Is downloading music or software without paying actually stealing in halacha? The Gemara’s rule is ‘zeh nehneh v’zeh lo chaser’ – when one person benefits and the other loses nothing, it’s permitted (Bava Kama 20b). A copied file takes nothing physical; the owner still has everything he had. So where would the issur come from? Does dina d’malchusa dina (Bava Kama 113a, CM 369) make copyright binding as Torah law – and does that hold when the government barely enforces it, or the company never sells in your country? Can Torah law recognize owning an idea at all, or only physical property? Does it change if I’d never have paid for it anyway – no lost sale? And the flip side: does photocopying a sefer for serious Torah learning get treated differently than ripping an album off Spotify?
Downloading without paying – is piracy stealing when no one loses anything?
by moi613 | Aug 20, 2026 | Hashkafa | 2 comments
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Thank you Rabbi! Your father’s position makes it click – copying for yourself takes nothing out of anyone’s possession, but copying to sell is interfering with his market. Clean and memorable.
For one’s own use, my father did not consider downloading or copying to be theft merely because another identical digital copy was created. Nothing was taken out of the owner’s possession. But reproducing somebody else’s work in order to sell it and make money is another matter entirely: now you are interfering with his market and profiting from his work, and that is where the serious monetary prohibitions arise.