What does the Talmud teach about rape?

After an especially harrowing discovery, we have been trying to convey to a dear and esteemed person that in America when one tries to right a wrong, the accepted method of doing that is through currency - monetary payment.

Of course, it occurred to us that it's not just an American practice. It's widespread and in particular, it's Talmudic.

Here is an anecdote to underscore that point.

Some time ago when we taught Talmud at the University of Minnesota, Rachel Adler, who was then married to our Hillel Rabbi, Moshe Adler, came to us and asked us if we'd agree to an independent studies course with her on the Talmudic texts about rape.

We had studied some of the relevant chapters during our rabbinical training. We also knew that Rachel was widely respected as a leading writer on Jewish feminist issues. Before consenting to the course we advised Rachel that she might be disappointed to find out that the rabbis of the Talmud were not concerned with or sensitive to the issues of sexuality, personal rights and gender differentials or even the cultural symbolism that Rachel found so urgent.

In fact, we cautioned, that the authorities who wrote the Torah and the Talmud did understand that rape is a violent crime and that a rapist needs to be punished and the victim needs to be compensated. In the society of the rabbis, who was the victim to be compensated by fines was a matter of some discussion.

Accordingly we were going to find that a main concern of the Talmud was the question of how the monetary compensation for the damages of the crime of rape was to be allocated, who is liable, under what circumstances, in essence, who receives the money.

Rachel duly noted my caveats and then we studied the relevant texts during that term. When we finished, she observed that the enterprise was indeed challenging and interesting and that in fact our original disclaimer was correct. The preoccupation of the text was the allocation of the fines.

Rachel went on the write several important books that treat matters related to this subject such as, Engendering Judaism: an inclusive theology and ethics.

Lesson: Clearly, compensation for a crime is not all about the money or only about the money -- in American culture or in the Talmud. To paraphrase Vince Lombardi money is not everything and it's not the only thing.

Like it or not, monetary compensation is accepted across history and cultures as the main way to right a wrong.

Rolling Stone: Government Wants to Clobber Copyright Violators

The digital age brings great opportunities for sharing information and even bigger risks of crimes against authors and publishers.

We think it is entirely just and plain common sense that the authorities have made such a giant example of an how costly it will be for a plain person in Minnesota to step over the line and steal artistic creations.

Bravo to the justice department for standing behind this judicial policy.

Justice Dept. Defends $1.92 Million RIAA Fine Against Minnesota Mom

The Department of Justice has defended the $1.92 million decision against Minnesota mom Jammie Thomas-Rasset for illegally downloading 24 songs off of a peer-to-peer network, according to the Daily Online Examiner. As Rock Daily previously reported, Thomas-Rasset asked for a reduction in the fine after she was sentenced to pay the RIAA $80,000 per song when a Minnesota jury found her guilty in her second trial. Thomas-Rasset’s lawyers had been pushing for a third trial, saying the fine of $1.92 million was disproportionate to the amount of damage she had actually done, but the Justice Department agreed with the massive ruling.

“The defendant’s suggestion that the actual harm can be measured to the ‘tune of $1.29 for each of the 24 songs’ … ignores the potential multiplying effect of peer-to-peer file-sharing,” the Justice Department said in legal documents filed last week reinforcing the decision. The papers also mention a 1999 amendment that increased the maximum fine per “infringed work for willful violations” to $150,000, so there is legal precedence for the huge fine against Thomas-Rasset. Lawyers for Thomas-Rasset argued that the $1.92 million fine was unconstitutional, but that too was rejected by the Justice Department...more...

Times: Copyright Infringement Does Not Pay for Joel Tenenbaum

Warning - copyright infringement is a serious and costly crime... even more serious if you can prove that it was willful.

Graduate Student Fined in Music Download Case

A jury decided on Friday that a Boston University graduate student who admitted to downloading more than 800 songs from the Internet between 1999 and 2007 should pay $675,000 in damages to four record labels for copyright violations, The Associated Press reported. The student, Joel Tenenbaum, right, testified Thursday in federal district court in Boston that he had downloaded and shared hundreds of songs by artists including Nirvana, Green Day and the Smashing Pumpkins, and said he had lied in pretrial depositions when he said friends or siblings may have downloaded the songs to his computer. The record labels involved in the case have focused on 30 songs that Mr. Tenenbaum, 25, downloaded. Under federal law they were entitled to $750 to $30,000 for each infringement, but the jury was permitted to raise that to as much as $150,000 a track if it found the infringements were willful.

