Software, Music and Movie Piracy: A Christian Perspective
This is a highly controversial topic, even among Christians. There are too many Christians out there who patronize Pirated CD stores and buying them in loads to watch with their family at home. I am one of them too. And then there are many Christians who use P2P programs such as Limewire to download music illegally online. I am also one of them. The trend has become so rampant that nobody thinks of it as wrong anymore these days. Surveys show that many teens simply do not think that downloading music online is wrong. “It’s online and for the taking since it is so accessible. What’s wrong about it?” Well, even many Christian parents do it too. Then there is also the issue of Christians pirating Christian music itself, and the Christian music industry is indeed a multi-million dollar industry. I was struck by the irony of the situation, since from the onset what we Christians are really doing is STEALING.
Let’s not be too spiritual about this. Before I start quoting Bible verses, let’s put things in the secular perspective. If you were a software developer who developed a fantastic software which can greatly enhance people’s lives, or if you were a musician who invested countless of hours and much sweat in making great music, you wouldn’t want people taking your original CD and printing thousands of copies of it to sell, of which none of the profits come to you. And after that you realise that you only sold one original CD. Sad right? Isn’t it that simple? Don’t do what you don’t want people to do to you. But it ain’t that simple, since, as we all can see now, most of us just don’t care.
And can’t we all realize that buying Pirated CDs is actually wrong? Why would the pirates in Malaysia roam the streets instead of setting up stalls? Why are they so afraid of being caught? Yes, it is because they are doing something illegal. IT IS WRONG, YOU PEOPLE. Stop buying pirated CDs!!! AND STOP DOWNLOADING SONGS THROUGH BITTORRENT! In some countries, some people have been arrested for excessive downloads of thousands of songs online. But does that make it lawful for us to download one or two songs occasionally and get away with it? Yes we do get away with it, but it is STILL WRONG. A big sin or a small sin is still a sin.
One of the Ten Commandments in the Bible states simply, “You shall not steal.” (Exodus 20:15) Yet what many people who call themselves Christians fail to hold themselves by a higher standard and buy these pirated stuff by the dozens, or download them illegally. Would Jesus pirate music? That’s for you to answer.
Some argue that by pirating Christian music to be given to a friend helps that friend grow spiritually and enriches the life of the person. To this I would ask back the question: Would you step into a Christian bookstore and steal a Bible and repeat the same argument? Puts it in perspective doesn’t it? We wouldn’t do that, right?
I know that many of you would be challenged by this issue. I would be too. “Everyone is doing it, so why should I stop?” I challenge myself and all of you to stop buying illegal pirated CDs and buy music instead of downloading them illegally through P2P networks. I am not trying to be overly spiritual here. But we cannot afford to be hypocrites by pirating music and software. I have told myself once that I would stop buying pirated stuff once I have the earning power. Really? Let’s stop cheating ourselves. Habits are hard to shake off, and soon we would be buying the fakes even if we had the money, since we are all so used to it already. (This is also why we must be able to handle our finances when we have so little of it, because we can only be trusted with more once we have earned our trust with the little that we have. Our financial management won’t suddenly change with the influx of money, but I’m digressing.)
As I said, we need to hold ourselves accountable by a higher standard.
But let’s not ignore the practicality problems. After all, I bet almost everyone right now who is reading my blog has a copy of a pirated Microsoft Office/Adobe Photoshop/Warcraft TFT installed in his/her computer, myself included. How are we going to live without them? I’m going to stop short of deleting it right now (I’ll try to remove it later, once I get used to the alternatives), but there are many alternatives out there: Google Docs (free), Open Office (free), StarOffice 8 (cheaper than MS Office), Preezo (free alternative to MS PowerPoint), MYOffice2007 (software developed in Malaysia, only RM 299), paint.net, Photoshop Album Starter Edition 3.2 (basic Photoshop functions), and many many many more (Google it yourself!). I find that many who buy pirated software are also those who really can afford them. They stay in big homes, drive big cars, but refuse to pay more bucks for an authentic MS Office Software, which is arguably more important to them than the big cars. The same can be said about the pirated movie CDs.
