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Copy That Floppy? Go To Jahannum (Hell)
andrewdm writes "The Business Software Alliance has a new partner: the grand muftis at Al Azhar in Cairo. The New York Law Journal has an article explaining the new holy(?) alliance between the BSA and the highest religious authorities in the Egyptian Sunni Islam sect. The clerics issued a fatwa (holy edict) against piracy, saying it is "the worst type of theft and prohibited by Islam." What's next? The Pope denouncing mp3's as mortal sins?" The worst type of theft, indeed.
Not only is that a caterogical lie, according to Catholic doctrine, you don't even need to be Baptized or believe in God or "accept J.C. as your personal saviour" to be redeemed. All you need to do is to recognize your fallen nature in some way, and wish for redemption. That is "baptism by desire."
I'm an athiest, incidentally, but such crude anti-Catholic sentiment needs to be countered.
Disclaimer: AINAM. Also, IANAL, but you knew that.
Some Muslims think that copyright is not a part of Islam.
Become a FSF associate member before the low #s are used
1302 is pre-Vatican. Current Catholic doctrine (currently called Vatican 2) is significantly different in many ways from the pre-Vatican council doctrine. 1302 is before Martin Luther and others cited the corruption of the church. So much has changed. My mother grew up pre-Vatican, and I was raised Vatican 2. You cannot judge current Catholosim by the pre-Vatican church. It is simply not the same.
By the way, please pardon my poor spelling, it has never been a talent of mine, and dictionary.com is not loading at all.
Read Matthew 7:13-23 and Ephesians 4:17-28.
Oh, and Mt. 19:24 doesn't say it's impossible for a rich man to enter the kingdom of the heavens, and it certainly doesn't say anything about hell.
"Anything is better than IE, and you can quote me on that." -- Wil Wheaton.
Well a couple of points:
Firstly a "Fatwa" is mearly an opinion it is not binding in any way. So if a cleric issues a Fatwa as a Muslim you are not bound to it if you do not agree with that opinion.
Secondly this Fatwa is actually wrong because in Islam copyrights and patents are not allowed, there are two reasons for this. The first being that it comes under "hoarding of wealth". The second is because in Islam you acknowledge that God is the creater of the universe, hence the holder of all knowledge and since you are part of that creation you can not claim to "own" any knowldege you gain as it is the result of your existance which of course you owe to God. Just imagine that God is the holder of all interlectual property.
Thirdly the head of the religious institions in countries like Egypt are appointed by the government and are basically puppets and are in no means regarded as authoritive figures with regards to the Koran. As a side note, one of the most respected Islamic scolars is an American who converted when he was 18.
Anyhow I hope that clears some things up, but to sum things up this fatwa is basically bullshit.
So copying a friend's King's Quest 5 floppy is going go give you eternal damnation, but suicide bombings against civilians in Israel and New York City get you 41 virgins and eternal paradise?
Quoth vkg: I'm not convinced that terrorism (or more correctly jihad) is really a product of our foreign policy - the wars between Muslims and Christians predate the foundation of the United States by around a millennium - and the issues have not changed much: control of the Holy Land.
You don't seem to know what you're talking about. Jihad is the struggle to improve one's condition, and there are two kinds. One is the lesser jihad, which is working to improve one's external condition by working or fighting just wars (which by definition do not include attacks on civilians). The greater jihad involves improving one's morals and personal conduct.
Terrorism is not supported by the Islamic creed in any way. Nor is there any way to "root out" the kind of terrorists which we are seeing these days. These are not plane hijackers looking for some money or a brand new 747. They are people who have been directly harmed by Western foreign policies, to the point where they have nothing to lose. They are literally like upset bees whose last assault results in their deaths. The terrorists that the USA is "rooting out" are dead. But don't worry: You can always make more terrorists by oppressing more people. A certain percentage will always fight back.
Can be found here. The Rabbi also calls it a no-no, but isn't threatening anyone with hellfire.
Just Like in Chistianity, the parts of the religon that don't stir up politics are the parts that don't get attention.
It's not a matter of a press agent. When the media dosen't care about what you have to say, or it dosen't stir up feelings, you will never get good publicity.
Ah the wonder of having a limited news media. With the small number of media companies involved anymore, it's no wonder there is so little interesting news covered.
