Can You Copyright The Rebbe? The Basis For the JEM VS. RebbeDrive Lawsuit
by CrownHeights.info
It’s not about copyright infringement, it’s about if you can copyright the Rebbe at all.
The explosive claim that JEM had been misusing copyright laws was made by RebbeDrive in court paperwork was made in a Memorandum of Law filed by E. David Smith Esquire on behalf of Mendel Mintz and Shmuly Butler.
“Plaintiff has engaged in a long-standing campaign to misuse United States Copyright law to seize control of these records of the Rebbe’s Torah, keep them in private archives, erect a pay-wall for those who can afford to
access a small portion of the archive and have sole discretion as to what is available to the public,” the filed paperwork claimed.
To illustrate its point that JEM is withholding, they write that “JEM admits in the complaint that it has registered “unpublished” works. An address by the Rebbe to a 1980 children’s rally bearing Copyright Registration number Pau004063664 is still unpublished, but for small snippets, after 40 years!! It is clear that JEM has been withholding this treasure from the eager public.”
The lawsuit, filed in court by JEM in February, alleged that the operators of RebbeDrive.com pirated photos and audiovisual material from JEM’s archives and provided them to third-party websites. The basis of these claims were outlined in the lawsuit, which provided photos of copywritten pictures with the RebbeDrive logo in place of JEM. The lawsuit also alleges the use of the WLCC archive, of which copyright belongs to JEM. RebbeDrive had received a library of unedited WLCC recordings which had been secretly recorded by one of the people working with the original broadcasts and had not been watermarked with the WLCC logo.
In the most recent Memorandum of Law, RebbeDrive’s Lawyer attempted to defend a motion for the case to be dismissed on multiple grounds, including Lack of court Jurisdiction, the statute of limitations, and RebbeDrive’s lack of economic motivations among others.
In past conversations with CrownHeights.info, Mintz defended the use and dissemination of these copywritten materials by claiming that according to halacha, a person can not copyright the Rebbe’s Torah, as well as any image or media of him.
According to the complaint filed by JEM, they had initially attempted to find an amicable solution through dialogue as early as 2016, requesting that those running RebbeDrive remove the copywritten content. After months of correspondence, the sides met up in March of 2017, but could not come to an agreement.
The issue was then brought in front of the Beis Din of the Central Committee of Chabad-Lubavitch Rabbis in the United States and Canada, which the operators of RebbeDrive ultimately claimed had no jurisdiction over the case.
Given permission to go to civil court by the Beis Din, JEM is looking to receive repayment for damages as well as the taking down of the RebbeDrive website and social media accounts.
An earlier version of this article was mistakenly posted with a quote not from the court documents. The article has been edited to the corrected version.