As for music, we need not be owners of the music all the time. There are music portals which allow us to hear the entire song via streaming, but we can’t download it: Imeem, Deezer (both have excellent database of songs, Christian music included), YouTube (many music videos uploaded! but please don’t rip them off YouTube!). There are also countless of radio stations online: Live365 Internet Radio. Or of course, get a radio and tune in to Fly, Mix, Hitz, Light, Red FM etce, you can be sure that they feature the latest music. Or the best way, buy the original CDs from the shops. I have made it a point to buy original Christian CDs and not download them. (My iPod is full of it now, almost 20 original Christian music CDs.) Now the challenge is not to do this to all genres of music. Bless a friend with a new CD instead of sending them illegal downloads. But I think it is no problem to share with our friends our original CDs for personal enjoyment. Or better still, if you have the cash, you can download from iTunes at USD 0.99 per song, or USD 9.99 per album, which converts into about RM 3.00 per song. (haven’t tried this yet due to cost)
Movies. Go to the cinema la! Using Golden Screen Cinemas eTicketing you can pay via credit card or Maybank2u.com to avoid queues. I tried it and it was superbly easy. I could click on the seats that I wanted online. Or subscribe to HBO on Astro. Wait for the official movie DVDs to be launched much later after the screening time. But all the Christians and Church Pastors who watched “The Passion of the Christ” clearly did so by buying pirated stuff, since Malaysia never aired it. Thought provoking.
Difficult but doable. My objective is not to see myself as a class higher than the rest by stopping all this. Or to feel more spiritual. I feel that it is just the right thing to do. I don’t think anyone wants to be at the losing end of piracy, to be the victim of piracy. So don’t support piracy!
Some of the hundreds of articles related to piracy:
Thief-to-Thief: A Christian View of Piracy
Effects of Piracy
Piracy of Gospel Music Worries Christian Music Ministries
Piracy no stranger to Christian tunes
When it comes to music, Christian teens, too, are pirates
Piracy
This post will challenge many of you. The choice is yours. Do what you think is right. Just remember that it’s wrong to steal. And make no doubt about it, piracy is stealing.
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Hi Guest, I am reposting what you commented in my chatbox here so that a discussion can ensue
are people propagating their music and spreading the love for God/Christ? Instead of worrying about the profits.
ok, piracy is stealing. what about the Christian music producers who claim that they produce these music to touch souls? Shouldn’t they be glad there
moreover, they don’t sell at a non-profitting price.
@Guest: So this is about Christian music in particular. Just to outline the boundaries of discussion.
Although it would be great if bands like Hillsong did what they did for non-profit, I doubt that they would be successful that way. First of all, they are people who have lives as well, thus they need to make a living. Secondly, without profits, how can they possibly expand from their humble beginnings? Profits are invested into their songs, equipment, tours, etc. Without profits, they would have to rely on varying funding from donors etc.
No matter what, we are not justified to spread/download their music via P2P and steal from them. But I realize that your argument is not about piracy, but about the Christian music industry not being non-profit instead. Hope that the two points above pours some light.
Just my two cents.
As a matter of fact, piracy doesn’t have a huge impact on the income of famous singers… They do loads of advertising.
I buy original CDs as the quality is better and the CD lasts longer. Pasar malam’s don’t last as long.
About softwares, I’m not saying that it’s OK to steal… but there are some features in a full original software which aren’t available in open source ones. Our standards of living in Malaysia is much higher than other countries such as singapore and US. They earn almost equal our amount but their programs only cost less than half.
So, whether we do have much of a choice? In my opinion- not really… I need my pirated version of software to complete my uni homework properly so I don’t screw up my internal. If you’re in my position, would you actually give up your marks or scholarship just because you don’t want to use pirated software? (I’m talking about cases where you really don’t have a choice) It’s debatable ain’t it?
Btw, if you’re considering to buy MYoffice07 for RM299, you might as well buy MicrosoftOffice07 Student and teacher OEM edition. Only cost about RM400 and you’re allowed to install on up to 4 computers.
@Vic: As a matter of fact, if i remember correctly, Kanye West encourages pirating his music cause he says it is great publicity. When he goes for concerts, they all sell-out. So it is good, he says. But that is not always the case for all artistes, especially local ones and not so big ones.
talking about choice, i am sure you would have survived using OpenOffice 2.4. It’s quite comprehensive for the price of ZERO. get it at http://www.openoffice.org
yeah sure if i did not have my pirated MS Office for the past 7 years i dunno what I would have done. Flunk all my assignments? haha. but now that we know, might as well save up and get the original stuff. i mean, the new MS Office 2007 just looks so much nicer to use. =)
That’s only office… currently I’m required to do programming. C visual studio, MATLAB, simulations, 3D drawings, autocad and many more. I doubt there’s any open source programs for those. To buy ori would cost thousands. To me, I would rather steal quietly than to fail my programming subject. =.=
Do you not feel it should be a 2 way street? Let’s face it ,deep down inside everyone will prefer not to commit piracy, but we are driven to it. This is due to the extremely high costs of cds, music cds are reaching the RM50 bracket, computer games cds are over RM 100. Do you not think, if software companies music artists all compromised, cut down their profits a bit to give us cheaper cds, then we wont buy them? It’s only because of the outrageous prices do people turn to pirated copies. I mean come will an artist who used to get 3 million dollars, now get 2.5 million, will she die?
