My Great Grandfather was Harris Epstein the Great Inventor of a Patented Folding Umbrella, Extension Ladder and more

I am named after my great-grandfather, Harris (Tzvee) Epstein, aka, Epstein the Inventor, who lived in New York City and Spring Valley. I probably inherited my technical curiosity from him.

He was the inventor and patent holder of many practical items, a folding umbrella, an extension ladder, a double sided toothbrush, a vegetable grater and more.

Here are of his patents with their links from Google Patent search: 

FOLDING UMBRELLA Patent number: 1666692 Filing date: Jan 29, 1927 Issue date: Apr 17, 1928

SIGNALING APPARATUS US Pat. 1060898 - H. EPSTEIN. SIGNALING APPARATUS, APPLICATION PILED JAN. 26, 19.11. Patented May 6,1913.

EXTENSION LADDER US Pat. 949529 - Filed Feb 10, 1909

VEGETABLE GRATER US Pat. 1799963 - Filed Apr 4, 1930... UNITED STATES PATENT OFFICE HARRIS EPSTEIN, OF ROCKAWAY BEACH, NEW YORK VEGETABLE GRATER

GAS-CONTROLLING DEVICE US Pat. 968457 - Filed Jan 11, 1910

TOOTH BRUSH Patent number: 1111144 Filing date: Oct 4, 1913 Issue date: Sep 22, 1914

Papa Epstein, as he was called by his grandchildren, sure would have liked the age of the personal computer and the Internet, especially the iPad and smart phone.

[Augmented repost from 12/17/06]

Moby Dick and My Babylonian Talmud Tractate Hullin Translation

Who would not want their published work compared to that of Herman Melville's, Moby Dick?

Yes, that is a documented fact. My translation of Talmud Bavli Hullin was cast in such a light in a review some time back.

The work has been enhanced and republished now in two volumes for sale at Amazon: Hullin part 1 and Hullin part 2.

And it is available as an ebook for kindle.

Here is that wonderful review. Me and Melville!

---

Ioudaios Review, VOLUME 2.024, NOVEMBER 1992, Reviewed by: Sigrid Peterson, Department of Religious Studies, University of Pennsylvania

The Talmud of Babylonia.  An American Translation: Volume XXX.A: Tractate Hullin; Chapters 1-2.. Tzvee Zahavy, Translator. Brown Judaic Studies 253. Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1992. Pp. xix + 238.

“All may slaughter,” has to be one of the more memorable three-word opening lines ever invented – right up there with “Call me Ishmael.”  While the latter is the opening to Melville’s Moby Dick, the former is less readily identifiable. In fact, the words “All may slaughter” open and form the reiterated recall to the ground theme of Tzvee Zahavy’s modern English translation of Hullin, one of the Tractates of the Babylonian Talmud. On beginning Moby Dick, I am sure I would feel conscientious and obligated and virtuous and bored. Similarly, that was my expectation in opening Hullin on preparing to review it. That expectation has been dispelled by this accessible and fascinating portrayal of the world of the rabbis.

Our Work is Published in the World's Most Expensive Jewish Books: $970 or $1,004

These may be the World's Most Expensive Jewish Books. And they have our work inside.

The Law of Agriculture in the Mishnah and the Tosefta Translation, Commentary, Theology ($970 if ordered from Brill) ($1,004 from Amazon)

Our contributions are Berakhot (pages 398-574) and Hallah (pages 2601-2627).

The book set is not titled accurately. Tractate Berakhot, the first in the book, is about prayer, liturgy (the Shema and Amidah) and blessings. The rest of the tractates are about agriculture and many other topics.

The listing for this book set from the publisher does not properly credit any of the contributors.

Publisher's Book Set Description - This project presents in three volumes the Mishnah's and the Tosefta's first division, Zera'im (Agriculture), organized in eleven topical tractates, together with a systematic history of the law of Zeraim in the Mishnah. To the exposition of the Halakhah on the chosen topic, the Mishnah-tractates are primary but complemented by the Tosefta's presentation of its collection of glosses of the Mishnah's law and supplements to that law.

The Mishnah's and the Tosefta's tractates are integrated, with the Tosefta's complement given in the setting of the Mishnah's rules, and the whole is given in English translation. The presentation in each case encompasses an introduction, a form-analytical translation and commentary, a systematic integration of the Tosefta's compositions into the Mishnah's laws, an explanation of the details of the law, and an inquiry into how the Halakhah of the Mishnah and that of the Tosefta intersect, item by item.

