Reprinted in full from http://slate.msn.com/id/2100890/
Copyrighting the Decalogue
Does Roy Moore love the Ten Commandments so much that he wants to own
them?
By Timothy Noah
Posted Thursday, May 20, 2004, at 1:24 PM PT
Judge Roy Moore famously lost his job as chief justice of the Alabama
Supreme Court because he refused to remove a marble monument to the Ten
Commandments from the rotunda of the Alabama Judicial Building. The
right to display the Ten Commandments in a government building will
surely be the central issue in his presidential campaign, should he heed
the urgings of Chatterbox and others to lure Christian right voters away
from Bush. But Chatterbox wonders whether another issue will be the
right to copyright the Ten Commandments, as Moore seems to have
attempted.
If you scroll to the bottom of Moore's Aug. 25 complaint, which he filed
in an attempt to win his old job back, you will find an attachment that
reproduces the monument's "full text," which of course is the Decalogue,
plus a string of quotations from the Declaration of Independence, the
Constitution of the State of Alabama, various Founding Fathers, and
other documents touching on the relationship between God and the
government of the United States. (Notably absent are any quotations from
the Constitution of the United States.) After the quotations, the
attachment ends with these baffling words:
Copyright information is inscribed below the quotations on the back of
the monument, as follows:
2001 R.S. Moore
D.S. Melchior
R.C. Hahnemann
Since only the last of these names, R.C. Hahnemann, identifies the
monument's sculptor, Chatterbox finds it difficult to escape the
conclusion that Moore and Stephen Melchior, an attorney on the case,
wanted to copyright the Ten Commandments (along with a string of other
quotations in the public domain). On the face of it, this is even more
presumptuous than Donald Trump's recent effort to trademark the phrase,
"You're fired." Chatterbox phoned Moore's spokeswoman, Jessica
Atteberry, to find out what this copyright claim was all about. She said
it was her understanding that Moore had helped design the monument and
that Melchior had chosen, or helped to choose, the quotations about the
relationship between God and the government. That jibes with Moore's own
description, at the monument's dedication, of how it came to be built:
Immediately after my election in November of 2000, I contacted Mr.
Richard Hahnemann, an accomplished sculptor, to assist me in the
construction and design of this monument. Based upon my specifications,
he worked, together with myself and my legal assistant and attorney, Mr.
Stephen Melchior, for the past eight months to complete this project.
Atteberry wasn't sure her description of the division of labor was
right, however, and she had no answer to Chatterbox's query as to why
Moore and Melchior felt it necessary, even under the circumstances she
described, to claim part of the copyright for themselves. (At the
monument's dedication, Moore thanked Clark Memorial, Pierre Tourney Sr.,
and Pierre Tourney Jr., "for their help in the construction, design and
installation," but apparently none of these people rated inclusion in
the copyright along with Moore and Melchior.) Atteberry said she'd have
to take my questions and get back to me. But a couple of weeks later,
after I'd prompted her several times, Atteberry said she would not
answer Chatterbox's questions because she believed I was on "a witch
hunt." Chatterbox subsequently phoned Melchior to ask him the same
questions. Melchior directed me to leave my questions with his
secretary; he would phone back with the answers. But Melchior never did
phone back, even after Chatterbox left a second message.
What gives? Profit seems a logical motive, if not personal than for the
political movement Moore has started. But Moore didn't lease or sell the
statue to the state of Alabama; it's on loan, gratis. Indeed, some have
suggested that the state should be charging Moore rent for removing and
storing it, which reportedly ran up a $7,000 tab. (The thing weighs
5,280 pounds. The original tablets, you'll recall, were portable.)
Hahnemann has said he'd like to sell bronze miniatures in order to
support Moore's legal defense fund. But why would that require Moore and
Melchior's names to be on the copyright? Don't they trust Hahnemann? The
Web site for Moore's defense fund sells Ten Commandments plaques, lapel
pins, T-shirts, and clocks, but none of these reproduces the design of
the monument or the quotations on it about God and the government.
Perhaps the explanation is simply the one offered by Ecclesiastes: "All
is vanity."
Whatever Moore's and Melchior's motives, the U.S. Copyright Office
didn't play along. An online search of its records yielded several books
by Moore, but no statues.
--
Gregory Gadow
techbear@serv.net
http://www.serv.net/~techbear
"If you make yourself a sheep, the wolves will eat you."
-- Benjamin Franklin
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