What does the Amazon Kindle 1984 Affair teach us about copyright infringement?

We ask, What does the Amazon Kindle "1984" affair teach us about copyright infringement?

Amazon made a mistake. The company sold some copies of a book by George Orwell in violation of its copyright.

The officials at Amazon deemed this such a serious error that they went ahead and retrieved all the offending copies that they sold from their customers' Kindles.

The managers at Amazon knew the irony of a "Big Brother" deleting copies of the book "1984" would make for a juicy unflattering story in the news media.

They also knew that copyright infringement by any author, publisher or book dealer is a despicable and unforgivable offense. It is a game ending sin. Once the trust is breached, it is gone.

Amazon did the right thing even though it has resulted in many mocking articles and blog postings.

Amazon is to be commended for their decisive and honest actions after discovering their copyright infringement mistake.

Applause please.

AP: Google Bringing Digital Immortality to Ancient Books

This gives us some further insight into the digital immortal salvation that Google is bringing to ancient books. Meditative process indeed.

Digitizing ancient books a laborious process
Globally, hundreds of librarians turning pages for Google
Natasha Robinson, Associated Press

In a dimly lit back room on the second level of the University of Michigan library's book-shelving department, Courtney Mitchel helped a giant desktop machine digest a rare, centuries-old Bible.

Mitchel is among hundreds of librarians from Minnesota to England making digital versions of the most fragile of the books to be included in Google Inc.'s Book Search, a portal that eventually will lead users to all the estimated 50 million to 100 million books in the world.

The manual scanning - up to 600 pages a day - is much slower than Google's regular process.

"It's monotonous," said Mitchel, 24. "But it's still something that I'm learning about - how to interact with really old materials and working with digital imaging, which is relevant to art history."

The unusually tight binding on the early 16th century polyglot Bible made it hard to expose the portions toward the book's middle as Mitchel spread each pair of pages for the scanner. Librarians believe it is the oldest Bible in the world with Arabic type.

Google, the Internet's leader in search and advertising, says the process it developed and is using for scanning the majority of the books in Book Search is proprietary. Employees will not discuss it, except to say it is much faster than what Mitchel is doing and is not destructive.

Many libraries began digitizing books a decade ago to preserve them. Funding from Google allows the 28 libraries it is working with to cut their digitizing costs, because they do not have to pay for scanning the books Google wants to include in Book Search.

Through Book Search, users can track down a book on any topic and read a small portion. If the book is not protected by copyright, users can download the whole thing. If it is, or if they just want to read an original, they can use Book Search to find copies to buy or borrow.

More than 1 million rare or fragile books have been digitized through the Google-Michigan partnership since it began in 2004, with an estimated 6 million to go.

In the room where Mitchel and colleague Chava Israel, an artist, work, the temperature is always in the 60s.

Each technician has a slightly angled table with a flexible middle that cradles books and holds them still while two overhead cameras photograph the pages. Sometimes the women play music or listen to news online, but often they work in silence, save the clicks of their computers and scanners.

Mitchel glides in a rolling chair between scanner and computer, computer and scanner, turning page upon page and clicking her mouse to shoot each pair. Once the images reach the computer, the women use the book scanning software Omniscan from Germany's Zeutschel GmbH to clean them up.

A final click of the mouse sends each digitized book to Google for optical character-recognition processing, which makes the text searchable. Google then returns a copy of the images and data to the library and posts another to the Web.

Israel, 44, who has been scanning books for three years, takes a philosophical view of the project.

"My favorite part is working with older books and being able to preserve a lot of the knowledge and help bring more people access," Israel said. "I turn pages. It's kind of meditative."

WP: NFL Forbids Churches from Showing the Superbowl On a Screen Bigger than 55 Inches

• Mammon NFL hath spoken.
• Thou shalt not show thine Superbowl in Church (or Synagogue or Mosque) on a screen bigger than 55 inches.
• Mammon NFL permitteth any size TV in the pagan sports bars.

NFL Pulls Plug On Big-Screen Church Parties For Super Bowl
By Jacqueline L. Salmon

For years, as many as 200 members of Immanuel Bible Church and their friends have gathered in the church's fellowship hall to watch the Super Bowl on its six-foot screen. The party featured hard hitting on the TV, plenty of food -- and prayer.