Readership: All those interested in Jewish prayer and liturgy, agricultural law, Mishnaic law and Tosefta.

Product Details
Hardcover: 2112 pages
Publisher: Brill Academic Pub
Language: English
Publication year: 2005
Series: Handbook of Oriental Studies. Section 1 The Near and Middle East, 79
ISBN-10: 90 04 14503 6; ISBN-13 (Brill)The ISBN (International Standard Book Number) on 1 January 2007: 978 9004145 03 0
Cover: Hardback
Number of pages: Vol.I, xxii, 800 pp.; Vol. II, xiv, 975 pp.; Vol. III, xiv, 1013 pp. (English)
Number of volumes: 3

Gerson's Church of Copimism hits the New Yorker

We still do not get the joke that Isak Gerson in Uppsala is playing on us. He has achieved church status for his software piracy group. Yes, if Sweden thinks that all religion is a joke, then this is a natural progression.

Whatever. New Yorker sent someone to do a story on Copimism and they delved, as they do, into the details. We gag on this. Some people can live in total disrespect of property and of faith. Not us. In the middle of the New Yorker article we found this poetic gem,

When Gerson talks about Kopimism as a religion, his tone is good-humored, but he also comes off as disarmingly sincere. Even if this religious-registration business is just a bit of political theatre, there’s no doubt that there’s an honestly and deeply held conviction at its core: the free exchange of information as a fundamental right. But is that enough to make it a genuine religion? When I asked Professor Bäckström, he hesitated. “Today you can believe in anything, so I suppose the idea of belief is a minor issue in a Northern European setting,” he said. “Belief can be a very wide concept.” He admitted, though, that he suspects that Kopimism is primarily an activist prank.

Isak Gerson's Church of Kopimism Recognized in Sweden as a Religion

We don't get the joke. Copyright violation is a crime.

Press release from the Church of Kopimism

The Church of Kopimism is recognized by the state of Sweden

Just before Christmas, the Swedish governmental agency Kammarkollegiet registered the Church of Kopimism as a religious organisation. This means that Sweden is the first country to recognize kopimism as a religion.

The Church of Kopimism have tried to become registered as a religious organisation by Kammarkollegiet for more than a year.

- Since Kammarkollegiet has been strict with formalities, we had to apply three times, a happy Gustav Nipe - board chairman for the organisation - says. He continues, I think it might have something to do with the governmental organisations abiding by a very copyright friendly attitude, with a twisted view on copying.
For the Church of Kopimism, information is holy and copying is a sacrament. Information holds a value, in itself and in what it contains, and the value multiplies through copying. Therefore, copying is central for the organisation and its members.

Being recognized by the state of Sweden is a large step for all of kopimi. Hopefully, this is one step towards the day when we can live out our faith without fear of persecution, says Isak Gerson, spiritual leader of the Church of Kopimism.

The Church of Kopimism is a religious organisation with roots from 2010. The organisation formalizes a community that's been well spread for a long time already. The community of kopimi requires no formal membership. You just have to feel a calling to worship what is the holiest of the holiest, information and copy. To do this, we organize kopyactings - religious services - where the kopimists share information with eachother through copying and remix.

Copy and seed.
Link http://kopimistsamfundet.se/
Contact
Isak Gerson, spiritual leader: 0046731585745
Gustav Nipe, board chairman: 0046760188918

Isak Gerson is involved in the Christian student movement in Sweden (which is anti-Israel), so despite his Jewish sounding name, he is not a Jew.

On his web page he explains further:

A "Kopimist" or "Kopimist intellectual" is person who has the philosophical belief that all information should be freely distributed and unrestricted. This philosophy opposes copyrights in all forms and encourages piracy of all types of media including music, movies, TV shows, and software. The term kopimist originates from the root word, kopimi, meaning 'copy me'.

As a writer who has been the victim of copyright violation, we do not find this activity humorous.

As a professor who takes religion seriously, we in no way agree with this declaration by Swedish authorities.

Times: Feldheim Index of theTalmud

Joe Berger wrote an article in the Times about a new index to the Talmud Bavli.

It may be useful. We have not seen it. For sure, indexing is the driest work that a student can do.

Unfortunately, contrary to what Times reporter Berger was told by the publishers and editors of this new work, there were previously published concordances to the Mishnah and Talmud by Chaim Kasovsky, essentially indexing every word of the texts. We own the four volume Mishnah Concordance and have it open in front of us as we write this. You can order a used set on Amazon as of today.

