Monday, January 23, 2006

Pay to Pray?

In the beginning there was the word. Then came the copyright battle:

ROME: A row has broken out over whether the speeches and writings of Pope Benedict XVI should be freely available to everyone or be subject to copyright.

The dispute was prompted by revelations that a publishing house in Milan had to pay €15,000 ($24,000) to reprint 30 lines from the first speech by the Pope after his election in April after the Vatican transferred copyright on papal texts to its own publishing house, Libreria Editrice Vaticana. The Vatican also plans to charge rights on any papal texts of the past 50 years.

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