Sermon - TLIS - 10.3.1 - Intellectual Property
Ecclesiastes 12:12
But beyond this, my son, be warned: of the making of many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness to the flesh.
I suppose that I should start with how much I dislike "Footprints." Poem, poster, meme, coffee mug saying; whatever it is, I'm not really thrilled about the concept, and I have written elsewhere about that. But it also irks me that the author has been so very aggressive in asserting her intellectual property rights. She has sued the pants off anybody who has dared to use the piece in other commercial products. Or, sometimes, even if they just used it in a sermon or a poster for their own church.
Now, of course, legally, she has every right to do so. Legally, she holds the copyright, and she gets the right to decide which products get made and how much people have to pay her in order to make them. That is copyright. As soon as she first wrote down that piece, whatever it is, she held the copyright. She gets to hold the copyright and benefit from it for the next seventy-five years or so. (At least from the date of first writing it down.) That's the law.
And, of course, I am a published author myself, and I do an awful lot of writing, and I have even had material of mine stolen and sold to a third party, without me getting any benefit from it! You would think that I would be more sympathetic to this whole intellectual property idea.
I have taught about this subject for over a quarter of a century now, so let's consider some of the details of it.
There are four flavours, if you will, of intellectual property. There is copyright, for when you create some piece of writing, art, music, or anything else that you create. There is patent, when you invent some kind of device that is new and useful. There is trademark, which refers to characteristics, colors, shapes that you might use to identify your particular product as opposed to other similar ones. And there is the trade secret, which is some process for manufacturing or doing business which you know, but which you keep secret from anybody else, in order to keep your business advantage over everyone else.
There is an interesting dichotomy between Eastern and Western thought in regard to this issue of intellectual property. In the Western world, we tend to come down on the side of the individual. If you have created something, or invented something, or thought of something first, then you get to benefit from it. Part of the benefit that you get from it is preventing, if necessary, anybody else from using your creation or device or process. Eastern philosophy and culture think a bit differently: they believe that the community is more important than the individual. Just because you thought of it first doesn't mean that you get to tell anybody else that they can't use it. This created a lot of cultural clashes in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Asian countries tended not to have intellectual property laws, and couldn't understand why they couldn't copy something that was widely available in the West, and, generally, sell it at a cheaper price.
Now, at this point, we should probably start looking into the Bible and see what God thinks about intellectual property. Also, at this point, you may be starting to think that I'd come down on the Eastern cultural side of the argument and say that, as a Christian, I think that we should be thinking more about others than about ourselves. After all, I have written elsewhere that I don't think that God is terribly interested in efficiency. In general terms, you'd be right, but it's a little bit more complicated than that.
As I noted, I am a published author, myself. I have been paid to write books. I get royalties from my books. One of my books, "The Dictionary of Information Security," had almost the entire contents of the material for the book stolen by someone who passed it off as his own work and sold it as content to some other company.
Now, possibly the reason that I am less concerned about this than the author of the "Footprints" piece is that I don't make as much money as she does. My books don't sell terribly well. They are for a specialized audience, and while they are respected in a particular field, they aren't exactly coffee table books for the general population. They are never going to be turned into movies. I am never going to be able to retire on the proceeds.
A lot of my ideas, other than books, have been stolen by other people as well. I had an idea for a project for a major event in Vancouver, and somebody else, with a higher name recognition and a bigger position than I had, stole it, and ran with it. They did a really terrible job at implementing it. A similar thing happened recently, on a slightly smaller scale. And then there are projects which other people have asked for my help with, and when I did provide assistance and worked very diligently at getting their particular project off the ground, they then abandoned it, and all my work was for nothing.
Gloria frequently asked me, on these occasions, whether I was angry at being treated this way. Yes, it is annoying. But, I tended to reply, what good would it do me to get mad about it? Generally speaking, there isn't an awful lot that I could do about the situation. Certainly nothing that would confer any benefit on me by doing it. So getting angry about the situation only upsets my stomach, and certainly doesn't do anything to the people who are doing things to me.
And I often told Gloria that, in reality, I kind of felt sorry for the people who were stealing my stuff. Obviously, they needed to steal my stuff, and this was the biggest thing in their lives right now. It's not, and never was, the biggest thing in *my* life. I have all kinds of things in my life. I do all kinds of intellectual work. I have taught on six continents. I generate all kinds of intellectual content. When someone steals one of my ideas, I will always be able to generate another one. Other people, not quite so creative, have to steal mine.
And maybe that's where we can finally turn to a Biblical understanding of how God feels about all this intellectual property business. God is creative. God is ultimately creative. God created the universe, and everything that exists. God has endowed us with a creativity. It may be a pale imitation of His creativity, but He does allow us to be, in a sense, creative, and to create new things. (Even though He does say that there is nothing new under the sun.)
And then God gives it away. God has created the world, and everything in it, and everything that we need in order to survive, live, and thrive. He has given it to us, to hold as stewards, perhaps, but He gives it to us and allows us to do with it what we will. God's creation was perfect, and then our sin caused it to become fallen and imperfect. And God doesn't demand any repayment for our misuse of his creation. Indeed, eventually he is simply going to create a new heaven and a new earth.
I am writing sermons. Nobody is asking me to write them, and nobody is asking me to preach them. (Nobody is paying me to write them.) I am posting them here. This site is freely available to anyone who wants to look at it. These sermons are freely available. I have no idea whether anyone is taking them and preaching them. (And possibly passing them off as their own.) I'd like to get some credit for the sermons if somebody does, but I'm not going to worry about chasing people down who might take these sermons and use them. In any real sense, God has given me these sermons, and I'm just passing them along to you. God has also provided for my material needs, so I don't need to charge anyone for these sermons.
So, actually, *I'm* in pretty good shape. I don't need to aggressively defend my intellectual property. I have enough for my needs, and I find the writing of these sermons, and other of my writings, intellectually stimulating work. And as for those who steal my stuff? Well, after all, as George Herbert said, the best revenge is living well.
As for all the research that I have to do, and then some people may steal it? Well, Jeremiah had something to say about that "Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know." That's pretty powerful stuff.
The Bible tells us that working and creating is good. It should even be celebrated! The Bible also notes that merely accumulating money and treasures isn't all that great. It is, in fact, to be avoided. Working creatively, developing something, creating something that other people want and can use is good. What we receive from doing it is the satisfaction of the work itself, not the money that it heaps up for us.
A couple of final words from Ecclesiastes:
Ecclesiastes 5:18
This is what I have observed to be good: that it is appropriate for a person to eat, to drink and to find satisfaction in their toilsome labor under the sun during the few days of life God has given them—for this is their lot.
Ecclesiastes 12:1
Remember your Creator in the days of your youth, before the evil days come, when you shall say, I have no pleasure in them
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