Licensing - making the case for ethics in connection with intellectual property

Recently I was visiting a full-time Christian worker and yet again was confronted with the apologetic shrug and slightly embarrassed laugh when it came to the question of downloading a video from a site that had no right to host it. The rationalization this time was that this person lived in a country that did not have laws protecting international copyright.

But I'm not arguing for legality - I'm arguing for ethics!

Imagine that you personally knew the producer of this particular movie and you knew that he/she had mortgaged their home in order to invest everything they had into this movie in hopes that it would get him his needed start into a business and he would then get out of the unemployment lines. He spent his time, his energy, his passion on producing this movie. In every sense of the word he OWNS this movie. And he has agreed to sell it for $10 per copy or rent it for $2 - that's the amount that he has determined he needs in order to put food on his family's table.

Does that put a different spin on it if you found out that hundreds of churches and thousands of their members across the USA were copying and distributing it? Your friend is starving because these people choose to copy instead of paying for the product? Would it make a difference if your producer friend lived in Australia or England and there was some technical loophole in the law which made it so it wasn't technically illegal for these copies to be made?

Now we've got to ask ourselves whether the wealth of the owner or the personal relationship with the owner makes a difference in ethics or if it just makes it easy to steal. Do I defend my friend's right to not have their car stolen but I think it's OK to steal from a company because they are rich or because I don't have a personal relationship with them? NO!

If person X owns something, person Y shouldn't take it from them. That's called stealing. It's called stealing whether there are specific laws governing that action or not. And if person X's ownership of the property should result in licensing fees or rental fees then it isn't right for person Y to take that away from person X - taking what belongs to someone else is called stealing.

"But," someone will say, "if I copy it or don't copy it the person hasn't won or lost anything -- they don't even know that I've made a copy!"

The fact that you *want* the property means that you have implicitly agreed that it has value. If it had no value then you wouldn't want it. If the owner has requested remuneration for the use of his property then to use it without paying is stealing. Would you sneak into someone's vacation home and live there for a week? NO! Whether there are laws regulating the trespassing or break/enter or not, whether you are causing the owner loss or not, you wouldn't go into their home and live there simply because it isn't right. (Or at least I hope that is what you would decide! If you don't come to that conclusion then stay away from my vacation home! Oh, wait, I don't have a vacation home. Oh, well, it's still ethically WRONG!)

Intellectual property is property. The owner of property has the right to determine how said property will be distributed or loaned and under what conditions. The person who wants to have/use said property either needs to comply with the owner's conditions or decide that they don't want the property that badly or else they have to turn to unethical behavior - i.e., stealing.

Downloading a video or a song in a way that doesn't agree with the owner's conditions is wrong. Installing software in a way that doesn't comply with the owner's conditions is wrong. It belongs to them and we are morally required to either give them what they want to use the intellectual property or else not use the intellectual property.

This isn't rocket science!