Do I Own My Art? On Intellectual Property Rights
00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)
00:00:02.580 | - We have an email today all the way from Middle Earth.
00:00:08.400 | Hello, Pastor John, my name is Simon from New Zealand.
00:00:11.400 | I've been thinking a lot about copyright
00:00:13.000 | and often wondered how copyright fits with scripture.
00:00:16.480 | I'm a video content creator
00:00:18.360 | and sometimes the copyright laws matter deeply to me,
00:00:21.400 | other times not so much.
00:00:23.320 | How should believers view intellectual property rights?
00:00:26.840 | What would you say to Simon?
00:00:29.200 | - Let's start by laying down a few biblical precepts
00:00:34.200 | which are perhaps taken for granted by everyone.
00:00:39.340 | But in our day, historical forgetfulness
00:00:43.240 | and widespread expectation of unmerited entitlement
00:00:47.760 | and pervasive individual autonomy
00:00:51.160 | with the individual self as the supreme value
00:00:54.280 | and the supreme arbiter in the world
00:00:56.600 | with all of that reality around me,
00:00:59.920 | perhaps what I'm about to say cannot be taken for granted
00:01:04.920 | or for being obvious, but here they are.
00:01:09.160 | Here are the precepts that lay the foundation
00:01:11.960 | for I think the understanding
00:01:13.960 | of intellectual property rights.
00:01:15.940 | Namely first, God has ordained in this present world
00:01:20.460 | that stealing is wrong.
00:01:22.520 | Ephesians 4:28, "Let the thief no longer steal,"
00:01:27.520 | or Romans 13, nine, "You shall not steal."
00:01:32.280 | Now those are New Testament precepts,
00:01:34.920 | not just Old Testament legal statutes.
00:01:37.340 | And the assumption is that this is the way
00:01:40.560 | born again people will be led by the Holy Spirit
00:01:43.520 | freely and joyfully to act.
00:01:46.400 | And it's the way that at the level of behavior,
00:01:50.560 | God commands the world to live.
00:01:53.400 | It also seems to many of us who reflect on it
00:01:57.880 | that this command not to steal implies
00:02:01.040 | so there must be some right that a person has
00:02:06.920 | to keep or possess or use as he sees fit
00:02:11.760 | the property that he owns.
00:02:14.080 | We call this private property.
00:02:17.000 | May not be the best term, but I think we know what I mean.
00:02:19.660 | The command not to steal assumes the rightness
00:02:24.660 | of personal ownership.
00:02:27.480 | There's another phrase for it maybe,
00:02:29.600 | which implies the right to trade what I have
00:02:32.720 | or sell what I have so that I could make a living.
00:02:36.600 | If I could get some appropriate or just or fair value
00:02:40.320 | from another person for what I have just created.
00:02:43.460 | That's the first precept, don't steal,
00:02:46.560 | and the right of personal ownership
00:02:48.760 | and selling and trading.
00:02:50.440 | Second, Colossians 3.9, do not lie to one another
00:02:55.440 | seeing that you have put off the old self
00:02:58.700 | with his practices.
00:02:59.580 | So what God expects from Israel once upon a time
00:03:04.240 | and from the church today is that we are new people
00:03:07.740 | in Christ and these new people in Christ
00:03:10.180 | do not lie to one another.
00:03:12.420 | We have put off in putting on the new man, Jesus Christ,
00:03:16.660 | we've put off lying and that same behavior
00:03:20.980 | is normative for the world at the level of behavior.
00:03:24.780 | Not lying, telling the truth, which would imply
00:03:28.100 | that if you say that something is yours,
00:03:31.660 | when it's not yours, you have sinned against God
00:03:35.340 | as well as your fellow man.
00:03:37.060 | So if a student, say in my class,
00:03:39.460 | says that a paragraph in his essay is his
00:03:43.900 | when he has copied it straight out of Wikipedia
00:03:47.460 | without giving any credit, the teacher, John Piper,
00:03:51.660 | will say, "You're lying."
