How Jewish Law Came to Address Intellectual Property

Recently, the Beth Din of America, one of the most highly regarded rabbinic civil courts in the U.S., issued a formal ruling, or psak, in the case of a corporation that published a slide deck without asking permission from, or crediting, its author. The Beth Din ruled against the publishers, relying primarily on the halakhic principle of dina d’malkhuta dina, or “the law of the land is the law.” The occasion prompted Rabbi Shlomo Weissman to author this brief historical overview of the halakhic approach to copyright law, rooted primarily in the principle of hasagat gvul (literally, “moving back a boundary”), which governs all manner of encroachments on the rights of another: