Beating a dead horse

This past week I wrote a journal entry about the issue of stealing Intellectual property.  The trigger for this topic was a website that is being set up to sell Jewish Ringtones for cell phones.  Obviously this was a hot button topic because so many of you weighed in with thoughtful comments.

Well, today the owner of the website in question weighed in as well by leaving a comment of his own:

"I was very amused by your blog. While I appreciate your defense of artist rights and intellectual property, there is also a basic tenet in Judaism of "giving someone the benefit of the doubt." As you can see from our web-page we have listed artists who will appear and sell on our site. We have contracts in place or pending with ALL of them. In fact, our first contract we signed was with the Estate of Shlomo Carlebach. Thaat[sic] being said, we are a legitimate and kosher operation and NO ARTIST's material will be posted until we have finalized an agreement with them. I appreciate your concern for the artists.

Andrew Lanter Koltones Inc."

Mr. Lanter makes a good point in saying that I made certain presumptions about him and his enterprise without talking to him.

However, I would like to draw your attention to an important phrase in his comment:

"As you can see from our web-page we have listed artists who will appear and sell on our site. We have contracts in place or pending with ALL of them." [my emphasis]

See, here is where I stop feeling too bad about not giving them the benefit of the doubt.  He basically comes right out and says that he has pictures of artists on his site with whom he does not yet have agreements!

That is problematic on two levels:

1.  It gives the consumer (who has given them the benefit of the doubt and assumes that everything here is kosher and above board) the impression that all of the artists depicted have agreed to participate in his enterprise.

2.  By placing the picture of an artist with whom he has not finalized an agreement he is transgressing copyright laws in exactly the manner I originally suggested.

UPDATE:  I spoke with a friend whose image and name is shown on the Koltone site and he has not signed a contract to allow his music to be sold as ringtones.  He has been approached by the people behind the ringtone site, but has not signed anything.  So here I made one phone call and was able to prove that this company's business practices are shaky, if not unethical.  They are promoting a product to which they presently have no legal rights!

In business law there are no such things as good intention or almost.  You either have rights to something or you don't.  If I want to use the Pepsi logo on my next album cover I need to get their permission!  I can't release the album and then begin negotiations with PepsiCo.

I accept Mr. Lanter's criticism because I really didn't give him and his website the benefit of the doubt.  But I am sorry to say that he has proven without any help from me that his end of the business world has done nothing to earn the presumption of innocence.

In Jewish law there are complex justifications for assumption of guilt or innocence based on past performance and the present likelihood of something occurring.  If a person gets caught serving traif (non-kosher) meat in his/her restaurant, that person can no longer be assumed to be reliable.  If an industry has a track record of ignoring halacha and civil legal norms, they too forfeit the right to the assumption of innocence.

If an entire industry has a long track record of trampling on intellectual property rights and ignoring all aspects of copyright law... then they can no longer demand that I (or anyone) give them the benefit of the doubt.

[Note: this was not my regularly scheduled post for today, so if you check back later I may have something else up.]