{"id":186667,"date":"2013-11-23T23:11:00","date_gmt":"2013-11-24T04:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2013\/11\/23\/the-juxtaposition-of-jewish-ethics-and-ip\/"},"modified":"2013-11-23T23:11:00","modified_gmt":"2013-11-24T04:11:00","slug":"the-juxtaposition-of-jewish-ethics-and-ip","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2013\/11\/23\/the-juxtaposition-of-jewish-ethics-and-ip\/","title":{"rendered":"The Juxtaposition of Jewish Ethics and IP"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Copryight, patent, and <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Pirkei_Avot\">Pirkei Avot<\/a>? Really?<\/p>\n<p>Yes, really.<\/p>\n<p>Harold Feld, public interest telco lawyer, and apparently a decent Talmudic scholar writes a <a href=\"http:\/\/tales-of-the-sausage-factory.wetmachine.com\/intellectual-property-jewish-ethics-and-aaron-swartz\/#more-4528\">well documented explanation of why our current IP regime is actually immoral under Jewish norms<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>A sample:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">As I shall explain, many people think that the debate around  intellectual property and public policy involves a conflict between the  first type \u2013 hasheli sheli v\u2019shelcha shelcha (what\u2019s mine is mine,  what\u2019s yours is yours) \u2013 and the second type \u201csheli shelch v\u2019shelcha  sheli\u201d (what\u2019s mine is yours, what\u2019s yours is mine). The media (which  come down firmly on the side of their owners for expanding copyright)  frame the debate as the well-meaning but foolish \u2018Information wants to  be free\u2019 v. the more intuitively appealing respect for \u2018intellectual  property.\u2019 Unworldly academics and idealistic young hackers, we are  constantly told, simply don\u2019t understand that without a way to control  and make money from things like copyright, patent and trademark we would  have no publishing industry, no movie industry, no medicines and  technology and other inventions.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">In reality, however, the modern debate over intellectual property <i>policy <\/i>in  the last 30 years actually takes place solely in the context of the  first sentence of the Mishna. The question is not whether we should have  copyright or patent or trademark in an abstract sense. In light of our  constant creation of new rights of enforcement and burdens placed on  others for non-infringing uses, such as the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Act\">Digital Millennium Copyright Act<\/a> and its \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.chillingeffects.org\/anticircumvention\/\">anti-circumvention provision<\/a>,\u201d and our efforts to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/blogs\/monkey-cage\/wp\/2013\/11\/18\/the-united-states-is-isolated-in-the-trans-pacific-partnership-negotiations\/\">force these ever expanding policies on other countries through trade agreements<\/a> negotiated in secret, such as the recently reported <a href=\"http:\/\/www.publicknowledge.org\/blog\/wikileaks-shows-whats-new-and-whats-old-abo\">Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement<\/a>  (TPP), the question is whether we have departed from ethical laws and  increasingly come to resemble the injustice and cruelty of Sodom.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>As an FYI to the gentiles reading this, the idea that Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed for sexual improprieties is not a part of normative Jewish theology.<\/p>\n<p>Rather, it was destroyed because of the greed of the people and the way that they treated foreigners.<\/p>\n<p>Read the whole thing.<\/p>\n<p>To the Jews among my readers, this would be an excellent d&#8217;var for Vayera.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Copryight, patent, and Pirkei Avot? Really? Yes, really. Harold Feld, public interest telco lawyer, and apparently a decent Talmudic scholar writes a well documented explanation of why our current IP regime is actually immoral under Jewish norms. A sample: As I shall explain, many people think that the debate around intellectual property and public policy &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1134,1002,1109,1191,1021],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-186667","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-copyright","category-good-writing","category-ip","category-patent","category-religion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186667"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186667"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186667\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}