We have an email today all the way from Middle-Earth, Hello Pastor John, my name is Simon from New

Zealand.

I've been thinking a lot about copyright and often wondered how copyright fits with

Scripture.

I'm a video content creator and sometimes the copyright laws matter deeply to me, other

times not so much.

How should believers view intellectual property rights?

What would you say to Simon?

Let's start by laying down a few biblical precepts which are perhaps taken for granted

by everyone, but in our day, historical forgetfulness and widespread expectation of unmerited

entitlement and pervasive individual autonomy with the individual self as the Supreme

value and the Supreme arbiter in the world, with all of that reality around me, perhaps

what I'm about to say cannot be taken for granted or for being obvious.

But here they are.

Here are the precepts that lay the foundation for, I think, the understanding of intellectual

property rights, namely first, God has ordained in this present world that stealing is wrong.

Ephesians chapter 4 verse 28, let the thief no longer steal or Romans 139.

You shall not steal.

Now those are New Testament precepts, not just Old Testament legal statutes, and the assumption

is that this is the way born again people will be led by the Holy Spirit freely and joyfully

to act, and it's the way that, at the level of behavior, God commands the world to live.

It also seems to many of us who reflect on it that this command not to steal implies so

...