Is BitTorrent Wrong?

I had a non-Christian tell me his views on using bittorrent. He took 3 passages from Scripture: a) thou shall not steal; 2) don't covet other peoples' goods; and 3) be holy as God is holy. Of course, he rejects Christ Jesus as God, Lord and Savior who died on the cross for the sins of the world, and resurrected the 3rd day which is why he is going to Hell. You can't take the passages of Scripture selectively interpreted according to your opinion and without the flow of the Holy Spirit in agreement with the word of God that comes to one who is born-again. He said he teaches his students not to bittorrent and that he himself never does it. Never does it? Not even once?

Then he preceded to accuse me, since I am a Christian how could I do such a thing? There was a 15 year old girl that was listening to our conversation. She immediately reacted and said "that's discrimination" to hold Christians to a higher standard than non-Christians. She took the words right out of my mouth. I couldn't agree more.

When I first tried to give him the Christian response to his position, I pointed out that in the Bible we are told of idols that exist in a person's life which need to be torn down. His idol was that of self-exalting himself by claiming he never bittorrents and claims that all his students agree with him which I found highly doubtful, because the young girl standing next to us listening to the conversation responded in opposition by saying, "when placing a bowl of candies at the entrance after you walk through a doorway is not stealing". After hearing this, you could see steam coming out of his ears, and his entire complexion changed. He was very angry and left in a huffy puff.

I would add further, when you download a movie, you aren't coveting anything but saving $14. Consider this God's grace. The download takes just a couple minutes if that. It is pervasive across all platforms and nations, and nothing could be simpler. This is God's judgment upon the entire movie industry to reduce their profitability as well as reduce the gargantuan paychecks for popular movie actors since it is usually these big budget movies that are subject mostly to downloading, and vanity of vanities would be to get paid millions of dollars for pretending to be someone you are not. Owners and directors of these movies are making in some cases more than a billion dollars. Avatar by James Cameron and The Passion of the Christ by Mel Gibson come to mind.

An unenforced law is no law at all so if such a law exists then it needs to have pervasive consequences to all who download freely and not just 1 in a million affected by it otherwise it is discriminatory and arbitrarily applied.

And I am not convinced if Jesus were here today, He would be against it. Though you are being holy as He is holy if you give your life to Christ which this person has not. Since he has not given his life to Christ, naturally he misuses and abuses the Scriptures for his own selfish purposes not in keeping with the Spirit of Truth which is the life of the Father and the Son.

Here we see the principle of salvation by works in this man who exalts himself by his own strength by alleging he has never bittorrented, but the Bible says we are not saved by works lest any man should boast. This man boasts in his works and creates a law for himself that he himself in all likelihood doesn't keep, for I am sure he has used bittorrent at some time or another. If you live by the law even a law you create for yourself, you will die by the law. Violating even one tittle of the law eternally separates you from God. This takes true humility to accept.

But as we have seen, there is nothing wrong with bittorrenting, and such points of pride are just that - pointing to oneself as being great and better than others because you don't bittorrent but most others do. Instead of pointing to ourselves, let us look to Christ who sums up all things as Christians do. Satan is the greater accuser and will try to use the Scriptures against the saints. He will call stealing that which is not stealing, unholy that which is holy, and coveting that which is not coveting. Praise be to God He protects us through discernment of the truth by His Spirit and applies it properly. Did ancient Israel steal the plunder of the goods they took? Most certainly not. This was God's judgment.

If you are watching merely for personal immediate consumption or with a few friends or share it with a friend that is acceptable until an enforceable law is widely applied, but if you want to mass redistribute to profit from others' works which many do all along the chain from copying and redistribution do then you are sinning.

Sadly, when I confronted this individual sometime later to ask him if he would like to hear the Christian response, he wanted nothing of it. He closed himself off in his little world and ran away. He only wanted to self-exalt himself with his view, misreading the Scriptures, and not listening to how Christians view these verses as applied to bittorrent.

What is God saying with respect the ubiquitous - omnipresent like God is - pervasive free downloading of movies, music, programs, etc.? I believe He is saying FIND A NEW BUSINESS MODEL! Or your companies' are going to no longer be able to compete and become yesterday's news. God is also placing a value on your products by how easily they are distributed through global internet file sharing.

One interesting fact you might not be aware of is a lot of musicians have received virtually no royalties from their songs for decades by big company label names, but with the advent of online purchases of music these artists are now receiving 50% of each .mp3 that is purchased online.

Napster created new demand for products that is initially sampled through file sharing before buying it online or in a store. The incremental new demand for products that otherwise would not have taken place has been so great it is incalculable.

We have seen with the shutdown of Napster thousands of 'Napster spawn that are much better bread'. And that you can't shut down! This is the music industry's worse nightmare which corroborates every word in this thread whether you like it or not. This extends to ALL INTERNET PRODUCTS!

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It's hard to deny the ultimate and continued outcome.

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Dinosaurs are trying to stop development in the world for the sake of obvious profit, delaying the foundations of the way we want to behave towards one another. If you are an ancestor who is trying to stop this from happening by holding onto old business models, you're a crummy person typically a CEO. And that's how you will be remembered in posterity.

I don' believe it is wrong because what you get from that service is biblical stuff also and helps people with the gospel.