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From: wjohn@reed.UUCP (Willis Johnson)
Newsgroups: net.religion.jewish
Subject: Stolen software & halakha.
Message-ID: <1768@reed.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 4-Aug-85 01:30:54 EDT
Article-I.D.: reed.1768
Posted: Sun Aug  4 01:30:54 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 6-Aug-85 08:36:22 EDT
Organization: Reed College, Portland, Oregon
Lines: 83

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This is a slight revision of a letter which I sent to Eliyahu Teitz.
Now that Reed is out of cherem (vide articles in net.news & net.micro.mac) 
I'm reposting to the net.

 ****************
I just read the entire backlog of net.religion.jewish articles.
I hadn't realized that there were so many chareidim out there. I'd
always thought my own romance with technology to be aberrant.
I wonder what the ARI z'al would have thought of this newtwork by which
weekly sedra lessons are zapped by phone, microwave & satellite le kol
afsei haaretz.  Do you suppose that, per the Benei Yisesesachor, Ma
Bell's infrastructure will some day, suddenly crumble as it yields up
its last netzuts kedusha with the posting of the address of a kosher
bakery in Albuquerque?  

A friend posed me a question the other day & it's given me pause.
"What are the Talmudic /ethical implications of using stolen software?"

Out here in the hinterlands (I'm in Portland, Oregon) where even an
Igres Moshe is impossible to find, I get asked some very difficult
questions by my very modern friends.  [Gabei kedushas ha-shem, by
the way:  I read a couple of articles from people who were questioning
the sanctity of shemos in binary or magnetic form.  There's a teshuva in
Igres Moshe on that topic.  He poskins that they are not holy.  I can't
provide you with a citation as, out here in the hinterlands...]  So, I'm
writing to you in the hope that we might engage in some divrei torah via
computer mail.

 			* * * * * * * * * *
Hanidun:
Are computer programs property?  What constitutes property and does
ownership extend to ideas?  In what ways might intellectual property
differ from tangible property?  

Commercially marketed software is ordinarily said to have a "half life"
based on the amount of time which will pass before it becomes readily
available at no cost from sources which do not pay royalties to the
copyright holder.

If the copyright holder acknowledges in advance that his product is 
"perishable" does that constitute a de facto acceptance of its
unauthorized reproduction by "bootleggers?"
 			* * * * * * * * * *
 

Two halachik analogies present themselves immediately:

1)  hasagas gevul, as in the case of copyrights on printed books.  I
think there's a discussion of this in the introduction to Tosefos Yom
Tov's commentary on the Mishna.  This validates the idea of intellectual
property as a means of earning a parnassah.  However, in the case of the
(effective) granting of a copyright on the mishna there was a time
limit.  And this brings me to the second point:

2)  eyushi meiish, as in the discussions in the (second perek of?) Baba
Matsiah (Elu matsias shelo, velu chaiv lehakriz...) of the intangible 
connection between an owner & his property.  Under a variety of 
circumstances a normal person could be expected to give up all hope 
of recovering his lost object & it would become hefker.  The case there
of someone who sees his property floating down the river and is running
after it seems analogous to attempts made by software vendors to copy
protect their software even though they think of it as "perishable."

Don't the software vendors market their programs ol smakh that they will
be copied?

3)  Where does dina dmalkusa dina fit into this?  Presumably, here in
golos (& consequently NOT under hamalkus harashaais), we are bound to
obey secular law so long as it does not conflict with halacka.  However,
dina dmalkusa dina may not apply in all countries either because A) they
have no laws which address the issue of software piracy, or B) the case
of eretz yisroel is being considered.  For the sake of discussion, I'd
like to avoid such arguments as
		"It's a violation of U.S. law.  
		Dina dmalkusa dina.
		It's assur.
		Q.E.D."

Eliyahu Johnson
aka Willis Johnson
aka ...tektronix!reed!wjohn