JVL summarizes the Kasovsky work:

KASOVSKY, CHAYIM YEHOSHUA (1873–1960), Israeli rabbinical scholar. Kasovsky received his early education at the Eẓ Ḥayyim Talmud Torah in Jerusalem where his father Abraham Abele Kasovsky was an instructor. At the age of 20, he was contributing articles to various periodicals on such subjects as Hebrew language and grammar, geometry, and talmudic themes.

Kasovsky's reputation rests upon the concordances which he compiled of the Mishnah, the Tosefta, Targum Onkelos, and the Babylonian Talmud (the last of which he was unable to complete). He undertook this task alone and under difficult conditions. He finally evolved a scheme which served as the "key" to the compilation of the concordances. Unable to afford a publisher, Kasovsky acquired a primitive press and set and printed the first volume of the concordance of the Mishnah himself. Its appearance in 1914 caused a sensation in the scholarly world. A committee was established to provide the necessary means to enable Kasovsky to continue his work: the four-volume Oẓar Leshon ha-Mishnah (1957–60); the six-volume Tosefta concordance (1933–61); and the four-volume Onkelos (1933–40). Kasovsky's works subsequently became indispensable to all scholars in those fields. His Talmud concordance (1954– ) consisted of 24 volumes by 1970, up to the letter Mem. After his death, his youngest son Benjamin continued the work (from vol. 10, 1962). His oldest son, Moshe, prepared a concordance of the Jerusalem Talmud under the auspices of the Israel Academy for Sciences and Humanities and the Jewish Theological Seminary of America.

We do hope the printed edition of the new index gives proper credit in the book to the published  Kasovsky work that preceded it.

Kasovsky's Tosefta Concordance can be downloaded here -  אוצר לשון התוספתא

The other works are out of print or hard to obtain. So we do welcome this new Talmud study tool.

Note that these new index books are not available for ordering on the publisher's web site as of this posting.

"God's Favorite Prayers" - completely accessible and indexed by Amazon

Elana Sztokman Still Likes Naomi Ragen

In an interesting and thoughtful Foreward article, "After Plagiarism Suit, Standing by Naomi Ragen," writer Elana Sztokman has made up her mind. She will not abandon her icon, writer Naomi Ragen, even after Ragen was found guilty of plagiarism.

Now, Elana wants to let us know that she is willing to forgive and forget and will stand by her woman, even though the infraction was not against her. That's a bit gracious of her, though nobody thought to ask her how she felt, since she did not suffer the plagiarism attack.

Ragen did not plagiarize Sztokman's work, so the forgiveness is not that difficult. Elana might have consulted with the victim first before deciding what is best for the Orthodox sisterhood.

Plagiarism is a vicious crime against our profession. It is a cardinal offense against a writer. We know this because we suffered a direct and eggregious attack of plagiarism and copyright infringement two years ago from a close mentor who published our work (some 900 pages) under his name. As a direct victim, we felt the full brunt of the attack, the "violence" of the crime. We searched our soul, maintained our dignity, forgave the transgressor, settled the matter out of court, and let it go. It was not easy.

The Times on Golan v. Holder and the Public Domain

A strong and clear Times Editorial defends the idea of the public domain against the onslaught of congressional interference. We await a supreme court decision on the case in point. We concur with the Times, as stated below:

The Public Domain

A major copyright case argued at the Supreme Court last week tests Congress’s power to expand copyright protection against First Amendment interests in having older works remain in the public domain. In Golan v. Holder, free speech rights should prevail.

The lawsuit was brought by orchestra conductors, educators and others who challenged Congress’s ability to restore copyright protection to foreign works that had been in the public domain for decades. They make a convincing argument that restoration has caused them to lose free expression rights central to their professions.

In 1994, Congress restored the copyright of many important works by foreign authors — like Prokofiev’s “Peter and the Wolf” — that had entered the public domain in the United States but are still protected by copyright in their own countries. The restoration was part of a larger trade pact, the Uruguay Round Agreements Act.

The government contends that Section 514 of the pact, promotes progress through “active participation” in the global economy. But the restoration breaks with two centuries of understanding about the public domain: what enters there remains there, free to all for any kind of use. Section 514 violates the First Amendment by removing works from the public domain and curbing the public’s right to expression and it impedes growth of knowledge.

As the petitioners said in their brief, “no treaty can authorize the government to do what the Constitution otherwise prohibits.” Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. put it this way during argument: “One day I can perform Shostakovich; Congress does something, the next day I can’t. Doesn’t that present a serious First Amendment problem?”

