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Brookline monastery turns to civil courts in battle over its work - and wins

Courts normally don't get involved in religious battles, but in a fight involving copyright law, a federal appeals court today ordered an Eastern Orthodox archbishop in Denver to stop posting online copies of the work of a Brookline monastery.

The Society of the Holy Transfiguration Monastery sued Archbishop Gregory of the Dormition Skete monastery in Denver when he failed to take down copies of English translations it had made of various Greek-language religious texts.

A lower court agreed with the Brookline monastery that Gregory was using its copyrighted works without permission - after he had agreed in an earlier suit to stop that - and needed to knock it off.

Gregory appealed on several grounds, including the fact that the Brookline monastery didn't own a copyright on its work because it had once signed an affiliation agreement with the Russian Orthodox church that would give all of its assets to the church if it dissolved or merged; that the monastery had made only minor changes to the original texts and so couldn't claim a copyright, anyway and that Gregory was not guilty of copyright violations because he had not personally posted the material to his site.

Wrong on all counts, the appeals court ruled.

The justices said the monastery had not dissolved or merged - it had merely ended its formal affiliation with the Russian Orthodox Church and gone back to being an independent monastery. Gregory failed to show just which small phrases were the only ones he claimed were modification and that, in any case, "derivative" works can be copyrighted. And the fact that Gregory admitted he owned the Web site and oversaw its operation meant he was responsible for its content, even if another priest was the actual person to upload the documents.

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