In any case, I think we’ll just have to agree to disagree. Thanks for your comments.

Again, I think you are harping on the wrong group. Why not rail about the fact that the other 49 Bibles in the Kindle store are not free? Why not make a stink over their DRM? Singling out one company that had the guts to make their text available for free in the first place, and bringing them public shame in multiple blog posts is what I see as antithetical to Christian teachings.

It just struck me as somewhat ironic that a free Bible isn’t in fact “free”. Particularly when one considers the content of the Bible (or the Gospels, anyway) and Crossway’s stated mission to bring folks to the Savior – by locking up the Bible. As you say, the ESV is available in other formats – but not for the Kindle – which was the source of my original post to begin with.

The argument that DRM makes sense to them because they’ve spent a lot of money producing it is the same argument the big publishers use, and the music industry, and Hollywood. Of course they have the righ to go ahead and produce all the DRMed stuff they want. It’s a bad idea for all the usual reasons which aren’t necessary to repeat here. And in this case, antithetical to the Christian mission, or so it seems to me. My hope is that Crossway takes the bold step into non-DRM-land rather than just joining the ranks of outmoded DRMers.

I should add that I think Crossway is operating in good faith here; they’re just not up to speed. As has been discussed around here and as I have found in my use of the Kindle, because of its very set-up, anything you put on the Kindle is locked-up, regardless of whether it started out DRM-free or not, unless you do some hacking around. The real culprit here is Amazon, I think, and I’ve said as much to the folks at Crossway.

Paul, thanks for the link. There are lots of digital version of the Bible out there, as well as other holy and historical texts. The readability of these varies. For the record, and as I mentioned in the comments on the first post, the Crossway version is eminently readable and easy-to-use.

http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=22438

There are a few other version of the bible there, as well as, of course, several thousand nicely formatted public domain ebooks.

Many translations of the Bible are in the public domain and available from many sources in many formats. Some translations are copyrighted.

If one wants to get ahold of the KJV they can get it for free or pay for digital or print versions from a wide range of publishers.

Crossways owns the rights to the ESV and make it available in a variety of ways – some free of charge, some not.

Here’s some more info – http://www.esv.org/about/faq .

Why leave snarky reviews on amazon for their efforts? Do you plan to continue your crusade and leave similar comments for all the other Bible editions available in Kindle format?

But why are you singling Crossway out? Why not talk about Zondervan’s iron grip on the NIV, or Tyndale’s NLT, or Lifeway’s HCSB?

These companies spend a lot of money developing these new Bible translations, and it is not surprising to me that they want to protect their investment. DRM makes sense to them from that perspective, especially if all they get from non-DRM advocates like us is complaints and public lashings.

In the wider sense…yes, making something that is supposed to be spreading “good news” DRM-locked is pretty dumb. Even pirates need to get the “good news”.

Since they were set up to distribute the Bible as widely as possible, and own the full rights to the translation, a free version for download would make sense.