Copyright gives writers and others the incentive to create by giving them exclusive right to their work. But Congress’s power to grant copyright is limited in time and scope so that works can move into the public domain, where they become an essential part of our culture. The government must find other ways to comply with the trade treaty without curbing free expression.

Golan v. Holder, Copyright and the Soncino Talmud

Golan v. Holder is now before the Supreme Court and will be heard in October. It addresses the following issues:

Section 514 of the Uruguay Round Agreements Act of 1994 granted copyright protection to millions of works that the Copyright Act had placed in the public domain of the United States, where they had remained for years as the common property of all Americans and free to use without restriction. The questions presented here are:
1. Does the Copyright Clause of the United States Constitution prohibit Congress from taking works out of the public domain?
2. Does Section 514 violate the First Amendment of the United States Constitution?

There are two sides to this case in our Talmudic view. Copyright must be enforced for commerce in published works to be carried out in any meaningful manner. However a major concern of this case is those works that were in the public domain by virtue of legalities pre-1994, which now would be wrested from the public domain by the URAA 1994.

That universe of publications does not include the Soncino translation of the Talmud, published  between 1935 and 1948 in London. That set has long been in the public domain due to the gracious wishes of the publisher and authors to make their work universally available as  resource for the Jewish people. No matter what the decision in Golan v. Holder, the public domain status of the Soncino Talmud will not change.

We believe the Supreme Court's logic for interpreting the law of public domain publications will be as follows. What was in the PD before 1994 should remain there. Going forward from 1994, the URAA may govern copyright for publications issued after that date. But how it will govern the materials after 1994 in the PD, that is another more complex question.

The Center for Internet and Society (CIS) at Stanford Law School has several postings on this matter.

Times' Stanley Fish: Plagiarism and the Rules of Golf

We like Stanley Fish because of his sometimes strange analogies. In his current Times column, Fish compares the rules governing plagiarism with the rules governing golf. We do get it, we like it and we think it makes some sense. The problem is that most people who don't play golf won't understand what he is talking about and his analogy won't advance insights into the violation that we call "plagiarism" and the actionable tort that we call "copyright violation."

Fish proclaims what we already know by looking around at what goes on in the world, "Plagiarism is not a big moral deal." Let's see what Fish says about golf and plagiarism:

Golf’s rules have been called arcane and it is not unusual to see play stopped while a P.G.A. official arrives with rule book in hand and pronounces in the manner of an I.R.S. official. Both fans and players are aware of how peculiar and “in-house” the rules are; knowledge of them is what links the members of a small community, and those outside the community (most people in the world) can be excused if they just don’t see what the fuss is about.

Plagiarism is like that; it’s an insider’s obsession. If you’re a professional journalist, or an academic historian, or a philosopher, or a social scientist or a scientist, the game you play for a living is underwritten by the assumed value of originality and failure properly to credit the work of others is a big and obvious no-no.

We need to add a bit of Talmudic insight to what Fish says. In golf, if you violate the rules, there are penalties. A stroke or two can be added to your score for each violation. You can be disqualified from a competition or thrown off the tour if you commit a serious enough breach.

Let's say for a minute that we like to think of golf as a sort-of religion. And guess what? Golfers we play with do not observe the rules according to ultra-Orthodox standards. They know you can't take a do-over shot by the rule book. But many of us take "mulligans" usually setting our own accepted standards and trying to stick to them. One mulligan on the front nine and one on the back nine. And who has not joked about using their foot-wedge to advance the ball out of the rough?

Fish might have tried a religion analogy to explain what governs academic life. Originality is kosher and plagiarism is treif. Some folks who say they are religious, surreptitiously eat treif. Some golfers move the ball to improve their lies and save some strokes when they are out of the sight of their playing partners. Some scholars take shortcuts to enhance their reputations, put their name on the work of others to increase their output and pump up their CVs.

But at the end of the day plagiarism is not truly comparable to cheating at golf or to eating a cheeseburger. Unless you are playing for money, golf is a gentleman's (and gentlewoman's) game where you keep your own score, a competition where you are not taking the property of others if you enhance your own performance with a pencil on the scorecard. Do that and you are a cheater in the sport, a moral deal only if sportsmanship matters to you and your friends.

Religion in America is a personal calling. Unless you bring the ham into your house and desecrate your cookware, when you eat a pork sausage, you satisfy your appetite but take nothing of value from the pockets of your friends. You are a sinner within that system, and it is a moral deal on your Rosh Hashanah scorecard.

