Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

Basically I don't believe in intellectual property in the first place, so I consider the whole debate moot. It becomes obviously absurd when you try to think of how to apply the rulings of actual property. For example if I have an OC and "lend" it to someone, what? Am I not allowed to draw it anymore? Will they sue me? How do I return a stolen OC? Are we really going to consider piracy a major sin (stealing)? Accepting IP as property would also imply that it never ends, and literally nobody does that.

Intellectual property should be seen for what it is: A system thought up by the British to make the rich richer that has about as much Islamic legitimacy as, say, segregation.

Edit: Also you're generally not going to get many replies from Muslims here seeing as the number of Muslims on the Threadverse is in the single digits.

That's a very interesting POV on exploitation rights Religious law's point of view instead of a state law. I respect that you try to follow your moral compass. I can't give you an answer though.

Since it isn't technically stealing (taking away a thing) but harming the creator by not buying licenses from him it gets complicated. Nice take on the book pirating - pay the creator as soon as you can.

Do you know how seeding in a p2p network is assessed? When you download a book which you intend to pay for later (halal), someone gives you bandwidth under the assumption that you seed it back. But is it allowed? You can't know if the leecher uses it in a halal way. Is not seeding haram? Is seeding haram?

I'm just glad my religion doesn't tell me what I can download.

I have an odd question. Does Islam have a position on corporate personhood? If corporations are not people, can one steal from them at all? Piracy is already not quite the same as theft because it does not remove the original from the source's possession, so can copying something 'owned' by something that isn't a person count as theft?

OP, in some of your comments you mentioned schoolers. I'm making the assumption you mean scholars? Just trying to get some clarification

I think you should just sit down and watch Everything is a Remix. The whole series.

https://www.everythingisaremix.info/everything-is-a-remix-remastered

Up until a couple decades ago, basically all religious texts were distributed without getting consent, giving credit or forking over royalties to their original authors. Rhymes and songs, even images, were observed and then repeated or noted down and spread.

By todays definition, that's piracy. Piracy is exactly the same thing, just in a digital world.

Therefore, if piracy isn't halal, most religious texts and imagery aren't halal either.

Now, looking at it the other way around, to confirm that:

Theft is illegal. So the question stands: is piracy theft?

That depends on the definition of theft. The old meaning of theft, so the thing, probably ruled over in religious texts, is: The unlawful taking of the property of another.

Now, can you take something from someone else, without them loosing it? I'd argue: No!

So, piracy isn't theft. Piracy is copying or repeating.

Muslims believe that Jesus didn't die, instead he was raised alive to heaven by God. So technically from that perspective his teachings would still be covered by copyright which is life of author plus n years depending on your location. So is it unethical to seed a torrent of bible according to Islam?

Maybe you should link to these fatwas, if you want a serious answer. Who made that judgment matters, because there is no universally acknowledged worldly central authority in Islam and there are many schools even within a given tradition.

In Islam you are supposed to follow the laws of where you live (as long as they don't go against the sharia) since this is considered the contract by which that society is bound. If the sharia does not have a ruling which would force me to break the laws of the land, regardless of what my personal moral point of view on the matter is, I must abide by said laws. If I don't agree with said laws, or they are against what Islam dictates then I should go live elsewhere.

The problem with religious texts is they are so badly written that essentially anything you want to do is permissible. Look at a comment you made:

The basics argument is taking anything from anyone without their consent is morally wrong and haram.

Who did take from? You couldn't have taken a game from a developer/publisher if its pirated. You took it from a bittorrent seeder. Did they provide consent? Yes, they were seeding it to you.

If I tell you a joke that I heard from someone who heard it from someone, etc. did I steal the joke? At what iteration of copying something does it stop being theft? Is it theft to begin with to make a copy?

I'm not Muslim, though I do have some general knowledge of their teachings. I don't think that this is a topic that can be answered only with scripture, since it was not directly addressed. You pretty much covered the two schools of thought in the topic.

But consider this: Jesus (considered by most Muslims to be a prophet) says in Matthew 23:23 "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others."

