Business Ethics: Stealing on the Internet - Rabbi Shlomo Cohen

welcome back I want to talk to you today about a question that comes up a lot I don't if we're going to necessarily answer the question but we're going to approach the question from a Jewish halacha point of view and see what source material we have lips that can can help us maybe with this very very serious problem that is raised a lot and that is copying from the internet downloading songs onto your onto your personal personal player is there a offical problem in doing this it's a large subject there are a lot of rabbis that have many different opinions on this subject and I'm not here to argue with anyone I just want to present to you some cases that we have in the Talmud and see if maybe they're going to be similar we can compare them to the case of downloading something from the internet the further the case I want to tell you about today just one case we're going to have a very short shoot today just one case I want to tell you about the Gomorrah speaks about a guy who walks up to an olive tree he sees an olive tree standing in the middle of nowhere a middle of land that doesn't belong to anyone and he climbs up that tree and he starts shaking the tree from the top so that the olives start falling down and his intention is that he's going to come down from the tree in a minute and gather up the olives and go and sell them and that's his par NASA that's the way his guy earns his living the olives don't belong to anyone the fact that he shook the tree is not an act of acquisition and therefore even when they fell on the ground the ground is grounded his own Alice and that that they don't belong to him when they fallen to the ground what happens now if a third party sees what this guys doing at the top of the olive tree and he says wow great olives comes along with a big bag and gathers at the holy that the first guys caused to fall to the ground and walks off with them has he done something wrong is he a thief has he acted immorally hazael here said that this second guy that comes along and takes the olives is considered as a thief but he's considered not as a normal thief as a thief dura banan we know that in all his forum of the Torah we have two levels we have a level of a tour I saw and the level of Adara banana saw here he's not really a thief according to the Torah why because the olives don't belong to the first guy all the first guy did was exert tremendous efforts to create a situation where the olives can be collected he created the situation on the tree someone else wouldn't be able to jump up and take them but now that they're on the ground now you can take them easily and that's all because of the first guys effort seeing as you're benefiting so much from this first guys effort you're considered as a thief if you're not going to pay him for those olives that's the case that the Gomorrah brings and this case is brought down in the shahana rule as being the haha that if someone climbs up on olive tree and brings down the olives someone else comes and collects them then that second guy is considered as a thief a thief to urbana what's just got to do with the internet when I made it made a song right I'm not actually a singer but let's say I did someone made a song they've put into that song tremendous effort and tremendous money sometimes but when it's been put out on the Internet so now it's in a situation where anyone can freely take it the guy that put it out the guy that put out the disc on the internet he's the person that is actually stolen from the singer but once it's on the internet however sad we are about this situation it is in fact in a situation of Hefner even though the owner the singer is not happy about it there's really nothing he can do once the song is out on the internet it's as if it's Africa it's as if its own Alice it's there in a situation where anyone can take it and that we have to accept as I said again the person who took this guy's song and put it out on the internet he's the person that did something wrong but for me to take it I'm taking something that is Hefner I'm taking something that is odorless right now right however sad that situation is and we don't want that to happen but nevertheless right now that song is ownerless it's like if you're walking through the marketplace and someone has just bought a kilo of tomatoes and the bag breaks and they scatter everywhere around the marketplace so everyone knows that it's the right thing to do to pick up those tomatoes and give them back to the little old lady whose bag has just been torn and who's lost them that's clear there's nothing to talk about but can you say that I'm a thief if I don't do that you can't say I'm a thief because as soon as that little old lady in the middle of the marketplace has lost all her Tomatoes she's given up any hope of ever getting them back so the song that's on the Internet is probably hefner probably half go but someone has got gone through tremendous effort to create that half go and to create that heffa the guy that climbed up the tree that's the comparison he's gone through tremendous effort he's taken a risk he maybe even risked his life by climbing up this tree and he has created these olives that have fallen around which are now in a situation of Hefner that their own Alice forced me to come along and take them we see that I'm considered as a thief if I do so so does that mean that one I've come here to say that you're a thief if you download something that's on the internet even though the owner has given up any hope of getting it back not necessarily and I'll tell you why because there's a big difference betwee the case of the olives and the case of the song on the internet one big difference is that the number of Olives is limited whereas the number of songs you can download is not limited so when I download one of those songs i'm not actually taking something away from the owner of the song i can hear you all screaming yes he is Larry to everyone you download a song you're taking away his royalty payment and you're right a hundred percent whenever I download the song i'm taking away his royalty payment but that only if i would have bought the song if I wouldn't have bought it then I'm not causing him a loss and maybe they're there for it would be dependent on that if I would have bought the song then I'm going to cause him a loss by downloading it and I and it would be comparable to the case of the olive tree in there in the in the deserted place but if I wouldn't have bought it then maybe not as I said I'm not passing any higher offers here I'm just suggesting putting out an idea I'm not the first person to think of this idea either that we can talk about and think about an item for discussion just let me just make one other point here and that is that as far as i know i'm no expert on the internet as far as i know there are things that most singers can do nowadays so that their their their discs cannot be put out on the internet and someone who didn't do that can't come with any claims afterwards that it was put out on the internet and it could be that they put it out on the internet intentionally because a lot of them today are earning their main their main living from live performances rather than from the discs and the discs are a way of advertising themselves to get live performances an item for discussion thank you you