No one owns the words of Jesus. They were spoken to crowds on hillsides, written down in common Greek, and handed on for free by people who were often killed for carrying them. But open nearly any modern English Bible and the second page answers this page’s question in small print: all rights reserved. This is the factual story of how the Word acquired owners — and of the translators who refused to own it.
Owners + policies
Cases
The free way
An open Bible separated from sealed papers by a brass fence.
Start with one record
Search the ownership ledger
Find a translation, inspect who holds the rights, follow the provenance, and open the source behind the claim.
Search the translation records by name, abbreviation, owner, or permission status. Each result keeps its claim, provenance, and source trail together. The research queue is visible so an unfinished record cannot masquerade as a settled one.
15 records
15 records found.
Copyrighted translation
NIV New International Version
Source checked
Record owner / posture
Biblica, Inc.
What the record says
A modern English translation with a public quotation allowance and a permission boundary beyond it.
Permission posture
Quote up to 500 verses without asking, provided the use is not a complete book and is not 25% or more of the larger work. Beyond that, written permission is required.
Provenance
How this record got here.
2 steps
Source checked
Complete translation record
The ownership record dates the complete NIV to 1978. A fuller publication bibliography remains outside this first pass.
Each of these is protected by copyright. The owner grants a “gratis use” allowance — quote inside it and you owe nothing; step past it and you need written permission, and sometimes a license fee. The allowances below are from the rights-holders’ own permission pages.
Biblica, Inc. — a nonprofit · published by Zondervan, part of HarperCollins, a News Corp company
Quote up to 500 verses without asking — provided it isn't a complete book of the Bible and isn't 25% or more of your work. Past that: written permission.
Quote up to 500 verses without a license — not more than half of any one book, not 25% or more of your work. The ESV may not be published under a Creative Commons license.
Hand-copy the Gospel of John from the NIV and give it away? That is a complete book of the Bible — past the free allowance. Permission required.
Quote verse number 501 in your own book? Permission required — and past a certain scale, royalties.
Release the ESV under a Creative Commons license so others can share it freely? Forbidden — by name, in the permission terms.
The Revised Standard Version was published in 1952. It stays fenced until 2048 — under copyright for ninety-six years, held by a council of churches.
In England, the King James Version — the year is 1611 — may still be printed only by the Crown’s licensees.
And the best-selling English Bible in the world? Its copyright belongs to a nonprofit — but its North American publishing runs through Zondervan, part of HarperCollins, a News Corp company. The NIV and the Wall Street Journal share a corporate parent.
How it happened
1611
The King’s Bible
The Authorized Version is printed under royal privilege. In England, the right to print it belongs to the Crown to this day.
1901
The first fence
The American Standard Version is copyrighted by Thomas Nelson & Sons — the title page gives the reason: “to insure purity of text.” Protection, not profit, was the stated motive.
1952
The churches take the copyright
The Revised Standard Version is published and owned by the National Council of Churches — a council of churches becomes a Bible rights-holder. The RSV is still under copyright today.
1978
The bestseller era
The complete NIV appears. Biblica owns it; Zondervan sells it; it becomes the best-selling modern English Bible in the world.
1989–2017
The fences multiply
NRSV (1989), NLT (1996), ESV (2001), CSB (2017) — nearly every major modern translation is proprietary, each with its own quotation allowance and its own permission desk.
2000s
The gift returns
The is dedicated to the public domain; the Open English Bible follows under CC0. Modern translations, freely given.
2023
Given away whole
The Berean Standard Bible enters the public domain on April 30, 2023 — proof that it can still be done.
The life of every fence
Publication to public domain, translation by translation — when the fence goes up, and when it comes down.
Fenced — under copyright
Free — public domain or given away
Dashed — hasn’t happened yet
Swipe sideways to inspect the full diagram.
Each fenced run is ninety-five years — the current US copyright term — so the modern translations stay locked long past everyone now alive (the dashed part hasn’t happened yet). The KJV, the Douay-Rheims, and the ones given away — the ASV, the NET, the Berean, the WEB — are free already. 7 of 13 are still fenced today.
Read the same data as a table
Publication year, public-domain year, and current status of each English Bible translation
Translation
Published
Public domain
Status today
KJV King James Version
1611
1611
Free — public domain by age (in the US)
DRA Douay-Rheims
1752
1752
Free — free for centuries
ASV American Standard Version
1901
1957
Free — copyright lapsed in 1957
RSV Revised Standard Version
1952
2048
Fenced — 22 years to run
NASB New American Standard Bible
1971
2066
Fenced — 40 years to run
NIV New International Version
1978
2073
Fenced — 47 years to run
NRSV New Revised Standard Version
1989
2084
Fenced — 58 years to run
NLT New Living Translation
1996
2091
Fenced — 65 years to run
NET New English Translation
1996
1996
Free — copyrighted but free to use
ESV English Standard Version
2001
2096
Fenced — 70 years to run
BSB Berean Standard Bible
2016
2023
Free — given away whole in 2023
CSB Christian Standard Bible
2017
2112
Fenced — 86 years to run
WEB World English Bible
2020
2020
Free — dedicated to the public domain
The case for the fence
Fairness requires their side. The rights-holders’ stated reasons, in their own words:
Copyright, 1901, by Thomas Nelson & Sons … to insure purity of text.
All royalties from Living Letters, The Living Bible, and the New Living Translation have been distributed to mission organizations operating all around the world.
Those are real concerns — translation is years of scholarly labor, and a guarded text is harder to tamper with. Whether a fence around the Scriptures is the right answer to them is the question this page leaves with you.
The free way
It has been done differently — by translators and publishers who finished the same years of labor and then gave the work away.
KJVPublic domain (US)
King James Version
1611
Free in America. In the United Kingdom, though, it is still printed under perpetual Royal Letters Patent — only Cambridge, Oxford, and the Crown's licensees may print it there. The oldest fence of all belongs to the Crown.
One of the first copyrighted English Bibles — its 1901 title page states the reason: “to insure purity of text.” The copyright expired in 1957, and the text has been free ever since.
A modern revision of the ASV, dedicated entirely to the public domain — the name is trademarked, the text is free. It is the translation this site quotes most.
Copyrighted by Biblical Studies Press, but deliberately open: quote it in any form for non-commercial use without asking, and download the full text free. “Ministry first” is their stated policy.
Every word of Scripture on this site — four full translations, the cross-references, the search — is public domain. That is not an accident; it is the reason the Scriptures world can exist at all. “Freely you received, freely give” is not this site’s slogan. It is an instruction — from the one the Book is about.
Make the page yours
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