Regarding copyright
Hello Rabbi Michael,
I heard you say in one of the recorded lessons that there can be ownership of ideas, and you based your statement on the fact that ownership of abstract things like smell, sound, light, etc. is subordinate to ownership of the tangible thing of which the abstract thing is a characteristic.
I recently read a halachah in the Rambam that if the shofar is stolen, it is permissible to perform the obligatory ritual on Rosh Hashanah because the sound is not stolen. But the sound is something abstract that is attributed to the shofar (the tangible thing). And if we say that the abstract follows the tangible, then, as it were, the sound of the shofar is also stolen.
See my article in Tachumin Ka that deals with this, where I also dealt with the shofar and the theft of its voice. I don't remember what I wrote, but on the surface the relationship between voice and shofar is not like that between smell and apple. The smell is a property of the apple, the voice is something created by a person through the shofar. Therefore, the voice should be discussed as an independent entity, while the smell of the apple and the honey-eyed eye (in the words of the Maimonides in the Hebrew Bible) are related to the objects that carry them.
Leave a Reply
Please login or Register to submit your answer