Copyrighting the Decalogue

It’s coming up on a year now since Judge Roy Moore’s Ten Commandments fiasco in Alabama, but that doesn’t mean that the story is over. Every so often something new happens or some tidbit of information comes out - like now, for example: apparently, Moore thought he could copyright the Ten Commandments.

Timothy Noah writes for Slate:

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

Moore’s motives in this are uncertain. Profit could be one, but there is no evidence of that being pursued at this time. Vanity is another, but apparently the U.S. Copyright Office hasn’t registered Moore’s monument. Those involved also seem to be refusing to answer any questions about it. If this were just a standard legal action taken on the advice of a hyper-vigilant lawyer (which might be understandable), then why not say so?

Read More:

• Separation of Church and State 101
• Ten Commandments