Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

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Some of the most frequently asked questions about Distant Shores Media are listed below:

FAQs

What about copyrights?

Isn't it too risky to allow anyone to edit discipleship materials? How do you ensure quality if anyone can change the material and make it say whatever they want?

Since the material you are helping create is not only free but open, how do you keep cults from taking the material and introducing false teachings into it, distorting the truth?

What if a derivative work of discipleship content is created that is doctrinally inaccurate but has an attribution to the creator of the original content?

Wouldn't it be better to keep the copyrights in place and just allow translation and distribution?

Can another organization make money off of my open-licensed discipleship resources? Shouldn't there be a "Non-commercial" condition to prevent this from happening?

What is the difference between Distant Shores Media and Door43? Are they the same thing?

What's with the name "Door43"? Where does it come from?

What about copyrights?

If a person creates any work (e.g. writes a paper, takes a picture, etc.) it is copyright to them without them doing anything – it's just the way copyrights work. We believe that the people who need discipleship tools most (often members of minority people groups around the world) are served best by discipleship tools that are free in every sense of the word – free to acquire, free to translate, free to use and free to give to others.

To set the discipleship tools we create free, we release them under a Creative Commons license. It is important to understand that Creative Commons licenses do not in any way nullify or replace copyrights. Creative Commons licenses state what the copyright holder legally pre-clears others to do with a copyrighted work.

While copyrights essentially say "this may not be used for any reason without permission" the Creative Commons approach says "this may be used for anything without needing additional permission, subject to the conditions of the license used." This makes it possible for people anywhere in the world to build on the tools we are creating and make them better and more effective in ways that would never otherwise be possible. And they can do it today, right now, without any legal risk.

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Isn't it too risky to allow anyone to create and edit discipleship materials? How do you ensure quality if anyone can change the material and make it say whatever they want?

We are using a wiki engine to build discipleship tools because it allows anyone, anywhere with access to the Internet to help build the tools. While we see a significant advantage in allowing anyone to contribute, there could also be an inherent risk that with more and varied contributors the quality of the contributed material will vary unacceptably in quality.

Instead of locking down the wiki and only allowing limited access, we want to encourage contribution by anyone while still maintaining material of the highest quality. To accomplish that, each page in the wiki will have at least two different versions – the "official" page that is only editable by a select sub-set of editors, and a "draft" page that anyone can edit and help write the content. While in draft mode, the page will be clearly labeled as a work in progress that has not yet been reviewed and is not recommended for translation or use.

Practically, this means that anyone can help write the content on the "draft" page but only those who have been identified as people with gifts and abilities in refining the discipleship materials will be able to review, edit and sign off on the material. We will include areas that each page needs to be checked for, e.g. "Accuracy", "Depth", "Breadth", "Readability", etc. Once all reviewers have signed off on each page, the content is put on the "official" page and the page is locked to future edits (in that language). However, the "Discussion" area of each page will still be open, so anyone can suggest additional improvements and additions, even to a page that is considered finished.

We think that by using a wiki engine and structuring it in this way, it will be possible to achieve the best of both worlds: the broadest possible base of contributors while still maintaining the highest level of quality in the finished version of the material produced.

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Since the material you are helping create is not only free but open, how do you keep cults from introducing false teachings and heresies into the material and distorting the truth?

"Open" has to do with copyrights and the legal relinquishing of their restrictions using the Creative Commons. Copyrights are considered a civil matter and thus very limited in how enforceable they are, especially at an international level. What this means is that, if the cults wanted to take existing materials and corrupt them with their own distortions and heresies, they already could and, in fact, they may already be doing so with existing copyrighted material and the copyright holders might never find out. There is no way for any copyright holder to police the entire world and all languages for abuse of their copyrighted material.

In addition, there are many resources in the public domain that could already have been downloaded from the Internet, corrupted by the cults and redistributed. History indicates, however, that this is not generally the tactic used by the cults. Instead, they usually author their own work as an "explanation" of an existing resource (e.g. explaining the KJV Bible) and then they target young, vulnerable believers who have not yet had the opportunity of growing in maturity as disciples of Christ.

So, the idea that copyright prevents derivative works of an inaccurate nature is unproven. What copyright does accomplish, all over the world, every day, is legally prevent law-abiding brothers and sisters in Christ from building on the excellent work of others, in faithful keeping with sound doctrine in order to further discipleship with people of their own language. Instead, they are required to either create everything from scratch or hope for a copyright holder to grant a special exemption to the copyright restrictions. In either case, the lack of unrestricted access to free & open, biblically-sound discipleship materials not only limits their spiritual growth but makes them extremely vulnerable to the advances of the cults and heresies. In that regard, one could argue that the existence of copyright restrictions not only does not prevent the rise of cults and false teaching, it could actually facilitate it.

