So basically most Muslim scholars say piracy is forbidden cause it’s a form of stealing. The basics argument is taking anything from anyone without thier consent is morally wrong and haram. If someone makes anything like a book, game or software and he sells it you shouldn’t pirate it unless they agree to give it for free.
There are exceptions for that, for example if you need a book or a course but you can’t afford it you can pirate it on the promise that you’ll give it’s honor the money once you’ve it. Also, concealing knowledge is a sin in islam, so it’s permitted to pirate books and courses if the platform had banned your country ips for example or you can’t pay because us sanitation or if a state try to hide a boom for example or it’s owner refused to share knowledge and decided to not sell his book anymore. but if it’s available for sale it’s haram to pirate it against it’s owner will.
How do you guys argue against these fatwas? Are there fatwas that make piracy halal? Why do you think it’s halal if you do?
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.
Schoolers argue that it’s a form of theft of effort of the author. You can’t take anything from someone against its well. The auther is your brother, if you have the money, you shall not ignore his right
If the author has passed/sold the rights to a distributor then is reproducing it via an alternative method a detriment to the author?
They are are the ones agreeing to reproduction. If the author is the sole owner they reserve the right to recreate and distribute themselves. Modern day media has many owners of the process…who all seek rent from you to listen/watch. Who would you pay?
Have you seen Heretic? In some of the scenes Hugh Grants character explores the idea of originality and uses music to do that. If an song is inspired by another song does that mean you have to pay towards the original song?
You could spend forever rationalising who deserves payment. That’s why we entrusted distributors to put a product in front of us based on value of that product.
That’s a really good point, you are not stealing the core product, its a reproduction, and one that you are invited to rent, rather than own. Interpretation is key.
By the same thinking we reproduce and consume other things - words, memes, recipes and don’t consider that stealing.
My stance on the ethics of piracy is - the procurement of something is based on what is a fair value. If that commodity is available via several routes I will always play fair. If the provider tries to extort that commodity past fair then I will look to another provider - If you had a toll road that saved you 5 mins and charged $1 fair, if they then start to charge £25 - I will revert to the back roads, is that considered immoral?
This touches on one of the reasons I am inclined to pirate – the majority of the time it’s not the author or developer that you pay, it’s the distributor or streaming provider (who often takes a 30% cut), then the payment processor takes about 5%, then the publisher takes a significant and usually undisclosed portion, until finally (and this differs between media) the actual creator sees perhaps £10 of a £60 purchase. Until the vultures clear the field and stop taking hefty cuts, or if I trust the publisher, I am inclined to find a way to actually pay the developer, or not at all, because even though it takes effort to research the sources and distributors, I would much rather vote with my wallet and not accept astronomical distributor fees and anti-consumer practices.
When I was younger I found an album I really liked on Bandcamp. The monetisation model the artist used meant you could actually pay 0 for the music. As I was tight financially I took it but was extremely grateful. This can be seen as consensual piracy, because in my eyes that produce is worth a certain value that can be exchanged with money, even if the seller doesn’t say it. Anyway, Bandcamp takes a 15% cut which is low for the industry, and this particular artist was also independent, meaning they were their own publisher/record label, so when I could I honoured that ‘pay what you feel it’s worth’ approach and bought it a couple years or so later for more than a commercial album. Trust is also extremely infrequent in capitalism, and I appreciated the design.
When the government makes the backroads “no thru traffic”, leaving the toll road as the only legal option, the government is working for the toll road owner.
That’s capitalism. Capitalism is immoral.