Modern Concerns of Theft Concerning Replicated Media

In most legal systems, theft and the fruits of theft are illegal. Receiving stolen property and stealing (by various means) are legally forbidden. These laws are just.

"Thou shalt not steal." Exodus 20:15

"Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife: nor his house, nor his field, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is his." Deuteronomy 5:21

"And when her husband heard it bleating, he said: Take heed, lest perhaps it be stolen: restore ye it to its owners, for it is not lawful for us either to eat or to touch any thing that cometh by theft." Tobias 2:21

Theft itself is not only condemned, but also covetousness, the desire to possess what another has. The ownership of things, of family members (although, we rarely think of it that way, we do express relationships as saying "my child", "my wife", "my friend", etc) and of the rights to use things of this world (land) is lawful. To deprive another of what is lawfully possessed, or even desire to do so, is unlawful. Failure to give what is another due is also forbidden (Deuteronomy 24:15).

These laws are ingrained in humanity and rightfully so. However, in this modern day, we are confronted with a new type of property. Intellectual property. While the ads and media would have us believe that "pirating" is "stealing" and the interested parties do their best to get laws in their favour, it may not be the same as traditional understandings of property and theft.

In this post, "media" refers to written works, spoken works and visual and audio performances and creations. It also concerns software and ideas. Furthermore, the words "artist", "author" and "creator" all refer to the same thing when it concerns the above works.

In determining the morality of such concepts, to determine whether acquisition or use of media not acquired in the way the publisher desired is sinful, we must examine it closely and not mindlessly believe propaganda. While it may be wrong, the mere fact that we are told that downloading or copying various media is stealing. In addition to the sinfulness of stealing, we have the issue of lawful authority. If certain acts are morally wrong, then they are sinful when done with knowledge and intent regardless of the legal status. However, breaking the law of the nation could be sinful as well, even if its object is not.

The reality of the law is diverse. Laws vary all over the world and even within governments. There is some international cooperation, but this is only between a few nations.

Copyright law, which covers the "set of exclusive rights granted by the law of a jurisdiction to the author or creator of an original work, including the right to copy, distribute and adapt the work." (Wikipedia.org) is incredibly diverse. However, it is very modern. In the history of the world, such laws did not exist in areas where there was much writing and publication. The Romans, Greeks and others did not have any sort of law concerning this matter despite extensive publication. The technology at the time made print very expensive and difficult to distribute. In this sense, stealing was possible if one actually stole something. Stealing the means to create printed work, or stealing the copy itself, is immoral and a theft like any other. However, what about the words, sounds and ideas? Is it possible to steal those?

There is historical concern of the content of media. The Church, and various legal entities, have had extensive rulings on publication because of the content, but these laws were not concerned with the rights of the publisher or author, but those of the state and Church. The states had interests in controlling what was printed after the printing press was widely used for political reasons. The Church had a moral responsibility to examine what was (at the time) easily mass produced and spread. In a way, the Church was not prepared for the ideas of any person with the means to get something printed to be spread. It is no surprise that the rants of troubled priest with various personal and spiritual problems could become widely heard and accepted instead of being a local infestation because of the ease of mass production. These laws concerning the legal status of printing could be just, but they did not concern the idea of theft. During this time, one did not become rich by writing works, but by selling books. One did not become rich by writing plays, but having them performed. Musicians, composers, writers and artists received money either by pre-arranged commission (agreement to be paid a certain amount for a given work) or by doing something for which they were paid. Payment was not by royalties or by rights, but by action. In this, it would indeed be theft to deprive an artist or writer of agreed upon payment. If one agreed to pay someone for an act or thing, then failure to pay as agreed and retaining the work or fruits of the actions would be a sin. For printed works, the only people to get paid per works sold was the person distributing or making the books. It was not easy, it involved physical labour and items, and the object sold was a thing. However, another issue arises. Attribution. It would be possible to claim responsibility for a work another produced. This would directly concern the content or idea. Would this be stealing?

Regardless of it being stealing or not, it can be wrong because it is a lie. Knowingly and intentionally supporting falsehood is directly against God. This does not mean attribution has to be accurate, only that intentional deception is wrong. Anonymous works, works attributed to others because of their great content, lack of certainty of the writer or because the creator of the work agreed to attribute to another and the other agreed to be responsible for the content are not lies. Attributing the Psalms to David even though it is nearly certain he did not compose them all, commissioning a work to be written for publication in that person's name, and other cases of factually incorrect attribution are not sins in themselves.

