Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2014 October 4

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October 4

Products sold with contracts

I'm interested in knowing if, legally, a product sold with a contract is enforceable or is coherent. I've been told that copyright could be replicated by books having contractual terms in them, but the idea seems…more than a little bizarre to me. I'm not asking for legal advice, only if this makes any sense. — Melab±1 ☎ 14:45, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

Some products, particularly software, are sold with end-user license agreements. There is a split of authority as to whether the agreement is enforceable if it is a shrink wrap contract. For books, however, copyright forms a more comprehensive legal regime, since copyright does not require a contract to be entered into before a book is sold and it applies to persons who did not receive the book by purchase from the publisher. John M Baker (talk) 16:55, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

Couldn't a contract be made to oblige the buyer to only resell under the same terms? — Melab±1 ☎ 19:11, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

(ec) Not certain what you mean. This Book Publishing Contracts: Checklist of Deal Terms might be helpful (?).  —71.20.250.51 (talk) 16:59, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

It might help if OP linked to source of proposed contractual alternative to copyright.

In the meantime, you might be interested in Creative Commons licensing FAQs, which concisely go into some fine legal details I didn't know. For instance, all CC-licensed works (up to version 3.0) only applied to copyright works; some versions of the new (November 2013) suite of version 4.0 CC licenses may apply to copyright-like - "neighboring" - rights (e.g., sui generis database rights or performance, broadcast, and sound recording rights). See also: certain CC-stipulated requirements on re-use have been upheld by CC-related court decisions -- Paulscrawl (talk) 20:08, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

The idea is that a contract specifying the exact statutory provisions establishing copyright can be used to replace it. I can't imagine this to be possible because a sale isn't a contract, so I don't know how one could slip a contract in. If I agreed not to give to anyone else, but did so anyway, would there be legal repercussions? — Melab±1 ☎ 01:08, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

A sale is a contract - there's an exchange of consideration (you get the book, the bookseller gets the money), and there's an intention to create legal relations (you're legally obliged to pay for the book, the bookseller is legally obliged to give it to you if you do pay). What you're thinking of is a deed, which (in some jurisdictions) is necessary to enforce a restrictive covenant of the type you describe. It would be theoretically possible to go through the whole "signed, sealed, and delivered" procedure to establish such a covenant (which would be with the publisher rather than the bookseller), but this would be rather impractical in a bookshop. Tevildo (talk) 11:45, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

Melab: If you, a contractually bound purchaser, were to resell a book to a third-party bona fide purchaser without meeting your contractual obligation to bind the new purchaser on the resale, then you would be in violation of your contract and liable to damages, but the bona fide purchaser would have no obligations. From the publisher's point of view, this state of affairs is inferior to what exists under copyright. John M Baker (talk) 14:15, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

You sure about that? A sale is a contract? That seems a little strange to me. Also, it's theoretically possible to contract yourself into slavery, but it also doesn't seem possible in a way. Is a covenant a contract? — Melab±1 ☎ 01:16, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

I am - see Contract and Contract of sale. For contracts of slavery, see Indentured servant. It's still possible to write out an indenture and sign it, but the courts won't enforce it due to the various statutory prohibitions on slavery. A covenant isn't _necessarily_ a contract, as it's possible to covenant to do (or to refrain from doing) something without any exchange of consideration. Tevildo (talk) 08:00, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

The instance of this that stood out to me most is when (paper, pre-internet, to keep things simple) scientific journals have a different subscription rate for libraries than individuals. Do they have any actual ability to stop individuals from subscribing then donating their issues to the library? Wnt (talk) 14:17, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

Surname of Prophet Moses, Jesus and Muhammad?

Does anyone know what's their sir names? Note Christ means anointed. -- (Russell.mo (talk) 19:54, 4 October 2014 (UTC))

You mean "surname". Likely none of Moses, Jesus, or Muhammad had surnames as the modern West understands them, though we do note Muhammad's full name at the beginning of our article on him. Jesus would likely have been known as "son of Joseph" or "of Nazareth", as noted early in our article on him. Moses was in a much more unstable cultural climate than the other two, but our article on him (a trend emerges) notes several possibilities. — Lomn 20:25, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

Russell.mo -- Surnames in the modern sense didn't even exist in Europe (outside of a small aristocratic elite) until the late middle ages, so I'm afraid that your question is quite anachronistic. People could be known as "son of X" (where X is the name of the person's father), or "of Y" (where Y is a placename), or "the Z" (where Z is the name of an occupation), but in general none of those was quite a surname as we would understand it. The closest approximation was lineage names, so that a "Zadokite" is someone who is descended in a male line from Zadok. However, ancient people didn't think of lineage names in the way we think of surnames today (for example, lineage names are not mutually exclusive, so that any Zadokite was also a Levite and an Israelite)... AnonMoos (talk) 20:58, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

"the Z" could also be a personal attribute or nickname: "the Bald", "Hot-spur". —Tamfang (talk) 05:42, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

