evidence: It turns out the King James Bible isn’t conventionally copyrighted. The work actually predates the concept of copyright by nearly a century (copyright started with the Statute of Anne in 1710). What you’re actually seeing is a unique, and thoroughly antiquated, publishing monopoly that functions as a copyright by other means. We’ll discuss what that means for everyone later, but let’s first look at the legal situation, so far as I am able to understand it. [...] As per the other Wikipedia article, to which I have just linked, the Queen’s Printer gets the rights to the King James Bible from Royal Letters Patent. That means you’re dealing with the Royal Prerogative, not with Statute Law. What does the 1988 Act say about that? [...] In honor of the KJV’s 400th anniversary, London’s newly reconstituted Globe Theater—Shakespeare’s old home stage—scheduled a series of actors to recite the entire King James Bible from the stage between Palm Sunday and Easter of 2011. But a few days before the presentation, the director received a bill for payment of a substantial royalty fee for the privilege of reading it publicly. The British Crown actually owns the copyright to the King James Bible, which has been renewed upon the accession of each succeeding monarch since King James himself. So the queen, through the auspices of Cambridge University Press, was sending him a bill, according to BBC Music Magazine.