Two of the services I offer are SermonCasting and WordPress blog hosting. If you know of a church that might be interested in having their sermons converted from audiotape to an MP3 podcast each week, let them know about SermonCasting.com. If you refer someone who signs up, you can have a free, cutting-edge, WordPress-powered blog for as long as the church uses the service.

Drop me a line if you’ve referred a church, and if they sign up, I’ll let you know. I offer top-notch blog hosting, and I’ll even throw in a domain if you don’t have one.

If you don’t know any churches that are interested in SermonCasting, but you’d like to start a blog on your own domain, you can sign up for $4 a month at WebbleYou.com and I’ll get you set up in no time. There’s also a WebbleYou referral program that can earn you money or free hosting from a simple text link to WebbleYou.

Monkey Love Rubber Stamps, uploaded by justinbaeder.

This is an actual store in the Lower Queen Anne section of Seattle. They really do sell rubber stamps, and little else besides stationery. Apparently it has nothing to do with monkey love.

On the heels of this post…

David says:

I think copyright issues are going to be the major problem - you may be able to create the open source tools [for using scripture], but you also need the content to make the tools worthwile.

From previous projects in the past, Zondervan has been a major pain in terms of licensing the NIV for electronic use. It’s also probably the reason that they are the most profitable division of Harper Collins.

Sadly this is the state of the scriptures’ copyrights. What I don’t get is why the publishers think this is a good strategy. I’m not about to stop buying bibles, at least not as far as I know. Media is changing, and the publishers need to get on board. I would even be willing to pay a small fee for unlimited use of the NRSV and NIV on my site. It’s just criminal to, as heptide put it, hold the word of God under copyright, at least to the detriment of its use. Copyright is fine, but don’t be a jerk about it, and certainly don’t restrict the missio dei for the sake of corporate rights.

I’m guessing that online bible copyright infringement falls under the DMCA. When a DMCA violation is detected by the copyright holder, they can issue a takedown notice (which BoingBoing refers to as a “nastygram,” which is a little perjorative, but probably often accurate). When you receive one of these, you have a certain (short) amount of time to remove the infringing material from your site.

Feel free to disagree with me as loudly as you want, but I’m wondering if a little civil disobedience is in order. I am perfectly willing to comply with any takedown notices I receive if I ever post scripture in violation of HarperCollins or any one else’s copyright. But perhaps I will just stop worrying about copyright and see what happens. Has anyone ever received a takedown notice for posting too much copyrighted scripture on their blog or church site? I seriously doubt the publishers will scour the web for infringing blogs, which probably crop up at a rate of a hundred a day, depending on how strictly you interpret the copyright policies.

The bewilderingly contradictory NIV copyright section on BibleGateway says (emphasis mine):

The NIV text may be quoted in any form (written, visual, electronic or audio), up to and inclusive of five hundred (500) verses without express written permission of the publisher, providing the verses do not amount to a complete book of the Bible nor do the verses quoted account for twenty-five percent (25%) or more of the total text of the work in which they are quoted.
…
These Scriptures have been made available on the Internet for your personal use only. Any other use including, but not limited to, copying or re-posting the Scripture on the Internet is prohibited. These Scriptures may not be altered or modified in any form but must remain in their original context. These Scriptures may not be sold or otherwise offered for sale–to include online banner ads that encapsulate linkages to these Scriptures for the purpose of selling online ad space. These Scriptures are free for all online use. These Scriptures are not public domain. These Scriptures are not shareware and may not be duplicated.

So, if I understand correctly, the NIV:

1. May be quoted in electronic form up to 500 verses (as long as it’s not more than 25% of the work in which it appears - in other words, don’t rip us off to make your own study bible)
2. May be used for all personal uses
3. It may not be copied (to the clipboard?) or re-posted on the Internet

I have no way of knowing which part they mean and which part they didn’t really think about before writing.

So howsabout this: If you’re so inclined, quote scripture at will, and don’t worry about copyright unless you get a DMCA notice. If you get one, comply politely. Over time, I think Zondervan and the other copyright holders will change their attitude toward the free online use of the scriptures.

Refusing to allow blogs to copy and quote the bible is crazy. Requiring a link to any quoted scriptures is a great idea (and very easy with Mean Dean’s Scripturizer). Could you imagine if Bible verses were at the top of Google search results for words like sex? I’d think the copyright holders would appreciate the linkage. Let’s go about our business, and worry about any problems when they arise.

N.B. This post’s title is a little shout-out to James Hooten, the guy who called himself Bible Geek and got a nastygram from someone who had copyrighted the name. He changed his blog’s name, graciously I thought, but garnered a good deal of unrequested support from the blogosphere.

I’m seeing parallels between my newfound interest in creating tools for new uses of scripture, and the work I’m doing at my school to make student data more useful to teachers and administrators.

The main challenge in using the bible online is obtaining access to the text itself. All of the major translations are available online in one format or another, but they are not, in the ultimate sense, free. You can view, copy, and paste anything you want, but you’re still limited to what you can do manually and what you’re allowed to do under existing copyright arrangements.

Bible-computer interaction is stuck in about 1997 (or 1987 if you compare what you can do online to software like QuickVerse). We can’t do much more with the major translations now than we could when the first Bible-on-floppy programs came out. (The ESV and NET Bibles are notable exceptions, though still outside the mainstream. ESV has a full set of web services).