00:03:53.460 | And he'll say, "No, no, no, no, I really believe
00:03:56.500 | "what's in this paragraph.
00:03:57.420 | "It's really my idea.
00:03:59.520 | "I agree with it, it's mine."
00:04:02.180 | And I would say, "No, by copying it verbatim
00:04:05.760 | "from Wikipedia and giving no credit,
00:04:08.340 | "you have taken over not just an idea
00:04:11.400 | "but a way of saying it that belongs to somebody else
00:04:15.240 | "and you're not telling the truth.
00:04:17.520 | "You're a plagiarist and you're gonna get a lower grade
00:04:21.200 | "because of it, maybe even not pass."
00:04:24.400 | Third, and I think it's very relevant
00:04:26.400 | to intellectual property issues,
00:04:28.240 | Ephesians chapter four, verse 28,
00:04:29.640 | same one we referred to earlier.
00:04:31.560 | Paul goes on to tell that thief who should no longer steal,
00:04:37.160 | "Let him labor, doing honest work with his hands
00:04:42.160 | "so that he may have something," that's important,
00:04:47.380 | "to share with anyone in need."
00:04:51.660 | So there are at least these three important things
00:04:55.740 | in that verse.
00:04:56.680 | One, doing honest work that produces some kind of value,
00:04:59.940 | might be a product, might be a service.
00:05:02.460 | Second, he should be compensated for it
00:05:06.800 | so that he has something,
00:05:08.280 | that's how he's making his living now,
00:05:09.600 | he's not stealing, he's making things or doing things
00:05:12.600 | or producing things or performing things
00:05:14.680 | so that people say, "That's valuable,
00:05:16.160 | "I'll give you $15 an hour for doing that
00:05:20.140 | "or I'll pay you $14 for that shirt you just made."
00:05:24.280 | And third, he should be inclined in freedom and love
00:05:29.280 | to use his resources to help others
00:05:31.960 | who may not have his advantages.
00:05:34.000 | So the precept of the goodness of work
00:05:38.200 | and the rightness of making a profit or earning a living
00:05:41.380 | and the goodness of sharing what we earn with others
00:05:46.080 | and the goodness of having it to share
00:05:48.800 | so that it's free and not coerced,
00:05:51.340 | all of that seems to be implied in verse 28 of chapter four.
00:05:55.100 | So I would say that all three of these larger precepts,
00:05:59.580 | not stealing with the implication of the rights
00:06:02.480 | of personal ownership or private property,
00:06:04.840 | number two, not lying and thus claiming something
00:06:08.760 | to be yours that's not yours,
00:06:09.840 | and three, gainful employment which is justly compensated
00:06:14.160 | so that we can possess things
00:06:16.040 | and then have things to share with others freely,
00:06:19.900 | I think that all of that underpins
00:06:23.120 | contemporary understandings of intellectual property rights.
00:06:28.120 | They flow, these rights flow from these principles
00:06:32.040 | and I know that it is possible, I've read some,
00:06:36.640 | to approach intellectual property rights
00:06:38.400 | from a very different perspective
00:06:40.920 | and justify them on the basis of selfishness
00:06:43.280 | and hoarding and the desire to be rich
00:06:45.440 | and the need to give incentives to people
00:06:47.440 | to maximize their wealth by coming up with inventions
00:06:50.920 | and other things, but this would not be the first time,
00:06:55.080 | would it, when bad motives and good motives
00:06:58.760 | lead to the same laws?
00:07:00.360 | I can think of lots of illustrations of that in life,
00:07:04.380 | but Christians aren't to be motivated by bad motives
00:07:07.680 | even if they come up with the same laws
00:07:09.800 | that people with bad motives come up with.
00:07:11.940 | So intellectual property rights include things like patents
00:07:15.520 | for inventions of material things
00:07:18.320 | and there's a fuzzy line between material things
00:07:20.960 | and other kinds of copyrights and industrial design rights
00:07:25.160 | and I mean, there's all kinds of stuff.
