More on the Russian Biblical Studies site

I commented yesterday on Bible Studies - Русские страницы and drew attention to some concerns about articles of mine that have been reproduced there without permission. I wrote to the author of the site to express my concern and he emails me in response with an explanation. He says that he did ask for permission to reproduce many of the articles on the site but he could not always find the relevant email addresses and some people did not reply. Others, he says, may have just slipped through the net. So I had a look in my own correspondence and see that I did in fact write to the author of the site in response to an email he sent me on 27 November 2001. (I write well over 5,000 emails a year so it is not surprising that I forget some). My email of 27 November 2001 says that I am happy to encourage links to any of my articles but that I am not happy to grant permission to reproduce any of them. I might add that in some cases (e.g. Fatigue in the Synoptics) I do not own the copyright anyway and so cannot grant others permission to reproduce them. So I have asked the author to take my articles down.

The site in question has lots more articles and as far as I can see there are no statements about copyright or permission being granted. It is possible that there are others whose articles have been reproduced without permission; I have written to the author of the site to encourage him to add statements concerning permission where he has it, not least because I can imagine that others might be less gracious than I when their material has been reproduced without permission. I should add here that I think that what the author of the site is doing, bringing Biblical Studies to Russia, where books and journals are often scarce, is most valuable. For that reason it is all the more important to make sure that everything available on the site is there legitimately.