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What if a derivative work of discipleship content is created that is doctrinally inaccurate but has an attribution to the creator of the original content?

Every Creative Commons license includes the "Attribution" condition that requires any derivative work to attribute the original work to the original creator, usually with a link to their website. So, by releasing discipleship content under the Creative Commons, anyone is legally allowed to make derivative works of discipleship material that somone else has written, meaning that doctrinal errors could be introduced into derivative works either intentionally (e.g. by a cult) or unintentionally (e.g. by a well meaning but under-trained believer). In either case, they are legally required by the Creative Commons to attribute the original work to the original creator, though they take credit for their own work. While this sounds concerning, we don't think it needs to be, for the following reasons.

Intentional doctrinal errors

It is unlikely that cults would want to attribute anything to the creator of the original work if the creator of the original work is an Evangelical Christian. The last thing they want is to have a Christian ministry name and website on any of their materials and run the risk of having some of their people actually going to the website and reading the original work and "falling away" to Evangelical Christianity. It is more likely that the terms of the Creative Commons would be violated by not attributing the original work to the original creator. For this same reason the likelihood of cults intentionally subverting content by changing the doctrine and using someone else's name on it is negligible.
History suggests that cults tend to leave the original material alone and create their own companion works that "better explain" the original – even when the original work is in the Public Domain and has no copyright restrictions or legal implications whatsoever. The obvious example here is the KJV and the cults that give them away free, as is, no heresy introduced in the original work. The false teaching gets included in their own original work.

Unintentional doctrinal errors

The experience of many working with believers in other countries suggests their drive to produce discipleship materials of the highest quality is exemplary. If they are voluntarily doing the hard work of studying, translating, revising, checking and keyboarding (and/or recording) their translated work, they tend to have a strong interest in it being of the highest quality. By working together with them and other organizations to train and equip them with free & open discipleship tools, we can help them ensure that the materials maintain the highest standard of integrity and orthodoxy to Christian doctrine.
Unintentional doctrinal errors may still occur in the development of discipleship tools but this is where the wiki technology we are using to create these tools is a significant advantage. Because everything is in the open on the Internet, many people can see the work as it unfolds, and the more people looking at it, the easier it is to spot and correct errors. Wikis make it very easy to correct the errors as they are spotted, as simple as clicking "Edit", correcting the error and then clicking "Save".
The Creative Commons, while relatively unknown in Christian circles, is in widespread use in the secular world and it is generally understood that derivative works do not necessarily imply anything about the original work or content creator. It is common knowledge that "re-purposing" content for other uses – sometimes with significantly different purposes – than the original is expected and is not necessarily a reflection of the intent or purpose of the original work by the original creator. That is why the attribution link is included – anyone who wants to can find out for themselves what the original work is and the intent of its creator.
The Creative Commons makes it very easy to waive the right to be attributed and even to request that it not happen. Quoting from http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Frequently_Asked_Questions: "If you do not like the way that a person has made a derivative work or incorporated your work into a collective work, under the Creative Commons licenses, you may request removal of your name from the derivative work or the collective work." In the Door43 project that we are building we are pre-empting this with a clear statement on the license page that says any derivative works that conflict with the Door43 statement of faith are strongly discouraged and should not have any attribution to Door43.

So the bottom line is this:

There is a potential (though so far, unproven) risk that discipleship resources released under a Creative Commons license could be abused or misused and that they would attribute the name of the original content creator as the source of the original work.
By contrast, it is a known fact that every day, all over the world, brothers and sisters in Christ who have no discipleship resources in their language are legally prevented by International copyright law from translating and adapting existing resources for effective use in their own spiritual growth.
In light of this, we think that releasing discipleship tools under a Creative Commons license as a gift to the global church for their spiritual strengthening and maturity is a risk worth taking.

We are encouraged in this risk of removing obstacles for the advance of the Gospel by 1 Corinthians 9:12,18:

"...we endure anything rather than put an obstacle in the way of the gospel of Christ... What then is [our] reward? That... [we] may present the gospel free of charge."

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Wouldn't it be better to keep the copyrights in place and just allow translation and distribution? Wouldn't that be safer than allowing the material to be modified?

It is important to understand that licensing a work under a Creative Commons license does not nullify the copyright. The use of a Creative Commons license makes it so people who encounter the work know what they have legally been permitted to do with the copyrighted material by the original creator of the content.

Another point to consider is that without a very clear and accurate legal contract stating what is and is not permitted, we would inadvertently put anyone who makes a translation (and thus a derivative work) into potential legal trouble. In matters of copyright and intellectual property, good intentions without an adequate legal foundation can result in confusion, violation of copyright law and lawsuits.

