{"id":396,"date":"2008-02-06T12:33:46","date_gmt":"2008-02-06T12:33:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/virtualtalmud\/2008\/02\/fair-play-jewish-law-and-the-w.html"},"modified":"2008-02-06T12:33:46","modified_gmt":"2008-02-06T12:33:46","slug":"fair-play-jewish-law-and-the-w","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2008\/02\/fair-play-jewish-law-and-the-w.html","title":{"rendered":"Fair Play, Jewish Law and the Writers&#8217; Strike"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/virtualtalmud\/2008\/02\/striking-out.html?WT.mc_id=HOMEBLOGS\">Rabbi Waxman is right<\/a> that it is hard to feel sympathy for striking writers who may make millions of dollars a year. However, I disagree that the fact that many other workers in other industries are severely underpaid should prejudice us against the screen writers. Many writers are freelancers or lower level writers who make $50,000 or less a year. And 48 percent of writers, on the West Coast at least, are unemployed (not because of <a href=\"http:\/\/topics.nytimes.com\/top\/reference\/timestopics\/organizations\/w\/writers_guild_of_america\/index.html?excamp=GGGNwritersstrike&amp;WT.srch=1&amp;WT.mc_ev=click&amp;WT.mc_id=GN-S-E-GG-NA-S-writers_strike\" target=\"_blank\">the strike<\/a>).<br \/>\nTry living on a salary like that, or during the frequent periods of unemployment between assignments. The online royalties that the writers are seeking can make the real difference between making ends meet or not.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><br \/>\nThis strike is probably not the exception to the rule that it takes two to tango, or not, as the case may be. However, it is not right that the media power houses have been refusing to pay online royalties. At our last meeting of the Conservative Movement\u2019s Committee on Jewish Law and Standards, we passed <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Responsa\" target=\"_blank\">the responsa<\/a> \u201cIntellectual Property: Can You Steal It if You Can\u2019t Touch It,\u201d by Rabbi Barry Leff that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rabbinicalassembly.org\/docs\/Intellectual_Property.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">affirmed that using electronic intellectual property<\/a> (music downloads, computer programs, etc.) without proper permission and payment is equivalent to robbery and is therefore prohibited by Jewish law even where such intellectual properties are not protected under secular law. (As Jews, we hold that the law of the land is the law, which means it is also binding under Jewish law.) While not completely analogous, the use of writers\u2019 works online without some sharing of the income such use generates seems not only contrary to fair play but also to Jewish law in a similar way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Rabbi Waxman is right that it is hard to feel sympathy for striking writers who may make millions of dollars a year. However, I disagree that the fact that many other workers in other industries are severely underpaid should prejudice us against the screen writers. Many writers are freelancers or lower level writers who make&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":101,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-jewish-issues"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Fair Play, Jewish Law and the Writers&#039; Strike - Virtual Talmud<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2008\/02\/fair-play-jewish-law-and-the-w.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Fair Play, Jewish Law and the Writers&#039; Strike - Virtual Talmud\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Rabbi Waxman is right that it is hard to feel sympathy for striking writers who may make millions of dollars a year. However, I disagree that the fact that many other workers in other industries are severely underpaid should prejudice us against the screen writers. Many writers are freelancers or lower level writers who make&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2008\/02\/fair-play-jewish-law-and-the-w.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Virtual Talmud\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-02-06T12:33:46+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Rabbi Susan Grossman\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Fair Play, Jewish Law and the Writers' Strike - Virtual Talmud","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2008\/02\/fair-play-jewish-law-and-the-w.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Fair Play, Jewish Law and the Writers' Strike - Virtual Talmud","og_description":"Rabbi Waxman is right that it is hard to feel sympathy for striking writers who may make millions of dollars a year. However, I disagree that the fact that many other workers in other industries are severely underpaid should prejudice us against the screen writers. Many writers are freelancers or lower level writers who make&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2008\/02\/fair-play-jewish-law-and-the-w.html","og_site_name":"Virtual Talmud","article_published_time":"2008-02-06T12:33:46+00:00","author":"Rabbi Susan Grossman","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2008\/02\/fair-play-jewish-law-and-the-w.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2008\/02\/fair-play-jewish-law-and-the-w.html","name":"Fair Play, Jewish Law and the Writers' Strike - Virtual Talmud","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/#website"},"datePublished":"2008-02-06T12:33:46+00:00","dateModified":"2008-02-06T12:33:46+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/#\/schema\/person\/a9bb8158f41d6142261566aaf4fdca39"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2008\/02\/fair-play-jewish-law-and-the-w.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2008\/02\/fair-play-jewish-law-and-the-w.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2008\/02\/fair-play-jewish-law-and-the-w.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Fair Play, Jewish Law and the Writers&#8217; Strike"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/","name":"Virtual Talmud","description":"Rabbi Brad Hirschfield, where politics and pop culture meet 3,000 years of Jewish wisdom","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/#\/schema\/person\/a9bb8158f41d6142261566aaf4fdca39","name":"Rabbi Susan Grossman","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/15d\/15d8c06ce1f6d62f74cf58348ba2771dx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/15d\/15d8c06ce1f6d62f74cf58348ba2771dx96.jpg","caption":"Rabbi Susan Grossman"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/author\/sgrossman"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/101"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=396"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}