As for the Christian songs, while I understand the arguments, if their aim was really to touch the souls of people, while they may have to charge higher than cost price, it doesn’t necessarily have to be as high as it is now. After all, their aim aint the millions but the touching of souls
@Vic: can’t blame you for that. but your monash should take responsibility as well and get genuine programs for shared use by students. it’s partly the uni’s fault anyway. or u can pool with friends to get the ori stuff. it’s ur own initiative anyway.
@Nim: sometimes we can’t change so many things so why not we take control of what we can indeed change. you can personally decide not to buy ciplak stuff, because of course we all know the price wun go down anytime soon anyway. so what if we think that they are overcharging us since there’s really nothing we can do about it anyway. Ori is ori, and since we do not know or realize the cost structures behind the production of ori CDs, maybe we shouldn’t argue too much about it. An empty CD may cost less than RM 1, but how about the salary of the producers, the sound crew, the special effects, the artistes, the director, the mucisians, the songwriters, etc. Maybe once we take this into consideration, it ain’t that expensive anymore. And perhaps at our income or allowance level, i am sure anything of that price range is expensive. just a matter of perspective.
Well, if its a matter of ethics, pirating will always be wrong ya, even if it has the potential to be beneficial to the producer of the content pirated.
Looking at the issue from a practical perspective is different though. It’s so much cheaper and it’s something that’s socially condoned here as well. I guess, ultimately, it’s still your choice.
i think the idea of non profit means selling at a lower price with the producers earning enough for a living, not for a luxurious life.
the idea that the Christian music industry is a multi billion business is somewhat ironic
Ouch, I got hit right on.
Piracy = You are getting what you get for less than the correct price with no legit reason = Stealing
Sorry, looks like this post is going to be more of excuses than reasons.
As someone who is going into intellectual property-related field like Computer Science, I understand and yes, I know that sooner or later I am going to be on the receiving end. I don’t argue on the point of don’t do what you don’t want people to do to you either.
I would argue that the blame rests on the developers and the musicians too, for setting prices that are too high. I do believe that the companies are themselves being selfish by excessively profiting from their software. (Actually, the programmers don’t get much more money, mind you. It’s only the CEO.) I’m not saying they can’t profit. They can. However, instead of trying to seem generous by giving zillions to the charity, what about caring about the normal people too and setting a reasonable price for a reasonable profit? I’d say, if you know that at the price that you set you are going to risk piracy, why don’t you bring down the price to fight piracy? Honestly, this is the best way to fight it, instead of threatening legal action and things. Personally, gaming softwares are reasonably priced. If Microsoft Office 2007 cost, say, $59, it would definitely be worth a buy. (C’mon, not much difference between pirated and authentic, so might as well get it proper.) If these companies weren’t out to make money, they would have thought that this sounds good. Lower profit? Lower prices will definitely convince people to go authentic. Profits might instead go up. With proper marketing (such as Office 2007 Student Edition at $200 can install in three computers) profits might just soar.
I advocate price discrimination too. Should price lower for personal and non-profit use. The difficulty, however, is in determining whether a use is authentic. From my observation however, I come up with my own view that companies should be corporate price, and all consumers taken as non-profit users, hence academic price, because you can’t check consumers anyway so why bother? Corporates much easier to catch. Might as well profit less but makes everyone happier. Corporates complain? They can go open source. Linux, OpenOffice, whatever.
In fact, talking about non-profit, Microsoft should consider donating old versions of softwares to non-profit organizations so that they stop pirating. Those org’s don’t have money to splurge, even on Windows 98, y’know. Since Microsoft always develop more Windows to suck $ from us consumers, might as well make very old software versions freely available and give back to the society.
Music, I have to say that without pirated music, I would have had almost no music in my PC, because my parents don’t allow spending on CD’s. They consider them waste of money. Well, English music CD’s, because they are darn expensive. I buy authentic Thai music CD’s. If I had spent on English music CD’s, I think my monthly spending goes up a lot, and my spending lifestyle goes from okay to terribly splurging.
As for Christian music, it is again a matter of pricing. One way of expressing their sincerity is to price the CD’s below normal music CD’s price. There is a difference between profiting to make a living and profiting excessively y’know. I can’t draw a line, but well, we all know the rough guide. This is again a matter of not trusting God enough. I don’t think I live up to this statement, but they have to know that if they don’t price for excessive profits, whatever God channels to them will be sufficient for them.
I must point out too, that MP3’s don’t possess CD quality, so you get the song, but not the quality. Want quality? Go buy authentic. Keep in mind that MP3 users like me have to bear the lower quality.
It’s no good to pirate, but as much as the reason is invalid, I still insist that overpricing plays a part in me still not immediately uninstalling all pirated things. If the prices go down, it gets very convincing to buy authentic. I don’t need to wait for my earning to go up, it is all about being affordable and reasonable. Apart from that, no other excuse.