But this year, Immanuel's Super Bowl party is no more. After a crackdown by the National Football League on big-screen Super Bowl gatherings by churches, the Springfield church has sacked its event. Instead, church members will host parties in their homes.

Immanuel is among a number of churches in the Washington area and elsewhere that have been forced to use a new playbook to satisfy the NFL, which said that airing games at churches on large-screen TV sets violates the NFL copyright.

Ministers are not happy.

"There is a part of me that says, 'Gee, doesn't the NFL have enough money already?'" said Steve Holley, Immanuel's executive pastor. He pointed out that bars are still allowed to air the game on big-screens TV sets. "It just doesn't make sense."

The Super Bowl, the most secular of American holidays, has long been popular among churches. With parties, prayer and Christian DVDs replacing the occasionally racy halftime shows, churches use the event as a way to reach members, and potential new members, in a non-churchlike atmosphere.

"It takes people who are not coming frequently, or who have fallen away, and shows them that the church can still have some fun," said the Rev. Thomas Omholt, senior pastor of St. Paul's Lutheran Church in the District. Omholt has hosted a Super Bowl party for young adults in his home for 20 years. "We can be a little less formal."

The NFL said, however, that the copyright law on its games is long-standing and the language read at the end of each game is well known: "This telecast is copyrighted by the NFL for the private use of our audience. Any other use of this telecast or any pictures, descriptions, or accounts of the game without the NFL's consent is prohibited."

The league bans public exhibitions of its games on TV sets or screens larger than 55 inches because smaller sets limit the audience size. The section of federal copyright law giving the NFL protection over the content of its programming exempts sports bars, NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy said. ...

Times Uncovers Ebay Sales of Free Movies: Reverse Piracy

Tired of reading about commercial films that you can download for free from some pirate web site? Here is the counter news story from the Times Bits blog. Turns out that you can actually pay for free public domain movies. Of course if you do pay for free content, you will have to confess to this and ask for atonement in the list of your sins on Yom Kippur.

On eBay, Some Profit by Selling What’s Free

By David F. Gallagher

While scouring eBay for interesting Christmas presents a while back, I found and bought a DVD of a film made in 1954 about my home town of Doylestown, Pa. After it arrived I went searching for more information about it — and found the entire film, available as a free download from the nonprofit Internet Archive.

It turned out that the eBay seller had simply downloaded the movie file, burned it onto a DVD and stuck it in the mail. And he was doing the same with a wide range of other public-domain material: military truck manuals from World War II, PowerPoint presentations on health matters from government doctors, vaudeville shorts from the late 1800’s.

The seller’s name is Jeffrey; he wouldn’t give his last name because, he said, strange buyers sometimes want to come by his house to pay for things in person. In an interview, Jeffrey said that he spends 20 to 30 hours a week working on his eBay business at his home near Dayton, Ohio. He wouldn’t say how much money he makes, but indicated that it was worth the time he was putting into it.

Jeffrey’s auction listings do say the material is in the public domain, and he acknowledges that it is all out there on the Web for those who know where to find it. But he said some of his customers were people who might not know how to turn a downloaded file into something they could watch on a TV or play on a CD player. Some have dial-up Internet connections that would choke on a 600-megabyte compilation of technical manuals. Others don’t have the time or expertise to search for specific information.

“Some people say ‘I could have gotten this on my own,’ but a lot of my stuff is very difficult to find,” he said.

Other sellers have gotten into the business since Jeffrey started doing this seriously in 1999, so sales are down somewhat. He estimated that there are 10 to 20 people selling public-domain material on eBay, and he said they watched each others’ auctions for clues as to what buyers might want. PowerPoint presentations from government sites, particularly on medical topics, are his latest niche.

Brewster Kahle, the digital librarian of the Internet Archive and a co-founder of the organization, said his group had no problem with people selling material from its online collection in this way. “There’s nobody making a lot of money off of this kind of thing,” he said.

Mr. Kahle added that he would, of course, like to see people making more creative use of the material, as in the case of this mashup of old instructional films and new footage that a couple made to show at their wedding.

I felt a little cheated when I found out that I had paid Jeffrey for a free movie. But at a time when there is so much focus on copyrighted material being ripped from CDs and DVDs and set loose on the Internet, it’s an interesting twist to find people taking non-copyrighted material in the other direction — and making some money from it.