One of the significant advantages of using a Creative Commons license is that the Creative Commons foundation has already done (and continues to do) the hard work of creating and overseeing licenses specifically designed to encourage freedom and building on the work of others. This includes translating the licenses and porting them to jurisdictions in many other countries so that the licenses are enforceable worldwide. Each license contains the deed which is understandable by people with no legal training, the actual license, and the machine-readable code that makes on-line content easily searchable by computers.

Another thing to consider is that as soon as we allow translation of content, we lose control of the content (and we do not see this as a problem). Translation necessarily assumes adaptation or modification of the text in order to accurately communicate the intended meaning. Some languages and cultures are so far removed from the linguistic and sociocultural context of the original audience of the Scriptures that effective and accurate translation cannot be accomplished without some degree of adaptation of the material.

There is no way for the holder of the copyright to police every one of the world's ~7,000 languages for accurate translations. But this is not necessarily a problem if we approach the accuracy and quality of translation from the perspective of "by their fruits you will know them" as opposed to controlling the translation process and assuming the result is good quality. In Bible translation, for instance, when a translation is made using impeccable translation processes by scholars using the original Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic texts as the source, sometimes the resulting work is less than ideal and may even considered to be an inaccurate or biased translation. The solution is not to try and place the original texts under copyright in order to limit how they are translated and used. The solution is to make or use a different translation that is accurate.

Can another organization make money off of my open-licensed discipleship resources? Shouldn't there be a "Non-commercial" condition to prevent this from happening?

Many members of the global church desperately need unrestricted discipleship resources and come from societies that are not as affluent as many Western societies. Because of this, we do not want to legally prevent them from making their living by the Gospel (see 1 Corinthians 9 and not "muzzling the ox while it treads out the grain"). In this case, that means not preventing them from selling the discipleship resources to recover their expenses and make a living.

For example, a rural African pastor can do one of two things: he can either cultivate his maize crop to try and put his kids through school or he can translate and adapt discipleship resources for effective use in his language and culture. He is not able to do both and if he is legally prevented from generating income by selling the resources to local churches and so provide for his family, then he will not be able to create them.

What about if another ministry sells material that was created by another ministry? Are they required to share the proceeds?

No, they are not required to share the proceeds. There are a few points to consider on this topic.

"Commercial" is an ambiguous term — Including a "non-commercial" condition on the license might seem to solve the problem, but it isn't as straightforward as it might seem. For instance, what constitutes a commercial use of the discipleship resource? What is the line between "recovering expenses" and "commercial use"?
Requiring free distribution limits redistribution — Some content creators avoid the ambiguity of the non-commercial condition by requiring that any redistribution of the content be completely free of charge. While this addresses the ambiguity issue, it creates another hindrance in that it requires anyone who wants to distribute the content to absorb all the cost of doing so themselves. Because even nominal costs cannot be passed on to the recipients of photocopies of resources, the number of potential distribution channels is limited. If content distributors in other countries cannot recover any of their expenses by selling the resources, it is unlikely they will be interested in creating a localized DVD of study resources, or audio CDs for use in churches, or even photocopies of discipleship resources.
Attribution changes everything — In the economy of the Internet, mindshare (or "attention") is the new currency. Even if a "competitor" (see below) were to take content created by someone else and sell it for a profit, they are legally required to attribute the work to the original creator with a link to the creator's website. Visitors to the website will find that the content is freely available online. "Free" generates attention and as more people find out about it, it is unlikely that anyone will be able to make a profit on what is freely available on the original creator's website.
"Share Alike" changes everything — Even if a "competitor" were to create a derivative work from content created by someone else (and available for free on their website) and sell it for a profit, they are legally required to release it under the same license ("Share Alike"). Anyone who purchases the content is legally allowed to release it in any other format, online for free use and re-use under the terms of the Open Discipleship License. Not only is the content freely available but it can be legally re-incorporated back into the original work, should the creator of the work so choose. Consequently, it is unlikely that anyone will be able to make a profit from content that has been freely given away under the Open Discipleship License.
There are no competitors in ministry — Even if a secular company were to take someone else's discipleship content and sell it for a profit, Paul's response seems to be: "What does it matter? The important thing is that in every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is preached. And because of this I rejoice." Philippians 1:17-18 NIV.

What is the difference between Distant Shores Media and Door43? Are they the same thing?

Distant Shores Media is a non-profit ministry organization. Door43 (www.door43.org) is an on-line, open-membership ministry network focused on creating free and open discipleship tools with and for the church all over the world. Distant Shores Media is overseeing the Door43 website and project design but Door43 is its own thing.

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