And then we come to scholarship which is both a calling and a competition. Cheaters violate their own standards and the standards of others. That's a moral deal on both levels. And of course there is that money that the plagiarizing cheater puts in his pocket, earned out of the intellectual property of others. "Not a big moral deal," insists Fish.

Fish says, "Plagiarism is breach of disciplinary decorum, not a breach of the moral universe." But Stanley. It is obviously a theft of property and that is in the Ten Commandments. So maybe you mean to say that it is a big moral deal in every traditional religious sense. But you just don't care a lot about those old rules.

We like Fish most because he does not take himself seriously. At the conclusion of his column he does a truly talmudic about-face and decides the rule of law, the halakhah, for the case in which another professor lifted his work, "They took something from me without asking and without acknowledgment, and they profited — if only in the currency of academic reputation — from work that I had done and signed. That’s the bottom line and no fancy philosophical argument can erase it."

Times: Plagiarism Runs Rampant at Universities

The Times has an excellent article on plagiarism. We have been victimized both by plagiarist students who submitted the work of others as their own and by a plagiarist colleague who actually did published our original work in his own name and attempted to publish more of our work under his name.

What we did in the case of students goes back to 2006. Instead of warning them against plagiarizing, a concept that they did not grasp, we told them that they were forbidden to copy anything from the Internet and then submit it in an assignment.

What we did in the case of the colleague was more complex, but we managed to obtain agreements and compensation and resolve the incidents without publicizing the details and without filing lawsuits.

Along we the Times, we recognize how blurry the lines are in the minds of many people when it comes to what constitutes plagiarism. This will be an progressively more complicated issue as the spread of digital access to texts grows more universal.

Lines on Plagiarism Blur for Students in the Digital Age
College officials suggest that many students simply do not grasp that using words they did not write is a serious academic misdeed....

Rabbis, Pirates and Goldman Sachs

Three respected rabbis spoke out on the issue of copyright piracy at a conclave in Israel, reports the IP Factor blog. Rabbi Zalman Nechemia Goldberg, Rav Shlomo Dzialowski and Rav Yitzhak HaLevi Clab made presentations:

...All three authorities accepted that since Halacha considers Civil Law on monetary matters as binding anyway, Copyright and Contract Law were sufficient to obligate parties not to make illegal downloads or installations. The ... discussion is, therefore, theoretical, in the sense that Talmudic or halakhic sources are not strictly speaking required...

We applaud this effort at leadership, even if it means that rabbis just provide Judaic support for existing civil law. That's welcome, it's good citizenship, we need more of it....more on the meeting here ...

And while we are on the subject of pirates, the Borowitz Report, hilariously rips into Goldman Sachs with this take down (hat tip to Mimi):

Somali Pirates Say They Are Subsidiary of Goldman Sachs

NORFOLK, VIRGINIA (The Borowitz Report) - Eleven indicted Somali pirates dropped a bombshell in a U.S. court today, revealing that their entire piracy operation is a subsidiary of banking giant Goldman Sachs.

There was an audible gasp in court when the leader of the pirates announced, "We are doing God's work. We work for Lloyd Blankfein."

The pirate, who said he earned a bonus of $48 million in dubloons last year, elaborated on the nature of the Somalis' work for Goldman, explaining that the pirates forcibly attacked ships that Goldman had already shorted.

"We were functioning as investment bankers, only every day was casual Friday," the pirate said.

The pirate acknowledged that they merged their operations with Goldman in late 2008 to take advantage of the more relaxed regulations governing bankers as opposed to pirates, "plus to get our share of the bailout money."

In the aftermath of the shocking revelations, government prosecutors were scrambling to see if they still had a case against the Somali pirates, who would now be treated as bankers in the eyes of the law.

"There are lots of laws that could bring these guys down if they were, in fact, pirates," one government source said. "But if they're bankers, our hands are tied." 

Is David Shields Jewish?

Yes, according to NYU's Bullpen, David Shields is, "a secular Jew who defines himself by his Jewish-ness." He was born in Los Angeles in 1956 and now lives in Seattle with his wife and daughter.

We know (or should we say it appears ) that David Shields was at Brown in 1976 when we were finishing our PhD there.

Of course he may not be Jewish at all. In his current work, Reality Hunger: A Manifesto, Shields makes it clear that he takes pride in how he blurs the lines between fact and fiction.

