Disclaimer for 3-line, Pīnyīn Plus, etc. Material

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Updated 2020-07-14

While the organization expresses valid general concerns here about posting copies of official publications to the Internet, there are good legal and spiritual reasons for concluding that those concerns do not apply to 3-line, Pīnyīn Plus, and similar material, since such material should NOT be considered to be infringing on copyright, and since such material is specifically designed to be, NOT SPIRITUAL FOOD, but rather, material FOR LANGUAGE LEARNING:

• Copyright, etc. Simply copying from the original official publication so as to supersede or take the place of it infringes on copyright. 3-line, Pīnyīn Plus, and similar material does not do this. On the contrary, 3-line, Pīnyīn Plus, and similar material uses material from the original official publication in a transformative way and repurposes it for a different nonprofit educational purpose (expression-by-expression multidimensional textual analysis to aid in language learning, as opposed to the original official publication’s purpose to aid in spiritual learning), so there is good reason to consider this to be fair use. That would mean that 3-line, Pīnyīn Plus, and similar material does not infringe on copyright. (E.g., there are legal precedents (Kelly v. Arriba Soft Corp., Perfect 10, Inc. v. Amazon.com, Inc.) for considering the use of thumbnail images to be fair use, and thus not infringing on copyright.*) Also, producers of 3-line, Pīnyīn Plus, and similar material have avoided including trademarks in it. So, the existence of 3-line, Pīnyīn Plus, and similar material should provide no basis for a defense of implied consent or estoppel on the part of an opposer or commercial enterprise that is misusing the organization’s copyrighted material, nor should it provide any basis for claiming that the organization is not actively using and defending its trademarks. In other words, the existence of 3-line, Pīnyīn Plus, and similar material should present no hindrance to the organization’s efforts to deter opposers and commercial enterprises from misusing its copyrighted material or its trademarks.
• Not Intended as Spiritual Food. When at all practical, only official material from “the faithful and discreet slave”’s official sources should be viewed or used as spiritual food. (And ideally, this spiritual food should be in one’s own mother tongue.) Generally, 3-line, Pīnyīn Plus, and similar unofficial material should not be viewed or used as spiritual food, which is for personally learning spiritual things from. 3-line, Pīnyīn Plus, and similar unofficial material is mainly meant to help Chinese field publishers with language learning, so that they can more quickly become more effective at using the language (especially the speech) they’re learning, as exemplified by the original official publication’s contents, to praise Jehovah and help others, without being unnecessarily obstructed and delayed by the difficult-to-learn-and-remember Chinese characters.
  • Along with the misuse of official publications by opposers and commercial enterprises, the serious yet unnecessary tradition-based difficulties presented by Chinese characters must also be fought against, since they act as a Great Wall seriously obstructing many publishers who are otherwise willing and able to help with our God-honouring and life-saving preaching and teaching work in what is probably the biggest worldwide language field that has ever existed anywhere. In fact, The Watchtower has commented to the effect that contributing to evangelizing should take priority over responding to opposers.
  • Unlike simple copies that detract from or compete with the original official publication’s value as spiritual food without contributing significant additional value to the evangelizing work, 3-line, Pīnyīn Plus, and similar material has been shown through the experiences of many to be extraordinarily effective at helping language-learning Chinese field publishers to break through the Great Wall of Chinese characters, so that these products of mere human tradition do not get in the way of them fully using the original official publication’s spiritual food for its intended purposes of honouring Jehovah and helping others spiritually.
  • One should only use unofficial 3-line, Pīnyīn Plus, and similar material as spiritual food for personally learning spiritual things from (as opposed to the main intended usage of personal language learning) if corresponding official material is unavailable, or is impractical to use because of language reasons or other technical reasons. Even in such cases, unofficial 3-line, Pīnyīn Plus, and similar material should not be viewed as superseding or taking the place of official material, but rather as complementing official material by helping to overcome availability problems and language factors and other technical factors that could hinder or prevent the spiritual food in official material from fully having the beneficial effects it was meant to have.

* Although thumbnails are reduced-size versions of the complete original images or videos, they are considered transformative (a major factor in determining fair use) because their purpose is, not to supersede or replace the original images or videos, but rather to help people to find the original images or videos, so that they can use the original images or videos as they were meant to be used. Similarly, although 3-line, Pīnyīn Plus, and similar material may contain the complete text of the original official Chinese publications, such material can be considered transformative (a major factor in determining fair use) because its purpose is, not to supersede or replace the original official Chinese publications, but rather to help people to find knowledge about and understanding of the language used in the original official Chinese publications, so that they can use the original official Chinese publications as they were meant to be used. ^

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