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From Maimonides to Microsoft : The Jewish Law of Copyright Since the Birth of Print.
2016
Details
Title
From Maimonides to Microsoft : The Jewish Law of Copyright Since the Birth of Print.
Item Type
Journal article
Description
1 online resource
ISBN
9780190456658 eBook
Summary
Jewish copyright law comprises a rich body of doctrine and jurisprudence that developed in parallel with Anglo-American and Continental European copyright laws and the book privileges that preceded them. Jewish copyright law traces its origins to sixteenth-century Italy. A rabbinic court in Rome issued a decree in 1518 forbidding the reprinting of a book of Hebrew grammar for a period of 10 years without the permission of the author or publisher. A major dispute followed in 1550 regarding rival publications in Venice of the Mishneh Torah by Moses Maimonides. Jewish copyright law continues to develop to this day, as we see in a recent rabbinic ruling concerning pirated software, issued at Microsoft’s request. Jewish copyright law is embodied in rabbinic reprinting bans along with parallel rulings, decrees, commentary, and haskamot, running from the sixteenth century through the Enlightenment and to the present. It reflects the regulations of semi-autonomous Jewish community councils, including the Council of Four Lands. This body of jurisprudence collectively addresses many of the same issues that animate copyright jurisprudence today: Is copyright a property right, or a limited regulatory prerogative? What is copyright’s rationale? What is its scope? How can copyright be enforced against an infringer who is beyond the applicable legal authority’s reach? In forging answers to those questions, rabbinic jurists have drawn repeatedly upon the examples of secular book privilege and copyright systems, and have had to navigate the limits to rabbinic and Jewish communal authority imposed by sovereign states.
Series
Source of Description
Online resource
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Published
Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2016
Language
English
Record Appears in
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