This topic has been on my mind for about a month now and I’ve read and prayed and considered and done that all over and over again. At first it was very difficult for me to imagine Jesus caring less about a computer, so I had to get a more ancient perspective.

We all know that stealing is morally wrong. When we take something from someone else because we want it we leave them without that thing and we get it. It is one of the base immoralities just up from lying, which I believe to be a (if not THE) base sin and will write about soon. In the digital world it is not so simple. Say Jesus the carpenter builds a chair. Someone breaks into his house and steals the chair. Now all of Jesus’ hard work has been stolen and for Jesus to have a chair again he has to build another.

Let me point out a few factors that while they may be emotionally charged they are not of any valid logic consequence to this discussion, aka, they are out-of-bounds:

1. How rich or poor the software developer is. From Steve Jobs to me (yep, I write programs and I’m poor) this has nothing at all to do with this debate.
2. The term pirated. While the industry has leveraged their money to label this “pirating” pirates literally steal things in the sense of Jesus’ chair above and not in this sense. The word does not equate to instant immorality any more than naming your child Pirate would instantly make them a thief. Though the industry would like you to believe so.
3. How much money is involved. The terms of the licensing is also not a factor. While it may sound like less of an issue to “pirate” a single song, or a $20 dvd, it is no different than using the $2000 3D Studio Max. In matters of morality this is simply irrelevant.
4. Whether or not you have ever copyrighted a work.
5. Whether by supernatural power or technological power the copying is accomplished. (you’ll see soon enough)

While that may not be a complete list it’s a good start. So let’s consider this.

Only for a little background, since the relevance of this probably belongs in the list above, consider the late 1970s and the entry of VHS & Beta into the market. Sony, a producer of video recorders at the time, went to war on copyright. Believe it or not, against. Now, this is not proof of anything other than the thoroughly fuzzy basis of connecting morality with copyright legislation. However, the fact remains, Sony won. The courts ruled that copyrighted media that enters into a person’s house is theirs to do with as they’d like. So long as they don’t sell it, they can record it, reproduce it, and even share it with their friends.

So back to Jesus and his stolen chair. In order to inject the dynamics of supposed software “theft” we have to inject a non-existent device into Jesus’ time. The Star Trek replicator! So our thief goes into Jesus’ shop and using his pocket replicator makes an exact copy of Jesus’ chair. Takes that and Jesus only knows what happened because he is omniscient (assuming you believe that he was). So he still has his chair.

That’s the problem with labeling software copying “stealing” … the only loss is the legislated right of the original producer to earn money from the bits. This does not mean that the case is proven, but it does highlight a major flaw in just assuming that this would equate to theft. Remember, copyrighting is only a few hundred years old. Before then most ideas were shared relatively freely.

I used to work for the International Bible Society, who made a significant portion of their funding through royalties on their own Bible translation, the NIV. As the statute of limitations approached on the NIV’s copyright they rushed to produce a new, improved, and whole ‘nother 20 years worth of copyright-ability from the new TNIV. Per United States law, this is perfectly legitimate. However, since when do matters of morality have term limits? Well, they simply don’t. The monkey wrench being that if there weren’t a limit then how could the IBS earn royalties on their copy of the Bible without paying royalties to the writers of the Bible? They could not…. it all becomes a big mess if legislators do not recognize that there’s something wrong with the whole model. So the fix? 20 year limit, then “public domain” and end of profitability.

While I love what the IBS does with the Bible, and am in no way crying foul at their business model, I do point out that it is just that. A business model and that it is based on legislation, not morality. After 20 years, they need a new product. End of story.

So back to Jesus, again…. His chair copied and cloned several hundred times and his ability to sell his chair at a high price quickly being undermined by a flood of supply in the market. Poor guy…. but alas some disciples show up and they decide to go for a walk. … Did you know that there was a replicator in the Bible??? … Anyway, they were walking along and someone says: “hey Jesus, man sorry to hear about that pirated chair you invented, but you need to get your taxes paid.” Wanna guess what Jesus does? Read it for yourself:

Matthew 17
24After Jesus and his disciples arrived in Capernaum, the collectors of the two-drachma tax came to Peter and asked, “Doesn’t your teacher pay the temple tax[b]?”