He also makes clear that he demolishes the distinction between his words and the words of others. The 200 pages of his anthology-essay mostly present the observations of other writers arranged according to Shields' 26 alphabetical chapters of varying length with cryptic sub-titles.

The problem is that in all his work of citation, Shields does not tell us who said what. The ancient Talmud would inform us in its anthological compositions that, "Rabbi X says" and an average modern essayist would provide footnotes to grant attribution. To be fair, there are some crippled notes in the back, which Shields explains are only there because lawyers for the publisher insisted on it. He'd rather the whole mess of citations go without assignment to its authors.

We are supposed to say either in praising him that Shields is daring or provocative, or in damning him that he has lost his senses and subverts literary propriety. Most books (post Unibomber) called "a manifesto" invite the latter appraisal.

If we copy his book and put our name on it, and start to sell it as our own or give it away, Shields would not rejoice, that we assure you. Subversive as subset of attention-getter is not the same as subversive as subset of social-disruptive.

You can enjoy the book in any event because Shields has assembled a Midrashic-Talmudic compilation of contemporary aphorisms on a wide variety of topics of varying length, depth and acumen. He clearly had fun "writing" this book.And about 30% of the material has some point to it.

So yes, Shields is a Jew, and to some degree he has written in style a rabbinic treatise. On occasion he slips in Jewish references, e.g. on page 50, "Verboten thematic: secular Jews, laureates of the real, tend to be better at analyzing reality than re-creating it..." followed by the dropping of the names of 14 names of Jews exemplifying the cryptic claim without telling us further what it means. We guess we must await the commentaries to come along and decode the meanings of each such undeveloped and incoherent passage in this assemblage.

We were hoping for some edification of a particular theme that was promised in a way in some blurb or other -- of why a person would steal another person's writing, put their name on it and publish it as their own. Nope. The author takes an "audacious stance" on hot issues. But not that one.

Bottom line. This book proves that audacity may generate some pleasant heat without much actual illumination.

Times: Michiko Kakutani reviews 8 books about the end of Authorship

We wanted to call up the Times' critic Michiko Kakutani after reading her essay in the Times, "Texts Without Context" and explain to her that the mashup universe that she reviews in her essay and in particular, what David Shields does in Reality Hunger, to assemble texts without regard for authorship, is not something new or unfamiliar to a person who has spent time with the Talmud, Midrash, rabbinic literature or even many biblical texts for that matter.

Authorship is less urgent in such a collectivity of wisdoms -- so much so that on occasion a modern writer enmeshed in its study will forget to assign or attribute authorship to the originating writer -- as we learned last year.

A mashup culture is not new to us and maybe that is why we feel comfortable surfing the Talmudic sea of cyberspace.

Jason Lanier, Kakutani says,

... astutely points out in his new book, “You Are Not a Gadget,” of how online collectivism, social networking and popular software designs are changing the way people think and process information, a question of what becomes of originality and imagination in a world that prizes “metaness” and regards the mash-up as “more important than the sources who were mashed.”

The end of text has been a long time coming, as Kakutani muses that,

...deconstruction, which became fashionable in American academia in the 1980s, it enshrined individual readers’ subjective responses to a text over the text itself, thereby suggesting that the very idea of the author (and any sense of original intent) was dead.

Aside: Like a guppy swimming upstream, we fight the deconstructive tides in our current book on the prayers of the synagogue in description that targets the text, author, original intent, archetypal meaning, or as we used to call it, the meaning of the content.

Observer via HuffPost: Times Plagiarist Zachery Kouwe has Resigned

Plagiarism is a capital crime in journalism and in academia. As the offender Kouwe himself says, there are no excuses.

There will be more on this sad event, but for now the NY Observer via HuffPost reports that Times plagiarist Zachery Kouwe has resigned.

Update: The New York Observer's John Koblin spoke to Kouwe, who resigned on Tuesday.

"I was as surprised as anyone that this was occurring," Kouwe said. "I write essentially 7,000 words every week for the blog and for the paper and all that stuff. As soon as I saw, I guess, like six examples, I said to myself, 'Man what an idiot. What I was thinking?'"

"I was stupid and careless and fucked up and thought it was my own stuff, or it somehow slipped in there," he added. "I think that's what probably happened."

Still, he acknowledged the seriousness of his mistakes and did not excuse himself.

"There's no excuse for this," he said. "I understand the seriousness of it. Even if it was inadvertent, that doesn't make it any less serious."

Read Koblin's entire piece here....

Times' editor comment from Koblin, “We have a zero tolerance policy for unethical journalism,” wrote Mr. Keller in an e-mail to The Observer. “Plagiarism is unethical journalism.”