A new generation of web tools has emerged, allowing data to be manipulated in a variety of ways - aggregation, syndication, tagging, sorting, linking, commenting, and so forth. Right now, the only automated thing you can do with the #1 bible site, Bible Gateway, is subscribe to the Verse of the Day. They also have excellent query-string input for viewing verses, but nothing to get the scriptures out of the Bible Gateway and into the wider world of the web, where they could actually make a difference in daily life and the public sphere.

If the Word of God is living and breathing, it must be suffocating inside databases with no APIs, no toolsets, no features to allow people to extract, manipulate, and use the text. Being able to read the Bible online is great, but we should not be satisfied.

In my school district, we have a wonderful student data system. It’s a big Java applet that interfaces with a massive Oracle database, and you can use it to call up all sorts of data. One of the slickest features is the automatic PDF generation of all reports - if you want labels, class lists, student profiles, test scores, or any other kind of data, you can just call up a pre-defined report or build your own and get the data you need in a PDF file.

The main problem is that all of the information is locked up into PDF files, which are good for printing, but useless when it comes to using the data in Excel or another data analysis application. All you can do is print. What’s worse, the PDF files are non-delimited, so when you copy and paste (which is so 1995), you just get a jumble of individual words on separate lines, with no way to restore the tabular structure. You can create some types of custom exports into .CSV files, but the most important data is not available this way, and even the available data comes out formatted poorly.

Our student data needs to be free (at least, free for the use of school staff - FERPA has plenty to say about student data security). We need to be able to sort, code, manipulate, graph, and generally use our data, not just print it out.

So this is a manifesto of sorts. Being able to access information is not enough. We need to be able to use it, manipulate it, do as we please with it, and not be locked into the limited uses envisioned by others in the past.

It’s also a call to arms - or at least, a call to hands that can program. We need tools. Mean Dean Peters has led the charge with his Scripturizer plugin, as have many other great developers. I’ve purchased Scripturati.com, and hope to use it in a manner similar to Technorati, only for the Bible. It’s time to move forward with the rest of the web into open interfaces, extensible, hackable, open-source toolsets, and so forth. Let’s get to work.

Former FEMA head Michael Brown defended himself today against accusations that he handled Katrina badly.

I think the congressmen must have been lined up around the block to kick him in the butt. It’s funny hearing erudite, polite southern senators say “You really, really suck” as Brown pathetically defends himself. NPR has audio. Funny audio.

I need input. I’m spearheading a project, way beyond my ability, called Extensible Scripture Markup Language. The idea is to develop a set of blog tools that support the ESML standard (whatever that turns out to be) and make it easier to use scripture.

Before we can do that, though, we need to know: What would you like to do with scripture? Remix? Tag? Hyperlink? Grid blog? Quote? Aggregate? Organize? Annotate? Comment? Reflect? Dissect? Tell me.

I’m thinking of the next generation of scripture tools. What would you like? How would you use scripture if you had a powerful set of web-based tools that worked with your blog? What else can you imagine that would be helpful to your time in the scriptures? What would encourage you to spend more time in the scriptures?

Here’s a little more on the project. Leave a comment here or there if you have input (which I hope you do).

This great post via Brian of WashBlog:

2001, Greg ‘the Seattle way’ Nickels:

“I will make transportation and gridlock my top priority as Mayor.”

“Build the monorail. It’s time for city officials to stop thwarting the public will.”

“The city has seen enough studies. Frustrated motorists are tired of gridlock, and tired of talk. It’s time to get people moving again.”

2003, Greg Nickels claims results on the Monorail and notes the public’s tire of continually voting on it:

“We are moving forward on what voters said repeatedly when the approved taxes for bus service, approved light rail and said yes to the Monorail. Over and over, the public’s message was clear: Do something about traffic! We are.”

2004, Greg ‘end the gridlock’ Nickels voices stong support to quit talking, and build the Monorail:

“We can’t keep second-guessing our decision to build a new monorail, and risk continued gridlock and frustration. We need to move forward.”

2005, Greg Nickels state of the city speech:

“We will never stop our relentless focus on doing the basics right. Because of this focus, the citizens of Seattle have given us their confidence and support to do more. People want us to make smart transportation choices for this century.

That support has helped us move further than anyone thought we could. It has helped us do the impossible. We broke ground for light rail. We approved building a monorail and then reaffirmed that decision – twice!

We continue to make progress and we’re not shying away from tackling the biggest “impossible” challenges.”

The recent cut and run from the Monorail by Nickels reveals a double standard by which city officials approve large sums for a central library, the South Lake Union trolley and Seattle Aquarium expansion without votes, and yet demand a vote on a voter-backed monorail for a ridiculous 5th time.

I’m not entirely sure the Netflix Friends program works as well as it should, but I currently have two Friends, and it seems pretty cool. You can see what your Friends have rented recently, and see their ratings and comments on the films.

If you want to be my Netflix friend and share movie recommendations, try this link. Let me know if you try it (leave a comment). It may not work - I got it by sending an invite to myself - and if it does work, it may only work for the first person. I’ll do a new one of the first one gets consumed.