Given no other data then, it would indeed be wrong to intentionally and knowingly deprive a creator of a work of attribution for a work. Claiming authorship when one has no lawful way to do so is against God because it is a lie. I do not think it is stealing by itself. It would be stealing, depriving another of what is their due, if the attribution directly concerned expected gains from the work. If a literary agent took credit for a work one was representing, it would be stealing to profit from its publication because one was supposed to do this for another and any gain would have been rightfully another's in the same circumstance (note, this is not a realistic situation. Literary agents have no financial interest in doing this for any reason and it would be in fact financially and legally unsound. It is however the best example I could make where one could in fact steal from another in this manner).

We can then assume that attribution is in fact a right of a creator of a work assuming this information is known and not waived. It would not be deception for an artist to refuse public credit for a work because the work stands on its own. Words and art do not need attribution to exist. Directly lying about it would possibly be sinful. An author does not need to put his name on a work, but if asked if he were the author, denying it would be a lie given no other facts. Denying credit for a work would not necessarily be deceitful if one did not identify with the work. A sinful man could write a spiritual work of great value and feel that his person is not worthy to be recognised as the source of that work. God created all, so matters of truth and nature are God's.

So far, we know that lying and stealing are sins.

What other rights would a person have concerning a created work? None, I think. All else is directly tied to the laws of a nation and of personal integrity. If a person agrees to something, it could be sinful to violate that agreement. Such consent has to be real. If I wrote at the top of my blog that "reading my words, including these, indicate agreement to my words", it would be laughable. Continuing to read my works would not be sinful even if you disagreed. If however, I agreed to give you access to my words on the condition you agree with them, it would be immoral to agree (in theory, immoral to agree with the condition, and then to disagree with my words) because we are forbidden to forswear ourselves. (Matthew 5:33) We are morally bound not to forswear ourselves. Intention to break a swear or a oath made foolishly are sinful. (Note, knowledge that we will violate it, such as when we promise God to follow Him, without intention to violate it, is not sinful but human. Resolving not to sin is not a sin unless one intends at the time of that resolution to sin. Knowledge that one will sin in some way however slight is nearly certain, but as long as one does not intend to, then it is a holy oath).

This brings up another facet of our modern lives. Often times, use of software or other media is preceded by an agreement to which we must actively or passively consent. Passive consent is difficult to find binding. Actively indicating agreement however is not. If we actively indicate agreement, then we are morally bound to it. However, this requires knowledge and intent. One is not bound to the contents of a license file shown if one just clicks "I accept" without reading it. Perhaps that is sinful in some way because one agreed to something which one did not know, but violating the terms of agreement in this case would not be sinful. It is however legally binding. If a software package requires you to agree to something before using it, and you agree to it, you have given the software publisher the right to take whatever course of action they are legally given in that agreement.

It is important to understand the relationship to various works before considering it to be theft. It is not theft to take what one already owns. One cannot steal from oneself. Also, it is not possible to steal what one cannot own. If one cannot possess something, then theft is futile. One can claim to own the sun, but this is impossible, so another claiming the same is not stealing. For modern works, we do not actually buy them. We buy the physical thing and the legal right to use it. Tim Paterson was given the compensated task of developing software eventually called "86-DOS". The ownership (as far as I know) was given to Seattle Computer Products. This was lawful. The software writer was paid for work he agreed to do, and the company owned the product. It would be sinful to falsely attribute that work to another. However, Microsoft paid SCP for all rights concerning 86-DOS. SCP legally sold what was theirs to another. Legally and morally, Microsoft now owned attribution for this work. Would it be intrinsically sinful to gain a copy of it without paying for it? One would not be lying by obtaining a copy of it and one would not be depriving the owner of anything if one had a copy of it and one would not be falsely attributing its creation. So, unless one expressing agreed to the contrary, one could not sin regardless of Microsoft's wishes by having or using a copy of this work without paying.

In the interest of prudence, do not agree to which you do not agree. Read and understand before accepting. This is legally important and morally important. If one does not agree, then one can return it for a refund (in theory) if you do not accept the agreement.

The only concern after this is the law. It may be in violation of the law. To what extent are we morally bound to follow the law? The diversity of law is another important matter. A work in the "public domain" such as the Douay Rheims text is legally determined by the state. It is possible for public domain works in one country to be copyrighted in another. Copyright law is extremely complex and there are many things which are not legally clear. Modern law in my country is determined by the intent and wording of the statutes and court cases concerning it. If something is not tried in court and not clear in the statute, then it is legally unknown. This state is extremely common for most users of media. It violates the law to attempt to break the encryption of works (in certain cases), but it is not clear if it against the law to use the product of such work. Furthermore, the laws of one country do not apply in another. The law of the USA forbids attempting to break encryption of encrypted works (even if the encryption is extremely weak). If a person in another country breaks it, then it is not breaking the law of the USA. Would it then be unlawful for a person in the USA to use software which includes the decryption algorithm? The law does not answer this.