Piracy helps spark new ideas.
The whole idea of making Malaysia versions of music CDs (you can buy them for about RM29.90 compared to international versions at RM39.90 ) was inspired by the whole issue of piracy. If they were not any piracy people will just continue to buy products with high profit margins and, like the rest say, the producers will reap in luxurious lifestyles.
so we all agree that the pricing mechanism is skewed and unfair to the consumers. profiteering is rampant, even in the Christian music scene. oh well, i guess that’s why the problem existed in the first place. for every one person who takes up the challenge and starts avoiding anything unauthentic, there would be a million others buying pirated stuff. you guys just do what you think is right then, since there will always be excuses not to stop buying pirated stuff. it is not my objective to change your way of life. just give it some thought, though.
spam: HAIL PIRATES!!! (screw the overly priced items)
But hmm… should not repay evil with evil… Don’t be discouraged! What you say is good and right. I want to get this right in the long run, just that I definitely cannot promise that I will delete everything illegal in my PC right now, kinduf thing.
Just something I’ve been wondering about.
On the issue of piracy, sure, yeah - it’s stealing. Boo stealing and so on and so forth.
However, p2p programs is something I’m on the fence about.
Here’s the concept of p2p. It’s file SHARING.
Essentially, how do you tell the difference between sharing an mp3, for example, with someone online, and lending someone your original CD and they copy it into their computer? I think, if you’re going to judge it based on technicalities, then on the very fine line between right and wrong, p2p sharing just manages to keep on the morally correct side.
What do you think?
File sharing… hey this is true. It is the right of the owners whether to share, so actually sharing is in grey whether it is right or wrong. This applies to everything on file-sharing softwares including BitTorrent, Kazaa, and so on.
However, selling pirated softwares for profit is still wrong.
So, what’s the moral? Don’t buy pirated. BT/Kazaa them off or borrow them from friends who own. In that case, you are at the mercy of your friend anyway, so they have every right to refuse you from borrowing and making copies.
The way I see it, the boundaries are blurred. Though I think that sharing music with friends we are in contact with is acceptable (through msn window or burn cds), but I do not agree with the use of P2P software as a channel to share. To think about it in the extreme case, the music company can sell one original CD to one guy and he shares it to a million others who never bought the original cd through P2P. And all the company sold was one cd. Might be a flawed argument, but my point is that sharing among friends is being fair to the people in the music industry, while the use of P2P is really unfair. This is a grey area, no one can say sharing to how many people is OK and what is not OK. But P2P opens the sharing field to unlimited persons, making it unfair to the music industry.
frankly, I don’t see any difference between buying pirated and downloading from P2P. The downloader, i.e. you, benefits while the original copyright owner without paying the owner of the property or music. It is free to you, but the copyright owner loses a potential earning. That’s why I don’t see the point of contention here. P2P is not really right too. But then again, people are just going to continue using it until the laws are tightened and new regulations are put into place globally.
*UNRELATED* (:
Post this pic and link to my site if you wish.
You really don’t have to but it’s cool, and I wrote about something that I honestly believe that every Malaysian should read about.
http://i270.photobucket.com/albums/jj83/planar_rebirth/mahathircopy.jpg
Yeah, its about our very nice ex-pm and racial politics.
ANYWAY, yes I agree that P2P and file sharing is still piracy cause file sharing networks still deprive the creators of the intellectual property from their rightful earnings. Just because it’s called ‘filesharing’ doesn’t mean that it isn’t digital piracy.
Cheers.
Yes, but 1. it is possible too, in extreme cases, for people who share the files on P2P to *never* have shared the files in the first place, so if everyone stops using P2P to share files that will be the end of it and, 2. the sharer does not benefit from the sharing. It is done for the benefit of others. To look at it from another point of view, it is a form of giving for the benefit of others. It is like, you learn something from school, and you share it with people who cannot afford to go to school. The school doesn’t earn extra $, but people who cannot afford to “buy” that knowledge gains from it, and the sharer loses nothing (although he benefits nothing.)
Exactly my point. It’s sharing. Sure, you may ‘deprive the creators of the intellectual property from their rightful earnings’, but is that any different from lending a friend your copy of Lord of the Rings, say.
But no reason to continue beating a dead horse, either you think it’s acceptable or you don’t.
well either way the argument goes you won’t stop because you are already so used to downloading online using P2P that I think any argument would not stop you from continuing the downloads =.= file sharing ain’t sharing and it’s illegal, that’s my stand. period.
@josh: Ah… that’s true.
@Ern Sheong: I respect your stand. =) Of course, the reasons that we cite are in the grey, and so sound like excuses, so ah well…