New International Version
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.
Sources & method
Source basis: Translation ownership, permissions, cases, and policies are taken from rights-holder pages and linked source records. Sources
World 07Who Owns the Word?
The ownership record
Who owns the Word?
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
Find what stays free
Open a public-domain Bible
Go directly to public-domain texts with no permission fence.
Find a free translationOpen the full ownership recordRead the policies, history, arguments, timelines, and free alternatives.
“Freely you received, freely give.”
THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
The fenced translations
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.
English Standard Version
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 The ESV may not be published under a Creative Commons license.
New Revised Standard Version (and NRSVue)
Quote up to 500 verses free — under 25% of your work's words, text unaltered, notice included. Past that: written approval.
New American Standard Bible
Quote up to 1,000 verses without permission — not a complete book, not more than 50% of your work.
New Living Translation
Quote up to 500 verses without permission — not a complete book, not more than 25% of your work.
Christian Standard Bible
Quote up to 1,000 verses without permission — not a complete book, not more than 50% of your work.
Revised Standard Version
Still under copyright and actively licensed, seventy years on. On the standard 95-year US term, the 1952 text enters the public domain in 2048.
What the fence means in practice
- 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.
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.
King James Version
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.
American Standard Version
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.
World English Bible
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.
Berean Standard Bible
Released into the public domain on April 30, 2023 — a complete modern translation, given away whole.
Open English Bible
Published under a Creative Commons Zero dedication: no rights reserved, anywhere, for anything.
NET Bible
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.
Douay-Rheims (Challoner)
The historic English Bible of Catholics, in Challoner's revision — free for centuries.
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.