“Then the sons are exempt,” Jesus said to him. 27″But so that we may not offend them, go to the lake and throw out your line. Take the first fish you catch; open its mouth and you will find a four-drachma coin. Take it and give it to them for my tax and yours.”

So I’m not sure that we ever hear whether or not this happened, but it sure sounds pretty telling to me. Jesus either duplicated money with the supernatural fish-mouth replicator, or used money lost by some other poor soul to pay His tax, either way the entire dialog very nicely contrasts the difference between human law and legislation and morality. I believe one of the most immoral things a person can do is lie, however legislation on the matter is sorely lacking. Unless of course you are standing in a legal court, then it suddenly of utmost importance. They don’t care if you told your brother-in-law that you make 3 times more money than you actually do, or charge 1 customer twice what you charge another just cause “you can”, so long as you tell them the truth, wink… wink.

There’s more than just government legislating to be had too. Within any company, school, or even family there are institutional laws, that while they shouldn’t usually undermine the government, they can add to them. For instance, my children will be disciplined when they lie, no matter what president Obama does.

So in conclusion I will say that IMO so long as legislation does not support someone’s claimed entitlement to royalties or payment for bits that are laying around the public internet, then there is no moral obligation to pay them for them. It’s the profit model they chose. It’s very lucrative within the Countries that do enforce it, and trying to turn this to a matter of morality is like wanting one’s cake and eating it too. However, I will also concede that this is not trivial. There is a Biblical mandate to submit to weaker brothers on trivial matters of morality. Paul and Peter warred over the issue of circumcision. For some it had become a moral imperative and Paul insisted it could not be so. I will insist that this cannot be so, not in a place where the legislation simply does not require it.

I will however take this one step further. I believe there is a significant lapse in morality when people decide that they should be paid for their ideas. Not just to be idea people, that’s a worthy profession, but to do the job once and get paid for it for every use. That is greedy and IMO has it’s own moral implications that are virtually extortion. No man is an island and no piece of software exists which was not built on the backs of hundreds and thousands of previous ideas. If one can leverage legislation to allow their 101st contribution, to the stack of ideas represented in any given program, to earn them recurring profits on each free replication of the idea, then they are exploiting with the backing of the legislation.

When the legislation does not exist, then the crime does not exist, and morality is as far from this conversation as it was in the Matthew 17 dialog. Jesus made money appear out of a fish’s mouth to pay his taxes and His friend’s & gave the legislation no more respect than was necessary to avoid offense, while his supernatural counterfeiting may well have devalued the currency by 4 drachmas. If He lived in a Country where such tax was not required by law then He would probably not have bothered to pay such tax, and if He lived in a Country where copyright law is non-existent neither should He be required to obey it as though it were a legal obligation just because some would have proclaimed it also a moral obligation. All that, IMO.

Disclosures: I live in a Country with copyright laws that apply to very specific items and that only recognize its own list of qualified copyrighted works. There is no provision at all for software in the law & it has not been revised in 13 years. I have Windows 7, OSX, and Linux installed on my computer and find Linux to be the most flexible, Windows the most powerful, and OSX the most pointless, though it is the only OS that I was able to write iPhone apps on (not by accident per Mr. Jobs). I’m thoroughly familiar with each, especially OSX as making it work on a Dell laptop is not for the faint of heart.

Update: Some of my disclosure has been pointed out as incorrect, a newer copy from 2002 has been produced which does include software, and even the fees associated are modified to a much higher (50x) rate. As can be seen here: http://www.ipnepal.gov.np/copyright_act_2002.pdf. From the site by “fairylord Kumar KC”… just found that funny. Anyway, the loophole about the Nepali register of copyrighted works being the only valid one is actually alive and well & from what I could find there are exactly 7 copyrighted software programs (as of 2006 old data) and which those are is impossible to know! haha. Anyway, I was wrong… a little bit.