Copy rights, business promotion : [copyright policies of some companies]

Fatawa Question

Dear Dr. Monzer, Assalamu o Alaykum Wa Rahmatullah, I hope you are doing well by the grace of Almighty. I have a question concerning copyright policies of some companies and what should be our approach as a Muslim and as general consumers. A lot of organizations and specially software companies have very weird copyright policies designed to maximize their profits without considering general consumers. I happen to run across few of those and it makes me wonder how much we are supposed to follow their policies. For example, I purchased and online IT training course for me and my wife, this course allows subscriber to watch online lectures and read online documents, I spent $300 on it. Now if I read the copyright policy of the company it says the purchase is for single user only. According to their terms I cannot allow my wife to read document and listen to the lecture and I should spend another $300 to buy the same thing again. How ridiculous is this ? of course, they want to draw as much profit as possible. It is like purchasing a book and keeping it to yourself for the rest of life. I don't think anybody cares about these absurd rules but I guess my questions is how much are we supposed to follow these human made rules, and if we don't, is there any sin on us. Same thing goes for big companies like Microsoft etc. When they make software the price is so high that people living in third world countries with little means to survive can never afford to purchase original software. I hope and pray they will not be held accountable for this as they don't have means to obey these corporate policies. Jazaka Allah, Salam Fawad

Fatwa

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Publication Date

2010-08-07

Main Subjects

Financial and Accounting Sciences
Religion
Islamic Studies

Topics

• Islamic jurisprudence
• Intellectual property
• Copyright
• Prices
• Corporations
• Business

No. of Pages

1

Data Type

Fatawa

Language

English

Record ID

BIM-734170

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• MLA
• AMA