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?
I’m just glad my religion doesn’t tell me what I can download.
I don’t know what you believe in but almost all religions can be interpreted this way. Even non-believers have a sense of morality telling them what they can or can’t do. It’s still a choice to either respect or disregard those rules. Most christians vastly disregard most sayings of the Bible, because they don’t all make sense
My religion has a “1” and a “0” on it and sails under a black flag /j
Basically I don’t believe in intellectual property in the first place, so I consider the whole debate moot. It becomes obviously absurd when you try to think of how to apply the rulings of actual property. For example if I have an OC and “lend” it to someone, what? Am I not allowed to draw it anymore? Will they sue me? How do I return a stolen OC? Are we really going to consider piracy a major sin (stealing)? Accepting IP as property would also imply that it never ends, and literally nobody does that.
Intellectual property should be seen for what it is: A system thought up by the British to make the rich richer that has about as much Islamic legitimacy as, say, segregation.
Edit: Also you’re generally not going to get many replies from Muslims here seeing as the number of Muslims on the Threadverse is in the single digits.
I have an odd question. Does Islam have a position on corporate personhood? If corporations are not people, can one steal from them at all? Piracy is already not quite the same as theft because it does not remove the original from the source’s possession, so can copying something ‘owned’ by something that isn’t a person count as theft?
Nope. Islam does not have the concept of corporate personhood. It does have the concept of long-after-dead possession (although not strictly owned by said person). When you donate your wealth to the ummah (term for muslim as a whole, usually represented by a government or organization) in the form of wakaf, that wealth may not be re-sold/re-inherited. The wealth is still “attached” to you in a sense and very different from the usual infaq/shadaqa
Does it matter?
There is no god, not the Christian one, not the Muslim one, not the Hindu one, none of them, they’re all human inventions.
But for the sake of argument, let’s say there is
Do you really believe that that God is sitting there with a tally list on of you touched your peepee and enjoyed it?.do you really think he’s checking the contents of your hard drive to see if you haven’t taken something from greedy corporation that happily supports murderous fascists without paying them?
I mean, ethically? I honestly believe that it’s a sin to pay these fuckers because you’re paying literally to help fascism grow. It’s the right thing to do to just torrent the media, any media, like AI companies also did, without paying a dime. Hey, wt least i don’t take from the average Joe who got ripped off by AI bots.
So to answer your question: stop asking questions and just do the right thing, just download that movie
Sharing is ethically good. There needs to be more sharing in the world.
That’s a very interesting POV on exploitation rights Religious law’s point of view instead of a state law. I respect that you try to follow your moral compass. I can’t give you an answer though.
Since it isn’t technically stealing (taking away a thing) but harming the creator by not buying licenses from him it gets complicated. Nice take on the book pirating - pay the creator as soon as you can.
Do you know how seeding in a p2p network is assessed? When you download a book which you intend to pay for later (halal), someone gives you bandwidth under the assumption that you seed it back. But is it allowed? You can’t know if the leecher uses it in a halal way. Is not seeding haram? Is seeding haram?
Regrading seeding, most pirated Arabic content is found on websites with direct download links. Torrent isn’t that famous mostly because of bad internet speed and quota see this https://lemdro.id/post/34737706
So for sharing in general, some schoolers even permit recording university lecture and sharing it even against professor and uni well as they shall not council knowledge.
I remember a schooler got banned from monitoring exams because students would ask him during exam and he would explain to them and giving answer because prophet siad “He who is asked something he knows and conceals it will have a bridle of fire put on him on the Day of Resurrection.”
So generally schoolers would allow seeding for course, lectures and books but not games for example. Some even might set price that you can’t share book below it because everyone can afford it. Some would tell you that you can pirate any knowledge that will benefit you and pay if you ever got the money but for example if it’s a novel that you read for pure enjoyment that you don’t read it to increase your vocabulary or something is not permitted in that.
Up until a couple decades ago, basically all religious texts were distributed without getting consent, giving credit or forking over royalties to their original authors. Rhymes and songs, even images, were observed and then repeated or noted down and spread.
By todays definition, that’s piracy. Piracy is exactly the same thing, just in a digital world.
Therefore, if piracy isn’t halal, most religious texts and imagery aren’t halal either.
Now, looking at it the other way around, to confirm that:
Theft is illegal. So the question stands: is piracy theft?
That depends on the definition of theft. The old meaning of theft, so the thing, probably ruled over in religious texts, is: The unlawful taking of the property of another.
Now, can you take something from someone else, without them loosing it? I’d argue: No!
So, piracy isn’t theft. Piracy is copying or repeating.
Calling it “piracy” is corporate framing. Piracy is theft: you’re stealing from somebody else’s boat. That isn’t what’s happening here. This is filesharing.
