[Avodah] Copyright redux

[Arie Folger]

RMB:
<<There is a long history of protecting the rights of published sefarim,
not allowing others to republish the material on their own.>>

As you did mention, that was based on cherem and on the classicla notion
of hassagat gevul. In fact, the time alotted to recoup expenses and make
profit was much shorter than current copyrights, and it was clearly in
order to promote a societal ood: having more seforim printed. Thus, the
protection afforded in days of yore supports the notion that copyright is
a crated right and that it cannot be arbitrarily legislated. Exactly my
speculation.

<<Also, the SuM's reasoning raises the notion of obeying the society's
moral code well beyond any limitations of DDD or even any loopholes in
any laws based on the moral stance.>>

But the flip side is to consider such artificial rights problematic,
because the transfer of rights may be unwarranted.

<<This also gets to the issue of ve'asisa hatov vehayashar, where the din
is simply to be moral rather than the din defining specific behavior.
However, that's a topic for another post.>>

Same as above. It is hard to make patents and copyrights such a simple and
straigthforward moral issue. Personally, I feel that we need to work
within the system, but may be we should both lobby against excessive
intellectual property laws by pointing out how dubiously moral they can
become, and to maximize the available consumer rights, including legally
available loopholes, insofar as these correspond to halakhcally
permissible actions. That last caveat is of course enormous and requires
that much more be written on the subject. Wholesale acceptance of a party
line does not equal analysis.

Kind regards,
-- 
With kind regards,
Arie Folger
http://www.ariefolger.googlepages.com