Newsweek on Gerald Posner: Lies heaped on top of plagiarism

We stopped telling students not to plagiarize when we realized that they did not know what that word meant. Instead we told them that they may not copy anything from anywhere into the work that they present to us as their own unless they tell us they are doing that by using attributions and quotation marks and footnotes.

Students continue to plagiarize no matter what we say. Professors plagiarize too and apparently so do journalists.

When caught, the students are failed, the professors and the journalists are fired, except when they are not, when they get away with their misdeeds, which is most of the time for professors and on occasion for the journalists.

When a plagiarist gets caught he tells a story to explain how it happened, which given the circumstances, we ought to assume is an outright lie.

Pope Asserts Ownership and Control of His Copyright and Brand

We applaud the Pope for standing up to protect his copyright. We know how much aggravation the Pope must feel when he sees others using his intellectual property without attribution, or worse, infringing on his brand.

And yet, we see this no-context-mode of a blanket declaration by the Vatican, without reference to any specific violations that provoked it, to be inviting humorous responses. And so we begin by saying, we hold the truth to be self-evident that the Pope was endowed with certain unalienable copyrights...

Holy See declares unique copyright on Papal figure
Vatican City, Dec 19, 2009 / 12:23 pm (CNA).- The Vatican made a declaration on the protection of the figure of the Pope on Saturday morning. The statement seeks to establish and safeguard the name, image and any symbols of the Pope as being expressly for official use of the Holy See unless otherwise authorized.

The statement cited a "great increase of affection and esteem for the person of the Holy Father" in recent years as contributing to a desire to use the Pontiff's name for all manner of educational and cultural institutions, civic groups and foundations.

Due to this demand, the Vatican has felt it necessary to declare that "it alone has the right to ensure the respect due to the Successors of Peter, and therefore, to protect the figure and personal identity of the Pope from the unauthorized use of his name and/or the papal coat of arms for ends and activities which have little or nothing to do with the Catholic Church."

The declaration alludes to attempts to use ecclesiastical or pontifical symbols and logos to "attribute credibility and authority to initiatives" as another reason to establish their “copyright” on the Holy Father's name, picture and coat of arms.

"Consequently, the use of anything referring directly to the person or office of the Supreme Pontiff... and/or the use of the title 'Pontifical,' must receive previous and express authorization from the Holy See," concluded the message released to the press.

Hat tip to Sarx

Hebrewbooks.org has digitized Rabbi Saul Lieberman - שאול ליברמן

We have mixed feelings about the legacy of Professor Saul Lieberman. On the one hand, many literate Talmudists venerate his work and consider him a genius of the past generation.

On the other hand, a review, attributed to Lieberman and published after his death, committed a grievous act of unmitigated disrespect to the work of one of my teachers. Alas, diatribes do not expire after a set time, unlike copyrights.

We assume the JTS copyrights to these works have lapsed and that leaves them in the public domain. We hope and trust that the Lubavitch Hasidim who run hebrewbooks.org have confirmed their rights to post all of their digital versions, since the physical books are still being sold by JTS. 

"Who owns the rights to digital editions?" is a hot topic of debate now if we judge from the article on the front page of today's Times, "Legal Battles Over E-Book Rights to Older Books" by MOTOKO RICH.

Hebrewbooks.org is a mighty useful Talmudic resource. Here are their links to some Lieberman books:

על הירושלמי		ירושלים	תרפט
תוספת ראשונים-חלק ראשון		ירושלים	תרצז
תוספת ראשונים-חלק רביעי		ירושלים	תרצט
תוספת ראשונים-חלק שלישי		ירושלים	תרצט
תוספת ראשונים-חלק שני		ירושלים	תרצז
תוספתא כפשוטה על סדר זרעים		נ.י.	תשטו
תוספתא כפשוטה על סדר מועד		נ.י.	תשטו
תוספתא כפשוטה על סדר נשים-חלק א		נ.י.	תשטו
תוספתא כפשוטה על סדר נשים-חלק ב		נ.י.	תשטו
תוספתא כפשוטה-חלק א-זרעים ח”א		נ.י.	תשטו
תוספתא כפשוטה-חלק ב-זרעים ח”ב		נ.י.	תשטו
תוספתא כפשוטה-חלק ג-מועד ח”א		נ.י.	תשכב
תוספתא כפשוטה-חלק ד-מועד ח”ב		נ.י.	תשכב
תוספתא כפשוטה-חלק ה-מועד ח”ג		נ.י.	תשכב
תוספתא כפשוטה-חלק ו-נשים ח”א		נ.י.	תשכז
תוספתא כפשוטה-חלק ז-נשים ח”ב		נ.י.	תשכז
תוספתא כפשוטה-חלק ח-נשים ח”ג		נ.י.	תשלג

PS: The most comprehensive Tosefta site (yes there is one) is Tosefta Online, which links to these and many more Tosefta resources.

