Do you have a reference for that story in the samyutta…
Now that I think of it, the only other religion I can think of, where the holy texts have copyright protection, is Scientology, so that they can sue heterodox sects.
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I would like to purchase Bhikkhu Bhodis books but I simply can’t afford them right now.
I found some interesting books at a local library that were put out by a Thai monastery, I forget which one. On the back of the book it said if you want a copy of this book please contact the monastery. When I contacted them, they no longer provided books. I contacted other monasteries and none of them send out books any more. I understand printing books and sending them out is very costly.
Most of these monasteries did how ever, have a lot of pdf files for download. Which is great but I can’t read online to long, it starts to bother my eyes. I understand that pdf is probably better for the environment but I admit I still much rather have an actual book. And it is great having suttacentral for reading and reference.
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Parts of this thread inspire nausea.
May peace, happiness, liberation from suffering and its causes, be. May fear, hate, greed, anger, be extinguished.
@ERose you may not have noticed, but that community member is suspended until August 2019 and won’t see your response.
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Ty for info Nadine.
Metta, metta, metta, to us all. 
But that does not mean that by copyrighting Dhamma material individuals working or owning Wisdom are not making profit, sustaining themselves…
And frankly, I would never feel comfortable to sustain myself and feed my cravings by using cash made out of Dharma. What kind of word conditioning one gets entangled by mixing things this way!?
And I am not sure if the Buddha or early Buddhists would see it as something wholesome or uncomplicated…
From what I can gather from EBTs this idea of making money or sustaining one’s desires through charging for teaching and guiding was strongly avoided by the immediate, monastic disciples of the Buddha.
And in the ancient West as well, the business of sharing wisdom for a price was the business of sophists and not true philosophers! 
An evidence that there was no room for sophistry in early Buddhism is the fact that we often in suttas see characters who were originally paribbajakas / parivrajakas, the closest you had to sophists in Buddha’s times, becoming monks and adopting the vinaya…
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Can I ask how - if as suggested in some of the posts above Wisdom and Bhikkhu Bodhi hold the copyright for his sutta translations - it has been possible to share them via Sutta Central? (Apology if this is covered elsewhere; I’ve looked in vain.)
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There are established authors and others who i hope will answer you in detail. However, copyright is a control mechanism, and rights to publish can be assigned, with a variety of limits (whether that right can be delegated/assigned to others; content requirements; etc.)
Having a copyright does not necessarily mean income; it does however mean a right to prevent others from profiting. Without a copyright holder… there have been cases when material in the public domain has been claimed by corporations or others, and profiteering occurred.
Edit: this might be interesting:
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That is much as I understand it, tho there are differences between American and Australian copyright law. I’m curious about this particular instance.
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After reading through a lot of the good points made in this thread, I feel a little awkward about buying Wisdom Publication’s sutta translations now. At the time it was the only way to read a complete translation of some nikayas—as far as I know. And if you want a physical copy of a complete nikaya today, I think Wisdom Publication is the only place where one can be affordably purchased. In both of these regards, they’ve done a great service. However, they really should consider freely distributing their PDFs and EPUBs so the dhamma can be made available to more people, and not just those who can afford a $50 hardcover. Maybe they could wait a few months after the release of the hardcovers if they’re worried about undercutting sales. This is what some video streaming sites do. Pay-customers get first access, and free-customers get access shortly thereafter.
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Wisdom Publication’s 2017 financial statements are already public and available. See at the link below my updated highlights from these latest financial statements.
In a nutshell, Wisdom Publications made in 2017 $379k out of selling Dhamma-related stuff (books mostly) after all functional expenses were deducted. Their cash and investments position ended 2017 at $1.19 million by 31 Dec 2017. On top of that their inventory position (Dhamma-related stuff waiting to be sold) ended the year at $1.7 million.
Last but not least, it called my attention the fact that Wisdom Publications apparently made very little dana itself in that year. 
In 2017, the reported total made amount of donation and gifts given/offered was of only about $8,100 (eight thousand and one hundred dollars) . This is a very small figure when compared to to the $161,000 spent in travel, accommodation/occupancy, conferences, conventions and meetings in that same year. 
How much is Wisdom Publications worth?
There are many ways the value of a positive cash flow business such as Wisdom Publication can be assessed.
On a conservative basis, we may approach it by its current outstanding cash and cash equivalents position ($1.19 million) and of course the operating cash flow stream selling Dhamma-related stuff yields (~380k / year).
A simple net present value calculation over this cash flow stream assuming it to remain at this level in the long term and a reasonable risk-adjusted capital cost of opportunity of 10% would result in $3.8 million. Hence, it is worth at least $5 million in total.
We may as well tackle the question from a simpler end and use instead the average Price to Earnings ratio of ~25-28x for the Publishing & Newspaper industry found at this link. This means that Wisdom Publications could be worth as much as $9-11 million, or 25-28 times the net profit of $380 k reported in 2017 ( “Revenue less expenses” in the document above).
You may add as well to both the above measures the net-of-depreciation value of Wisdom Publications’ fixed assets - land, buildings, and equipment- booked at $355k as of year end 2017.
Source for the above is: Charity Navigator - Rating for Wisdom Publication Inc.
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Just FYI: “occupancy” means office space costs, not hotels
Did you open the doc in the link?
Occupancy was $78,620 of that total.
Travel was $55,500 and $26,303 was conference, conventions and meetings.
Occupancy may not be office space as afaik they own the property from which they operate. Unless the one running the business charges the charity for his home office ? 
042979113_201712_990.pdf (873.1 KB)
Occupancy: The amount for the use of office space or other facilities, including rent; heat, light, power, and other utilities expenses; property insurance; real estate taxes; mortgage interest; and similar occupancy-related expenses. Does not include expenses reported as office expenses (such as telephone expenses).
So I guess it’s their utilities and insurance bills then?
Maybe, but sounds like a big sum for such a small office!
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Don’t forget the Osho-“Movement”. Under a big dispute between the followers one part of the leading crew installed some legal construct in New York, which has now the copyright on all “Osho”-texts and can deny communities of followers to use the name “Osho” for their events/workshops etc. I do no more know this all exactly (because this happened at least 20 years ago and I was no member, only observer) , I think it should be written in wikipedia.
(Late p.s.: if one is interested in some insider reflection: I’ve been in an email list at that time (“Sannyas-list” I think) and had collected and saved, but not curated, the email exchange of a couple of years then, but which was mostly from the side of the critics of the commercializing/legalizing process. So if there is really interest (private or research) I could look through my archives and make accessible what I have - but only on such a restricted base)
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I just bought the Ajahn Jayasoro book on Ajahn Chah for $65.00, its massive and beautifully written.
I received that for free thanks to who ever paid to have 1000’s of them made and donated some to the buddhist library in Sydney. I did not read the whole thing but I passed it on to a friend who, in fact, did!
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