In my work & studies, I run into discussions about the law & ethics of copyrights. Most of these discussions are from Western secular viewpoints. Once in a while, I come across interesting discussions about religion & copyright from Christian and Jewish religious viewpoints, with which I am quite familiar. Last week, I learned of an IslamOnline thread on "Is There a Copyright Law in Islam?"

Somebody from Egypt had asked:

[...] Is there a copyright law in Islam? Some people say that knowledge is a common property and it cannot be restricted. They use the Hadith of the Prophet, peace and blessing be upon him, that "Wisdom is the lost property of a believer, it is his, wherever he may find it." What do you think of making copies of computer software?

The response was that the Hadith about wisdom did not justify software piracy. The response included this observation Dr. Muzammil H. Siddiqi, former President of the Islamic Society of North America:

“It is correct that the knowledge is a common property. But it does not mean that people cannot sell books or own books. It does not mean that people can go and steal books or take over other people's labs and libraries. It means that all people should be free to learn. No one group should have monopoly on knowledge.

That snippet fits nicely with the free & open source ethos. Not that Dr. Siddiqi is neccessarily a free/open source advocate or even knows about that concept.

Elsewhere, I found other sites with more on Islamic views on copyright & software/media piracy. The Islamic Workplace blog had an extensive article that included references to a fatwa concerning copyrights.  Josef Assad's blog had a good article on "Islam, Intellectual Property, and Free Culture".

Assad's article is especially good in looking at religious views and relating them to free/open source concepts.  He also explains the challenge of applying religious teachings to modern technologies and legal developments:

In some cases, legislative attitudes are defined by analogy to divine principles; this seems to be most appropriate in legislative scenarios presenting situations which, due to the advances of culture, society, and technology were not envisioned 1500 years ago. In many instances the easiest source for derivation of legislative attitudes towards intellectual property is this one, the analogy path. The cost, however, can be ambiguity and non-authoritativeness, since conflicting analogies are not that difficult to derive given a sufficiently large body of reference material such as the Koran presents.

Sometime soon, I hope to get back to the religion & copyright topic and look at several articles from Jewish and Christian viewpoints.

J.D. Abolins

I've been seeing several reports such as this one about the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) going after a man who had 2,000 mp3 on his personal computer. The Arizona man, Jeffrey Howell, says those files were copies for personal use he made from legally purchased CDs. A legal brief filed by the RIAA claims the copies are nonetheless "unauthorized copies".

A report on the Zooped.com site on the case quotes a part of that supplemental brief responding to the judge’s technical questions about the case:

“It is undisputed that Defendant possessed unauthorized copies of Plaintiffs’ copyrighted sound recordings on his computer,” the brief states. “Virtually all of the sound recordings on Exhibit B are in the ‘.mp3′ format. … Defendant admitted that he converted these sound recordings from their original format to the .mp3 format for his and his wife’s use. … Once Defendant converted Plaintiffs’ recording into the compressed .mp3 format and they are in his shared folder, they are no longer the authorized copies distributed by Plaintiffs.”

The RIAA Web page about piracy and the law hints of the legal precariousness of copying for personal use from CDs one has legall purchased or obtained. The pages says:

Copying CDs

• It’s okay to copy music onto an analog cassette, but not for commercial purposes.


• It’s also okay to copy music onto special Audio CD-R’s, mini-discs, and digital tapes (because royalties have been paid on them) – but, again, not for commercial purposes.


• Beyond that, there’s no legal "right" to copy the copyrighted music on a CD onto a CD-R. However, burning a copy of CD onto a CD-R, or transferring a copy onto your computer hard drive or your portable music player, won’t usually raise concerns so long as:
  
  
  • The copy is made from an authorized original CD that you legitimately own
  
  
  • The copy is just for your personal use. It’s not a personal use – in fact, it’s illegal – to give away the copy or lend it to others for copying.


• The owners of copyrighted music have the right to use protection technology to allow or prevent copying.


• Remember, it’s never okay to sell or make commercial use of a copy that you make.

Although the above indicates the RIAA doesn't see a right to make personal use copies from CDs one has legally, but there is very low likelihood of practical risk. So the Howell case as reported in various places seems to say there is a significant practical risk.

But things might not be as they first seem...

The Jeffrey Howell case raises several questions. One of the biggest questions I have is how did the recording industry learn about Mr. Howell's personal use copies on his PC? My first hypothesis was that he wittingly or unwittingly has some kind of peer-to-peer file sharing software on his PC that would nake his collection visible to the world. I've found some hints of the answer in an informative blog posting examining the case. The answer lies in the RIAA supplemental brief itself. The brief claims:

First, Defendant actually distributed the 11 sound recordings listed on Exhibit A to Plaintiffs’ Complaint from the KaZaA shared folder on his computer to Plaintiffs’ investigator, MediaSentry.

[...]

Reading sections 501 and 106(3) together shows, first, that it is an actionable infringement for one to violate a copyright owner’s exclusive right to authorize the distribution of copies or phonorecords of a copyrighted work. Thus, under the statute’s plain language, the distribution right does not require a consummated transfer of the copyrighted work at issue. Here, Defendant authorized distribution by placing Plaintiffs’copyrighted works in his shared folder, where they were then available to other KaZaA users.

So it was exposure of the "personal use" files via a P2P program that lead the RIAA to Mr. Howell. This case isn't as simple as the RIAA going after purely personal use copying from one's purchased CDs. At least, not yet. Some of RIAA's approaches to copyright makes that prospect so believable.

Disclaimer of sorts: I am not saying Mr. Howell is guilty of copyright infringement or such. I'm only noting that this case is not as simple as I first thought and we have to be careful not run off railing against a new RIAA outrage that might not be true.

J.D. Abolins