Papal copyright claims revisited and clarified

Looks like my hunch was right, and that as earlier reported (see: "Copyrighting truth?") the assertion of copyright by Libreria Editrice Vaticana is "not to limit access to the Pope's words, but to prevent "premature" publication of leaked documents, and to guard against exploitation of the Pope's name."

Catholic World News goes on to say:

"Some English-language reports on the dispute in Italy have suggested-- innaccurately-- that the Vatican would forbid quotations from the encyclical, or charge fees to journals that reproduced passages from the work."

The Italian daily La Stampa wasn't pleased:

"In a January 21 editorial, the Italian daily La Stampa charged that the Vatican publishing house, Libreria Editrice Vaticana, was seeking to squeeze a profit by limiting access to the Pope's statements. The Italian paper charged that the Vatican wanted to "terrorize" editors and publishers with the threat of charging heavy fees for use of the Pope's written work."

But the Vatican was ready to play hardball too:

"Libreria Editrice Vaticana shot back with a public statement released on January 23, saying that the Vatican was not limiting access to the Pope's work, but merely protecting against "piracy" of papal statements. The Vatican publisher stressed that Italian publishers were well aware of the rules governing reproduction of papal statements, and that those rules have been essentially unchanged since 1978."

Seriously, La Stampa has no excuse to be doing stuff like this:

"The dispute with La Stampa began when Libreria Editrice Vaticana sent a bill of 15,000 euros (about $18,400) to the publishers of a book entitled The Dictionary of Pope Ratzinger, which was advertised as coming from "the pen or the voice of Joseph Ratzinger." The journalist who compiled that book wrote the first article in La Stampa criticizing the Vatican policy."

AmericanPapist Final Judgement:

Libreria Editrice Vatican - 1, La Stampa - 0.