Rabbis Rule Software Must Ask 3 Times Before Format Conversion

The new rules, called the Graphic Interface Yes-Urging Requirements (GIYUR), are aimed at gauging the sincerity of file conversions and weeding out the potentially dangerous ones.

Jerusalem, February 25 – Israel’s Chief Rabbinate instituted new rules today for handling the conversion of files to different formats, establishing that the user must be asked on three separate occasions whether he or she sincerely wishes to perform the conversion, and only at repeated user insistence may the conversion proceed.

Ashkenazi and Sephardi Chief Rabbis David Lau and Yitzhak Yosef jointly signed the new guidelines, which will affect all registered operating systems sold in Israel. When a user instructs the operating system to convert a file from one format to another, a dialogue box will appear on screen to ask whether he or she is sure of the decision. Clicking “Yes” will prompt the display of material relating to the conversion and warning of the responsibilities and requirements that conversion entails. Only after successfully completing a test at the end of the session will the user be allowed to proceed to the next step.

The second step is introduced by the same question testing the user’s sincerity, and a “yes” response warns of the dire consequences of insincere acceptance or observance, and of the societal dangers posed by the phenomenon. A second test further challenges the user to remember and apply the relevant information, and only then will a third “yes” click lead to actual file conversion.

Rabbis Lau and Yosef explained that the new rules, called the Graphic Interface Yes-Urging Requirements (GIYUR), are aimed at gauging the sincerity of file conversions and weeding out the potentially dangerous ones. “We have had bitter experience with conversions that go awry, and with those that are simply incompatible with the operating system,” said Lau. “We want to include as many files as possible in the right formats, but that does not mean throwing open the floodgates and saying anything goes.”

The move comes amid decades of contentious debate over the nature and role the Rabbinate and Jewish law in general should play in defining Israel, and is sure to meet with objections from users and software providers already irked at what they perceive as undue interference by the Rabbinate in what should be personal and private affairs.

“All this will do is drive users away,” warned Uri Regev of the Union for Progressive Programming. “The Rabbinate can’t pretend everybody uses Windows anymore, or that users won’t go elsewhere to convert their files. Times have changed, and our practices must adapt to the changing ways users interact with their files. In fact the Rabbinate should be disbanded as a government institution and let users handle their own file conversion if they so choose.”

A Rabbinate spokesman scoffed at the idea that file conversion should be open to anyone. “There has to be a single standard that everyone accepts, or Israeli society courts rampant incompatibility among its constituent files and systems,” said Rabbi Sam Sung. “Things have to be properly regulated because users don’t automatically know what to do. They might have incomplete data. They’re not androids.”