Oxford University Press has released
From Maimonides to Microsoft: The Jewish Law of Copyright Since the Birth of Print, by
Neil Weinstock Netanel (UCLA). A description from the Press:
Jewish copyright law is a rich body of jurisprudence that developed in
parallel with modern copyright laws and the book privileges that
preceded them. Jewish copyright law owes its origins to a reprinting ban
that the Rome rabbinic court issued for three books of Hebrew grammar
in 1518. It continues to be applied today, notably in a rabbinic ruling
outlawing pirated software, issued at Microsoft's request.
In From Maimonides to Microsoft,
Professor Netanel traces the historical development of Jewish copyright
law by comparing rabbinic reprinting bans with secular and papal book
privileges and by relaying the stories of dramatic disputes among
publishers of books of Jewish learning and liturgy.. He describes each
dispute in its historical context and examines the rabbinic rulings that
sought to resolve it. Remarkably, the rabbinic reprinting bans and
copyright rulings address some of the same issues that animate copyright
jurisprudence today: Is copyright a property right or just a right to
receive fair compensation? How long should copyrights last? What
purposes does copyright serve? While Jewish copyright law has borrowed
from its secular law counterpart at key junctures, it fashions
strikingly different answers to those key questions.
The story of
Jewish copyright law also intertwines with the history of the Jewish
book trade and with steadfast efforts of rabbinic leaders to maintain
their authority to regulate that trade in the face of the dramatic
erosion of Jewish communal autonomy in the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries. This book will thus be of considerable interest to students
of Jewish law and history as well as copyright scholars and
practitioners.
A few blurbs:
"Neil Netanel's From Maimonides to Microsoft is a masterful,
rigorous exploration of Jewish copyright law. Netanel weaves past and
present, history and theory, into an intricate socio-legal fabric, as he
unearths the making of rabbinic copyright law. The book meticulously
traces the complex interactions of a community's law with external
authorities, framed as a dynamic process of legal transplantation. The
result is the intriguing case of Jewish copyright, and this engaging
book." -Michael Birnhack
"Neil Netanel follows Jewish copyright law from the very
advent of print to the digital age. His contextualization of
developments in terms of history and the laws of the societies in which
Jews lived make this an exceptionally rich and rewarding read. Enviably
well-versed in the language and debates of modern copyright law, Netanel
contrasts and compares Jewish and secular jurisprudence through the
ages and ultimately offers conclusions about changes in traditional
Jewish life that make this much more than just a legal history." -Edward
Fram
More information is available
here. And Professor Netanel has posted the book's introduction
here.
