Orthodox Christian view on so-called "piracy" and "intellectual property"

By fr.Georgiy Maximov


In the comments to the sermon on theft, I was asked the following question: "is it theft to use hacked programs, scans of non-purchased books, music downloaded bypassing the copyright holder, watching pirated movies? What about "intellectual property"?" I decided to answer separately and in detail. I suppose not, it's not stealing.

The modern secular world seeks to abolish the commandments of God, declaring as the norm what is sin from the point of view of God, and at the same time introduce its own commandments, declaring as sin what God did not declare as sin. For example, from the point of view of the ideologists of secularism, euthanasia, abortion, fornication and homosexuality is not a sin at all, but downloading a book or program from the Internet without paying the copyright holders is a terrible sin, as well as "homophobia", "intolerance", etc.

If we return to the essence of the issue, I would like to recall one interview with Kaspersky (the creator of the famous antivirus program). When a journalist asked him how he felt about being robbed by "pirates", Kaspersky replied: "I do not consider this theft, because when someone downloads an unlicensed version of my program, I do not lose anything of my property" (I write from memory). Indeed, downloading so-called "pirated" software or content is not theft, since it does not take away and assign someone else's property. All that is being discussed is that the copyright holders are allegedly deprived of potential profits. This is pure demagogy. Depriving an imaginary profit is about the same as depriving an imaginary golden unicorn.

Firstly, if there were no "pirates", this would not at all lead to the fact that all users of pirates would collectively carry their money to the copyright holders – the lion's share of them would prefer not to use the product and not pay. The copyright holders would not have received any profit from them anyway. Secondly, reasoning within the framework of "potential profit", it is necessary to recognize that "pirates" ensure the dominance of certain software and thereby indirectly increase the profits of copyright holders, since as a result of the dominance of certain products, they are bought by those who would not have bought if this dominance had not been. Let me explain with an example. If in the 1990s and 2000s the "pirates" had not ensured the dominance of the Windows OS, and instead of Windows, people who did not want to pay would have been given free Linux, then as a result the number of people who can work on Linux in our country would have been so significant that enterprises that are willing to pay for software would install Linux, not Windows. So corporations receive part of their profits due to the dominance provided in many ways by "pirates". Therefore, ranting about the "loss of potential profit" cannot be taken into account, since anyone who downloads software for free works for the dominance of this software and, accordingly, ensures that copyright holders receive profits that they would not have received without the dominance of their product. I wrote this only to show the inconsistency of the demagogy about the loss of an imaginary possible profit. Everything is a little more complicated, even with profit.

Now a few words about "intellectual property" in particular, about books (because I am a writer myself and I know this better than others). If someone writes "to the table", exclusively for himself, and these records were stolen from him and published against his will, especially if they made money or published under another name, then yes – this can be called theft of intellectual property. But when an author publishes his work, it means that he himself makes it public, publicly available. I'm not an old man, but I remember the days when there was no Internet and people went to libraries en masse. One copy of the book in the library could easily be read by hundreds of people. Completely free of charge. And if you take the library network across the country, then these are tens of thousands of readers who have not paid a penny to read a popular book. And no one called it "piracy", no one fought against libraries as a system that deprives copyright holders of potential profits, no one argued that everyone who reads for free in libraries is allegedly stealing from unhappy authors. And then the Internet appeared and actually became an electronic library. Yes, it has other functions, but it is also just a very large electronic library. In fact, there is no difference. But then all of a sudden the copyright holders started to stir and the accusations began that "if you read on the Internet and don't pay, then you're a thief!" Complete nonsense.

It is worth saying that in most cases, the copyright holder and the author of the work are different people. Often, copyright holders are big businessmen who have obtained the rights to their works from the authors in various ways in order to profit from their distribution. In my opinion, the interests of copyright holders and authors do not coincide. Put two options in front of any writer: either your book will be read by a thousand people who will pay for it, or it will be read by a hundred thousand people, of whom only a thousand will pay for it – and I do not know a single writer who will choose the first option. And I will not believe the writer who says he will choose him. Any writer wants his work to be read by as many people as possible, and it would affect as many minds as possible. But for businessmen who fuss and become copyright holders, only money is important, and they are ready to limit the freedom of information dissemination, just not to lose a "potential ruble". I understand their interests, but when they begin to declare violation of their interests as a sin against God, I resent it.

When discussing this topic, there are always those who start saying: "but if they did this to you, you probably wouldn't like it," so I'll say right away that I have never fought the so-called "pirated" distribution of my texts. Moreover, they are posted on my website and are available for free download. As for the software, in recent years I have been using only licensed software and paying for those programs that are positioned as paid. That is, my position is not a defense of my unwillingness to pay. I pay the copyright holders. But I do it because I want and can, solely of my own free will, and not because other behavior is allegedly a sin of theft. No, it is not. I am outraged by the hypocrisy of the secular world, which declares child murder and fornication to be the norm, but at the same time declares downloading a text or program from the Internet to be the worst sin of stealing "potential corporate profits."

It is also worth adding that the "Fundamentals of the social concept" sets out the point of view of the copyright holders. I consider this a mistake and hope that when the time comes to officially revise this text (and there is something to revise and correct), this place will be corrected. The revelation of God does not need to remove anything, nor to add anything like the "sin of stealing imaginary profits."