Then there is the simple fact that if the film hadn’t ended up on eBay, I most likely would never have seen it — or given it to my dad, who got a kick out of it.

“I’m performing services much like Lexis-Nexis or any other company that sells data,” Jeffrey said. “Somebody has to do that research.”

Google Will Scan 10 Million More University Books

Remember: their plan is to scan every book in the world.

U makes deal with Google to put up to 1 million books online.

By Mary Jane Smetanka, Star Tribune

Up to 1 million books in the University of Minnesota's libraries will become part of Google's project to put every book in the world online, U officials said this morning.

The new agreement is between Google, the Big Ten institutions and the University of Chicago. Google will scan up to 10 million volumes from libraries at those institutions.
"We're talking about library collections developed over 150-plus years," said U of M Librarian Wendy Pradt Lougee. "This is a true national resource, as much for its diversity as for its sheer size."

Among the distinctive U collections that will be targeted first for scanning are books on Scandinavian history, literature and culture; forestry; bees and beekeeping; and medicine, including oncology, radiation and pediatrics.

Google's library project, which was announced in 2004, has been controversial. Some publishers have sued, saying copyright could be violated. But supporters say the project, which is free for anyone to use, could save researchers weeks or months of research by allowing them to locate sources at the touch of a mouse.

The contract with the U and other schools in the new agreement will allow Google to scan entire books into its system if they were published before 1923. For works that are copyrighted, Google will provide a few sentences of the work online and then direct readers to libraries that have the book or to bookstores that sell it.

The contract with the U is for six years with an option to renew. No money will change hands. Google essentially is digitizing large parts of the U library for free. If the U did it itself, it would take years and cost about $60 per volume.

Lougee said the project doesn't mean the death of traditional libraries. On the contrary, she said, her previous experience at the University of Michigan with 19th-century collections that had been buried in stacks but were digitized shows that "hidden treasures" can be opened to the world. More people came to see and use those documents in person once they could be seen online, she said.

"They got 1 million [online] hits a month worldwide, and comments from people all over the world," she said. "You see the power the search gives, and the way it can lead people to the real thing."

Twenty-five universities from around the world have now opened their libraries to Google. They include the University of Michigan, University of California system, Harvard, Stanford and the University of Oxford in England. The New York Public Library also is involved.

Why is Wikipedia the first stop for plagiarists?

I was reading a digitally submitted paper by one of my students in 2006 and accidentally clicked on the text. Immediately my browser took me to Wikipedia. Sure enough seconds later I found the passage she had cut and pasted into her paper without change or attribution. Following that I escalated my stern warnings and threats to students about the evils of plagiarism.

Why do students gravitate to Wikipedia as the prime source from which to cut and paste their stolen content? Because it is unevenly written material and hence harder for a professor to detect using his innate plagiarism radar. Most of us academics can smell in an instant a paragraph lifted from a real encyclopedia.

Students know that Wikipedia is the best place to copy from because it is so easy to find and so poorly written. And who knows? Because anyone can change a Wikipedia article at any time, a professor trying to nail down the source of a plagiarist may not be able to find it. In fact a clever plagiarist may just go in and delete the copied text from Wikipedia after appropriating it into her homework.

But then most plagiarists are not clever.

By the way, according to the Times' Noam Cohen, at lease one department at one college, Middlebury's history department, has banned Wikipedia as a source to be cited in student work.

Princeton Allows Google to Scan its Library

The value that this project brings to the world is beyond calculation. Scanning the libraries of the great universities and making them available to anyone will advance human knowledge by a factor of googolplex. The company name Google was an obvious allusion to Googolplex, the name given to the large number . The Google headquarters in Montain View in fact is called the Googleplex.

Princeton libraries join Google book-scan project

Mon Feb 5, 8:28 PM ET

Princeton University has become the 12th major library system to join Google's ambitious, sometimes-controversial project to scan the world's great literary works and make them searchable over the Web.

The Web search leader said on Monday Princeton had agreed to work with it to digitize about 1 million public domain books -- works no longer covered by copyright protections.

The combined collections of the university's libraries total more than 6 million printed works, 5 million manuscripts and 2 million nonprint items.

A Google spokeswoman said her company and the 250-year-old Princeton library system would work together to determine which portions of the collection would be digitized.