00:07:28.320 | So patents is one, copyrights for the verbal creations,
00:07:32.200 | which doesn't mean that you have mere information
00:07:36.360 | or an idea that you own,
00:07:38.520 | but rather your form of expression of it is owned.
00:07:43.520 | Trademarks are another example,
00:07:45.720 | like you design something and it signifies,
00:07:49.600 | oh, that's the Pillsbury or the 3M or the Apple
00:07:54.140 | or the Microsoft trademark
00:07:56.940 | and you can't start using that for your own company
00:08:00.160 | without legal entanglements
00:08:02.160 | and I'm saying that these rights are rooted
00:08:04.820 | in those biblical principles.
00:08:07.020 | So those are three examples of property rights
00:08:12.520 | and there's lots of others or intellectual property rights
00:08:15.840 | and the essence of the matter seems to be
00:08:19.120 | that just like a person can build a car or a bicycle
00:08:24.980 | or make a shirt and sell it in order to make a living,
00:08:29.280 | so a person can invent a certain wiring circuitry
00:08:33.560 | that can be used in every phone on the planet
00:08:36.200 | that has never been thought of before
00:08:39.120 | and make a living by owning that patent
00:08:43.420 | for at least a season in history.
00:08:46.200 | Similarly, a person can write a poem or a novel or song
00:08:50.800 | or make a video or a short story or an essay,
00:08:54.760 | could sell it in a store or sell it to a newspaper
00:08:58.040 | and make his living that way
00:09:00.360 | and copyright laws exist to protect
00:09:02.720 | that way of making a living
00:09:05.540 | and so it seems right to me that Simon in New Zealand
00:09:09.660 | should care about copyright laws
00:09:12.020 | and should not consider it sinful to be thankful
00:09:15.660 | for their protection of his work
00:09:18.560 | so that he can make a living.
00:09:20.920 | This is not about boasting, this is not about arrogance,
00:09:23.600 | this is not about selfishness,
00:09:25.320 | this is about protecting a way of making a living
00:09:28.880 | the way selling a shirt would be.
00:09:31.520 | And the only other thing I would add is that Christians,
00:09:34.920 | Christians are not simply shrewd business people.
00:09:39.180 | Our citizenship is in heaven.
00:09:41.200 | We do not exist to lay up treasures on earth.
00:09:45.440 | We want to draw attention to the supreme value of God
00:09:49.260 | over all material things including the ones we create
00:09:54.260 | and so Christians will be lavishly generous
00:09:59.260 | with the things we create and the money we make from them.
00:10:04.900 | It will not be wrong to take the things we create
00:10:08.180 | and make a living with them
00:10:09.980 | but we will seek in every way we can
00:10:13.820 | to be generous with those in need
00:10:16.420 | and especially to spread the good news of the gospel
00:10:20.380 | making it as free as we can.
00:10:23.700 | - Yeah, amen, we love to create content
00:10:26.060 | and to spread it online free of charge to the world
00:10:29.680 | and I would encourage you to get familiar
00:10:31.820 | with all of the content that we have online
00:10:33.620 | at desiringgod.org and be sure to check out
00:10:37.300 | Look at the Book, it's a series of videos
00:10:39.820 | where John Piper marks up biblical passages with a pen
00:10:43.140 | to show you how he dissects those passages
00:10:45.560 | in order to extract principles of truth.
00:10:48.220 | You'll want to check those out.
00:10:49.140 | They're deeply valuable resources free online
00:10:51.700 | and you can also find many thousands of articles,
00:10:54.460 | sermons, free books, lots of free books.
00:10:56.820 | You can find all of that at desiringgod.org
00:11:00.220 | and we close out the week
00:11:01.180 | with a very important question tomorrow.
00:11:03.060 | If I read the Bible and I feel nothing happening in my heart,
00:11:07.060 | nothing in my affections, what do I do next?
00:11:10.700 | I'm your host Tony Reinke.
00:11:12.660 | We'll see you tomorrow on the Ask Pastor John Podcast.
00:11:15.700 | (whooshing)
00:11:18.040 | (silence)
00:11:20.200 | (silence)
00:11:22.360 | you