Note Well: Many of the questions about the nature of Tosefta and its relationship to Mishnah were thoroughly researched and resolved in published works that are not referenced on that site - specifically e.g., our own monograph, The Mishnaic Law of Blessings and Prayers: Tractate Berakhot, republished as, Part One: Mishnah-Tosefta Berakhot in The Law of Agriculture in the Mishnah and the Tosefta: Translation, Commentary, Theology. Handbook of Oriental Studies. Section 1, the Ancient near East. Brill Academic Pub, 2005.

Times: Michael Jackson's Estate Gets busted Triying to Steal Paul Anka's Song

We are sure that the Michael Jackson estate has a really good story to explain how it happened that they tried to steal a song co-written by Paul Anka.

But they were busted! And the outcome - even-steven royalty sharing.

What in the world were they thinking? Well of course! They weren't really thinking at all.

An entity made up of pure ego cannot cogitate.

Paul Anka to Get Half the Royalties for the New Michael Jackson Song
By Ben Sisario

Michael Jackson’s new song “This Is It” could prove a significant payday for Paul Anka. Although the song had been advertised as an unheard recording left behind by Mr. Jackson — and written by him alone — it became clear after it was released on Sunday night that “This Is It” was not new at all: it had been written by Mr. Jackson and Mr. Anka 26 years ago, and recorded by the singer Safire in 1991 as “I Never Heard.” Late Monday afternoon, the Jackson estate acknowledged Mr. Anka’s role and said he would be given credit. On Tuesday, the estate also confirmed that Mr. Anka would receive half of all due royalties for the song, which could be substantial. The song will play over the end credits of the film “This Is It” and feature prominently on its soundtrack. In addition, Mr. Anka would be owed fees for any licensed use of the song to commercials or other films. The Jackson estate is said to be in talks with Coca-Cola about possible use of “This Is It” in a large ad campaign, according to people with knowledge of the discussion who were not authorized to speak about it.

WSJ: Amazon Pays $150,000 in Kindle Copyright Aftermath Settlement

There's no more heinous a crime than a publisher who violates copyright law. It eats into the core of the enterprise mission of the firm and undermines the single essential relationship in the industry.

Unless... the publisher violates copyright and then, in trying to remedy the violation, destroys its clients' personal property.

Hard to imagine how this could happen except that it can in the strange world of Amazon's Kindle machine. From 10/1 -

Amazon Pays for Eating Student’s Homework

Amazon.com has settled a lawsuit with Justin D. Gawronski, a Michigan high school senior, whose copy of George Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four” was deleted from his Kindle in July.

Gawronski claimed that when Amazon wirelessly deleted the book, it also got rid of notes he had taken on the device about the book, which he needed for a homework assignment.

In the settlement first dug up by the Seattle blog TechFlash, Amazon agreed that it would not “remotely delete or modify” digital books, magazines or newspapers on Kindles (with a few exceptions). Amazon also paid Gawronski’s law firm $150,000, with the stipulation that the money be donated to charity.

Amazon didn’t respond to a request for comment, but its CEO Jeff Bezos has apologized publicly for the incident.

Gawronski’s lawyer, Jay Edelson, says Amazon did “a lot of aggressive negotiating” to reach the settlement. “It is one thing for a CEO to go out and say we will never do it again. It is more serious when it is in a legal document and it establishes legal rights,” he said.

The settlement says that Amazon can still delete content from Kindles if they get a judicial order and if they need to stop a computer virus. The promise also doesn’t apply to third-party apps (which, as of yet, aren’t sold on the Kindle), or prevent the process by which “transient” content such as blogs and newspapers are replaced with newer content.

As for Gawronski, he only got a small payout. Several weeks ago, Amazon offered all of the people who lost the book to have it redelivered or given a $30 gift certificate. Gawronski chose the $30, according to his lawyers, because he had already re-started and completed his “Nineteen Eighty-Four” assignment.

Getting rich was never his client’s goal, Edelson said. “He was just interested in setting precedent in this new area of the law.”