Bar Ilan CD

It costs a pretty penny.

Avhaben,

The Torah can’t be copyrighted but a peirush certainly can be. It’s not published for free and the author deserves to be compensated

Lesschumras, avhaben:

I have seen teshuvos that interpret tis view to mean that no one can have ownership over the ideas themselves; i.e., no one has an ownership interest in the intellectual product of Torah learning. But, if someone invests money to typeset, footnote, edit, and print a sefer, one may not simply photo copy the whole sefer (as apposed to a page or to) in order to avoid buying it.

In other words, Rabbi X has no halachic ta’anah on someone who uses his Torah ideas (unlike in secular law, where people “own” their intellectual work product). But Oz V’hadar, for example, can bring a din Torah against someone that makes photo copies of their edition of the gemarah in order to avoid buying a cop from the publisher. In that case, it’s not the Torah that is owned; its the work that went into the typesetting, editing, and researching, and printing that particular edition.

Derszoger: You’lle notice that Bar Ilan doesn’t use pdf copies of the pages of printed editions of the seforim, they merely reenter the text of the sefer into the program; its essentially the equivalent of you sitting down and typing the entire Igros Moshe into MS Word to have your own copy of the sefer. Bar Ilan is using the though-product, the Torah itself. They aren’t reproducing the efforts of publishers who invest money and time into producing the sefer.

Better question is how does Otzar HaChochma do it; they use pdf copies of the actual pages of the seforim, and unlike Hebrewbooks, they make money off the effort. Could be they only use seforim whose copyrights have expired, and for others they pay the publisher for use. But I don’t know.

For anyone who is interested YU alumni are entitled to use both Bar Ilan Online Responsa and Otzar HaHochma Online for free. The alumni association has a license that allows free access (and a number of other databse tools as well).

I find it amusing how people have no problem searching for heterim and kulos to justify stealing intellectual property