Or more formally, "Jesus H. Christ". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:34, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

McJoseph or van Nazareth. Plasmic Physics (talk) 06:00, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

Jews (which both Moses and Jesus were) didn't use surnames in many places down to the 18th or 19th century, when (at least in Eastern Europe) they had them inflicted on them by local rulers for census and tax purposes. That's why there are so many surnames that are just 'son-of-a-Jewish-forename' or 'from-a-place-that-used-to-be-in-the-Russian-Empire', in Polish, Russian or Lithuanian. In short, the question is a thumping great anachronism. AlexTiefling (talk) 22:02, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

Seriosly, Alex? Moses wasn't a Jew, not even a Judean. He was a Hebrew, and your contribution isn't worth squat. μηδείς (talk) 02:17, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

We are sick of your side comments, Medeis. Please just politely explain the mistake, even better with a simple blue link. IBE (talk) 05:39, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

Moses was an Israelite, a prophet of Judaism, which didn't exist yet. Jesus was definitely Jewish. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 05:47, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

Medeis, please cease the personal attacks. It's a technicality, about which Bugs is exactly correct. AlexTiefling (talk) 12:14, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

No, neither of you is correct. Moses led the Hebrews to Canaan, where they became referred to as the Israelites. After the Babylonian exile, the Kingdom of Judea was founded from the remaining tribe of Judah. After the destruction of the Temple the word Jew is used to describe the people of the diaspora. This is all quite nicely explained in Essential Judaism. Calling Moses a Jew is sloppy and essentially wrong, but fine for colloquial speech. Even calling him an Israelite is simply wrong; he never entered Israel. μηδείς (talk) 18:05, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

Medeis -- "Israelite" as a lineage name means a descendant of Jacob / Israel through a male line, and has nothing to do with geography. Israel as a geographic name is several centuries anachronistic to Moses. As far as terminology is concerned, "Hebrew" was probably originally a name which outsiders sometimes called Israelites, but not always what they called themselves (in political or genealogical contexts in Old Testament times they often preferred "Israelite"). And all the ancient languages had only one word (Hebrew יהודי, Greek Ιουδαιος, Latin Judaeus and so on) to refer to all of the three concepts "member of the Israelite tribe of Judah by genealogical descent", "inhabitant of the kingdom or province of Judea", and "adherent of the monotheistic religion purified under kings Hezekiah and Josiah of Judea, and whose holiest place is the temple of Jerusalem in Judea"... AnonMoos (talk) 14:59, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

Lol. I encourage you to keep it up μηδείς! -- (Russell.mo (talk) 15:51, 5 October 2014 (UTC))

I know several Indonesian people today who have only a single name. Modern western naming customs don't exist everywhere or everywhen. HiLo48 (talk) 22:17, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

See also Abdullah Abdullah of Afghanistan: "Until he became a government minister, Abdullah had only a first name; demands from Western newspaper editors for a family name led him to adopt the full name Abdullah Abdullah." —Tamfang (talk) 05:42, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks guys -- (Russell.mo (talk) 02:16, 5 October 2014 (UTC))

If last names weren't used at the time, why did Judas Iscariot, and his father, Simon Iscariot, have last names ? StuRat (talk) 17:14, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

The generalizations above are misleading. Western use of essentially now meaningless last names passed on by family is a modern thing, but the Semitic practice of naming people be father and town, to give a mixed language example: Jesus bar Joseph of Nazareth did exist. There's debate over whether Iscariot is from Greek eis Kerioth "from Kerioth" or if it had to do with the zealots know as sicarii. But if Jesus had a son born in Jerusalem, he would not have passed "son of Joseph" or "of Nazareth" on to him. The Greeks also had recourse to patronyms and reference to city of origin, while the Romans had the Gaius Julius Caesar pattern or praenomen, nomen, cognomen, which is not the same as our system either, but does exhibit family ties in a multiple name form. μηδείς (talk) 18:05, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

Hebrew not Greek. איש קירייות "a man of Qeriyyoth" (or maybe "a man of the suburbs", קירייה means "small town, suburb; literally a location surrounded by a קיר "wall"" and קירייות is the plural of קירייה). Can the Greek εις mean "from"? I thought it only meant "towards, in, into". For example the name Istanbul/Stanbul in Turkish comes from the Greek "εις την πόλιν/στην πόλιν" which means "towards the city" (the city being The City, that is Constantinople). That's my favorite trivia with "εις". With קיר "wall" my favorite, hands down, is this one: לא־השאיר לו משתין בקיר that is "he left him not one that pisseth against a wall" (KJV, 1 Kings 16:11) and which prosaic modern translations render something like "he didn't leave him one single male (heir)". Contact Basemetal here 19:16, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

You're right, it is literally in, into. I don't know about the Hebrew or Aramaic at all. I said Greek because the name is rendered in Greek in the NT. I know Kerioth is not of Greek derivation. μηδείς (talk) 23:49, 5 October 2014 (UTC)