So, regardless of propaganda, some things are not sinful and are not unlawful.

How are we to act then? Would it be sinful to watch a movie on Youtube which has been converted, split and uploaded by an individual against the technical laws concerning that particular media? What if the publisher does not act? Could their lack of action be considered consent or indifference? Would it be sinful to actively seek out a copy of a given work and download it? I cannot answer this. It is a very complex situation. I do think that content which is openly available is not sinful even if it technically against the law if one has a reasonable belief that if it were objectionable to the creator of the media, it would have been stated. One can find videos of comedians and old TV shows on Youtube quite easily. This videos may be official uploads of the copyright holders, but usually, they are of fans. While it may be technically against the law, and copyright holders do sometimes request works to be removed or altered (and Youtube does comply quickly), I see no principles which would make such passive choices sinful. The law is extremely complex and enforcement varies. We are called to be holy, not lawyers. It is technically against the law to casually touch co-works in my area also. It can be considered harassment or assault (yes, assault), yet, we do not anguish over whether violations of written laws in such a manner are sinful. So, would finding streaming content on the Internet or downloading works in part of in full be sinful?

Let it be clear: such things do not typically deprive a sale. A person who watches videos online would probably not pay to watch it, and many works which are freely viewed online cause people to buy what they would not have bought before. It greatly aids a comedian to have videos of his act online for free because it greatly expands the audience and paying audience.

However, we must not be surprised when we are held to the law. I do not actually know the penalties, civil or criminal, of such acts.

Another issue is the morality of the law itself. Many acts of the interested parties are very greedy and immoral. They are interested in profit for things they do not have to produce. If examined closely, it could be considered stealing (in this case, from us). If one buys a disk containing a video, would it be immoral to require you to pay to watch it without your previous consent? This is actually the law. You probably did not know it. While it is obvious we need a means of reading such works and that is not sinful, what is not so public is that we need legal decryption methods and we need to pay for them. Those DVD players in stores have price tags which would be lower for you if the company which supplied them did not have to pay for the right to decrypt DVDs. This encryption is weak, but again, because of the law, it is illegal to attempt to decrypt it. We are stuck with a situation where we can easily decrypt the movies we bought, but have to pay for the right to watch it. This is immoral. libdvdcss is software which is freely available. It only decodes DVDs so they can be watched. The act of breaking the encryption could cause a person to be deprived of money or be imprisoned. How is this moral? Note, no person has ever been in trouble for using this. It is one of those legal areas which is not defined. It is also impossible, given that it is so widely used (VLC, the popular media player, uses it).

In short, the legal entity under which I live would take my money and put me in prison if I were to develop a means of breaking this encryption so I could watch a movie on my computer. Note, this encryption does not serve any function other than to force drive builders and their users to pay for the right to use it. Such disks are easily accessed and copied. Even if they were not, there is the Analog Hole (which you can research on your own).

The situation of is very complex. Naturally, unless we are morally bound to do something contrary to the law, following the law is the safest choice morally and legally. However, it is very difficult to judge instances of breaking the law in this area because of its complexity, its immoral facets and the fact it is not easily known when it is knowable.

Is it immoral to download media contrary to the wishes of the interested parties? Is it immoral to use legally obtained media in a way contrary to the interested parties? Is it immoral to lend a book for another to read instead of making them buy their own?

These are not questions St. John would have had to have answered, but I think the content of the media would be vastly more important for moral judgement than the means of obtaining it when it was copied so effortlessly without depriving another of it.

The laws are complex, hard to follow and not clear about many things. They are made by people more interested in greed than in God, despite the foundation of the law being in natural law. If one has doubts, avoid it so it may not distract you from God.

For me, I read the agreements and only use software which has terms I accept. For content which is "encrypted", I find it no sin to use free means of decrypting it. I do not think we have to pay to use certain file formats merely because the creator of that content wishes people to pay extra for using it (yes, file formats can be "patented", so even though the file itself is openly distributed, it can be against the law to interpret this file without paying, even if the means of interpreting it are openly available as well). I think freely available content is not immoral as long as I do not violate any agreement I made.

I do think it is wrong to agree to something which one intends to violate, to agree to something which is immoral in itself or to lie and steal.

If the media of this world is too distracting to us, we should forsake it and devote ourselves to God more fully.