You see, based on the above, my perspective is that if you are using (any) scripture to justify an action, you're probably doing religion wrong. Personally, I agree with the Muslim idea that knowledge should not be hidden, I think it's an important addendum to simply "not lying". I don't believe in intellectual property as a concept. But...someone or many someones did work for many hours on the end product.

Is paywalling, say, GTA V "hiding knowledge"? I believe in game preservation and all that, but ultimately, no, that's a little silly to say. It's a luxury. An extra thing we do for entertainment, not to better oneself. Is it WRONG to pirate? I don't personally think so (I'm subscribed to the piracy sub) but it's certainly suspect, and at the end of the day we shouldn't be spending too much time on luxuries anyway.

Has the government banned an educational book, or perhaps it simply isn't sold in your region? I would have a hard time condemning that from any perspective, and I think the author of the book in most cases would encourage you to pirate, because they want you to have the knowledge within.

There was a book I was reading about personal internet privacy, and within, he mentioned that many people pirated earlier versions of the book. The author said basically "I can't stop you from pirating the book. Maybe you can't afford it. Maybe you don't trust the value without seeing it first. Just know that I am considering not updating a new edition because I am getting less and less sales. If it ever becomes not worth it, then resources like this will not exist."

At the end of the day, that's what it's about. If you respect the work being done and want more of it, you should pay for it, if possible. If you want more things like that thing, you should pay for it. If you want to prevent further degeneration of art into lowest common denominator slop, you should pay for it.

There are times where pirating (or similar things like adblockers) may be more moral than not doing it. YouTube has a lot of important knowledge that should not be gate kept, but Google is a very immoral company, and so are companies that advertise heavily. Ad blocking is the moral thing, as well as the best from a privacy and security perspective, even the FBI recommends using them. So at the end of the day, it's a complicated topic, but you should consider "what would Allah do in my situation?" If good people create something with their hard work, he would reward them. If it is avoiding association with bad people by pirating, or finding a way to bring knowledge and wisdom to the masses, maybe he'd pirate.

I dont think piracy is that bad, and I don't have qualms about not giving money to mega corporations, especially for content that rarely makes them or the actual creators money years after release. But if you're really worried about morality, the question should not be "is it THAT bad?", it should be "what is the moral line of action in this situation?"

Very interesting question.

I don't really know any Muslim doctrine but I think you could make the argument from first principles that if the 'owner' of the original work is not deprived of it then it doesn't qualify as theft.

Also, does Islam have a concept of all things ultimately belonging to god? In which case they cannot really be stolen in a strict sense.

not a muslim: the common argument against piracy is "it causes a lost sale" so if you have the intent, the money and the means to buy the product that'd be true but if you don't it would not.

I am as muslim but not a scholar. You know what that means so be warned. I think it falls under the same as marriage where the necessity and law is dependent on your situation. It could be mubah, makruh, or haram. I think there is no situation where it could be halal unless somehow your life is threatened without pirating. I cannot equate it to stealing with my limited knowledge because with stealing, there are actual lost not just potential lost. And we already have ruling about speculation / unrealized gain

Does it matter?

There is no god, not the Christian one, not the Muslim one, not the Hindu one, none of them, they're all human inventions.

But for the sake of argument, let's say there is

Do you really believe that that God is sitting there with a tally list on of you touched your peepee and enjoyed it?.do you really think he's checking the contents of your hard drive to see if you haven't taken something from greedy corporation that happily supports murderous fascists without paying them?

I mean, ethically? I honestly believe that it's a sin to pay these fuckers because you're paying literally to help fascism grow. It's the right thing to do to just torrent the media, any media, like AI companies also did, without paying a dime. Hey, wt least i don't take from the average Joe who got ripped off by AI bots.

So to answer your question: stop asking questions and just do the right thing, just download that movie

Not Muslim here, but I struggled with rationalizing taking an easier way to get what I wanted. Intention matters: are you borrowing it until you can afford to buy it, and do you follow through? Or are you "borrowing" it until you get bored with it and don't feel it's worth the honor anymore? It basically came down to me having to look at how honest I was willing to be with myself in order to get what I wanted.