Hi, I'm a Muslim who has just gone through law school (studying US IP law) and who is now writing a phd on digital copyright in the ivy leagues.)
Not being an expert in Islamic law and not having much time, I can't answer your question fully. However, I can tell you:
1) There is no 'church' akin to the Vatican in Sunni Islam, and Sunni Islam encompasses virtually all Muslim countries from Africa to Indonesia, except Iran. Generally, Islam is reluctant to produce hierarchies, and in Sunni Islam, the scholars have an interpretive role, not an executive role. (Modern Shite Islam in Iran is obviously different, where Khomenei combined both roles.)
2) What is Al-Azhar? Al-Azhar is a place of higher learning; interpretations eminating from there are respected just as interpretations at our leading law schools are respected-- because the people are highly trained.
(Interesting aside: Al-Azhar is perhaps the world's oldest university, and it's the institution upon which great European (and thus American) universities were modeled upon. Even the tradition of graduation robes can be traced back to Al-Azhar. Furthermore, many concepts such as "reasonable doubt" and hermeneutic reasoning were present in Islamic law even in the days when European legal systems were busy employing 'trial by fire' and 'trial by water'. My point is, Islamic law and Al-Azhar are much more sophisticated than you might think, although the warped misimplementation of Shari'a in the corrupt Gulf dictatorships (especially) gives reason for people to think otherwise.)
3) For a more detailed understanding, check out:
21 CAPULR 1079 (Capital University Law Review
Fall, 1992)
THE PROTECTION OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY UNDER ISLAMIC LAW
ILSA J Int'l & Comp L 307
DEFINING TERMS IN THE INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY PROTECTION DEBATE: ARE THE NORTH AND SOUTH ARGUING PAST EACH OTHER WHEN WE SAY "PROPERTY"? A LOCKEAN, CONFUCIAN, AND ISLAMIC COMPARISON.
Well... at least I've given you some starting points.
cheers.
rumi1422 @ yahoo . com
Microsoft's empire is built on Word, not on Windows. It was Word that made Windows happen. Word, um, 2.0(??) for Windows 3 was wildly better than most of the other word processors at the time. It was fairly fast, quite easy, and very powerful. Its main competition was AmiPro (which was very nice but had a strange interface) and Wordperfect, which at the time hadn't yet been ported to Windows. WordPerfect was arguably technically better: it was much more stable, and you could write huge manuscripts with it. Word would choke past a certain point, but few people wrote documents that large, and it never became much of an issue. And WordPerfect's interface was abysmal.
Word cleaned their clocks, and sold A LOT of copies of Windows. Microsoft's later tendency to exploit their OS to muscle into new markets and extinguish any potential competitor is a relatively new development. At the time, they didn't have the market power to pull off that kind of move. It was Word that gave them that power.
People use Office because it is the standard, and it got to be the standard the old-fashioned way, by relatively fair competition in the marketplace. Microsoft has been coasting with Office for years now, but the original basis of their dominance isn't terribly shady. They won that battle fair and square.
Mind you, even back then, there were some undocumented functions being put into Windows that only Office could use.... but having been there at the time, it really felt like Word won through a MUCH superior interface and feature set, not because it ran a little faster. I was a mighty Wordperfect master, and also ran Word and Amipro regularly, and I honestly liked Word the best of the three.
I cannot argue, however, that their pricing is fair. It is monopoly-level pricing and is ridiculous. However they happened to get here, they're exploiting it ruthlessly now.
In the west, we take the place of faith and clergy for granted. Islam is not a "holiday and special occaision" religion like christianity (or even judaism), rather an all-encompassing life affirming practice.
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I think that it is good that this Sheik spoke out against piracy. I don't think that many westerners can relate, however, many of us could care less what our religous leaders think
As for this fellow belting out "I hate Israel"... We are all entitled to our opinions
God bless, which ever god or gods you may or may not believe in.
-jcw
BTW, not all fatwah's are taken seriously. A high ranking mullah from egypt also declared supermarkets as being against islam (One chain in particular had a major impact on commerce at a local bazaar) and Ayatollah Kahmeini (not Khomeini) in Iran declared that Coca-Cola was satanic... Both fatwah's were greeted with scepticism, especially the Ayatollah's.