Two years ago, Google Inc. began the book-scanning project with a core group including the New York Public Library and academic libraries at Harvard, Oxford, Stanford and the University of Michigan.

Six months ago, the University of California became the first of a second round of libraries to join, followed by the University Complutense of Madrid, the National Library of Catalonia and the University of Wisconsin, Madison, University of Virginia, and the University of Texas at Austin.

Only the Michigan and Texas libraries agreed to scan works that are still under copyright. The rest have said they are focusing on public domain works or are still considering whether to scan copyrighted works.

More details can be found at http://books.google.com/.

In October 2005, five big U.S. publishers, together with the Association of American Publishers, sued Google seeking to block its plans to make libraries' works searchable online.

The case has yet to come to trial.

You Cannot Sue Borat - the Release Form

Having seen the film, and given the box office receipts, I conclude that just about every unsuspecting person caught in the film will probably try to sue for defamation and other injuries.

Will they succeed? No, definitely not. I am not a lawyer, but it would appear to me that the release form that they signed is quite strong and the producers have no incentive to settle with any litigant.

The lesson learned here is - if you don't want your family to see you making a fool of yourself, don't get drunk and have yourself filmed.

Here is the Borat release form that has been floating around the Internet:

STANDARD CONSENT AGREEMENT

This is an agreement between One America Production, Inc. (the “Producer”) and the Undersigned (the “Participant”). In exchange for the Producer’s obligation to pay a participation fee in the amount of $____ (receipt of which is acknowledged by the Participant) and the opportunity for the Participant to appear in a motion picture, the Participant agrees as follows:

1. The Participant agrees to be filmed and audio taped by the Producer for a documentary-style film (the “Film”). It is understood that the Producer hopes to reach a young adult audience by using entertaining content and footage.

2. The Participant agrees that any rights that the Participant may have in the Film or the Participant’s contribution to the Film are hereby assigned to the Producer, and that the Producer shall be exclusively entitled to use, or to assign or license to others the right to use, the Film and any recorded material that includes the Participant without restriction in the media throughout the universe in perpituity and without liability to the Participant, and the Participant hereby grants any consents required for those purposes. The Participant also agrees to allow the Producer, and any of its assignees or licenses to use the Participant’s contribution, photograph, film footage, and biographical material to connection not only with the Film, but also in any advertising, marketing or publicity for the Film and in connection with any ancillary products associated with the Film.

3. The Participant understands that the Producer and its assignees or licenses are relying upon this consent agreement in spending time, money and effort on the Film and the Participant’s participation in it, and that the consent agreement, for this and other reasons, shall be irrevocable.

4. The Participant specifically, but without limitation, waives, and agrees not to bring at any time in the future, any claims against the Producer, or against any of its assignees or licenses or anyone associated with the Film, that include assertions of (a) infringement of rights of publicity or misappropriation (such as any allegedly improper or unauthorized use of the Participant’s name or likeness or image), (b) damages caused by “acts of God” (such as, but not limited to, injuries from natural disasters), (c) damages caused by acts of terrorism or war, (d) intrusion (such as any allegedly offensive behavior or questioning or any invasion of privacy), (e) false light (such as any allegedly false or misleading portrayal of the Participant) (f) infliction of emotional distress (whether allegedly intentional or negligent), (g) trespass (in property or person), (h) breach of any alleged contract (whether the alleged contract is verbal or in writing) (i) allegedly deceptive business or trades practices, (j) copyright or trademark infringement, (k) defamation (such as any allegedly false or misleading statements made on the Film), (l) violations of Section 43(a) of the Lanham Act (such as allegedly false or misleading statements or suggestions about the Participant in relation to the Film or the Film in relation to the Participant), (m) prima facie (such as alleged intentional harm to the Participant), (n) fraud (such as any alleged deception or surprise about the Film or the consent agreement), (o) breach of alleged moral rights, or (p) tortuous or wrongful interference with any contracts or business of the Participant.

5. This is the entire agreement between the Participant and the Producer or anyone else in relation to the Film, and the Participant acknowledges that in entering into it, the Participant is not relying upon any promises or statements made by anyone about the nature of the Film or the identity of any other Participants or persons involved in the Film.

6. Although the Participant agrees not to bring any claim in connection with the Film or the production, if any claim nevertheless is made, the Participant agrees that any such claim must be brought before, and adjudicated by, only a competent court located in the State of New York and County of New York under the laws of the State of New York.