases we could make an exception.
(No admin decision, only my personal opinion)

Would you like to contact who ever is responsible and tell us the result?