This is a traslation of "Jesus, la piratería y las patentes" by Tchorix, translated by Mig.

As many know, the life and work of Jesus is written in the Bible for study and dissemination. It provides a lot of teaching, miracles and human acts. When we analyze his miracles in the New Testament we find enough evidence to say that if Jesus had lived in our present era, he would be prosecuted and probably convicted of piracy and violation of patents.

These are the facts. In one of his many sermons where about five thousand people attended, there was not enough food to feed everyone. Of course, the resources of Jesus and his apostles were not sufficient to feed so many people, so they needed a miracle. Jesus multiplied five breads and two fishes to feed everyone (John 6, 1-15). This evidence is sufficient to sue Jesus for piracy, that is for making illegal copies of bread and fish, and probably for having distributed it using peer-to-peer (imagine five thousand attendees passing the bread to each other).

The argument for judging him includes that for every copy that he made he stole a bread, because if these people had not received that bread and fish, they would have had to buy them. Therefore, fishermen and bakers couldn't sell five thousand breads and fishes that day.

Some things that should not be put aside in this story: In defense of Jesus, we can say that his followers were mostly poor, so the argument that "culdn't sell bread or a fish" is very questionable. Against Jesus, we can add that he was not the original owner of the five loaves and two fishes that dared to multiply. These were of a boy who was in the crowd. So Jesus made copies of bread that he had not even paid. So Jesus was a pirate.

Someone could argue that the analogy is not correct because people needed to eat, however no one is in need of music, movies or software. That argument is incorrect because the software is not just for entertainment, but it is necessary among other things to work, study and communicate. I will not discuss the spiritual needs of the arts, but I will continue to examine the miracles of Jesus to support the analogy. For instance, in the multiplication of breads, everyone ate enough to remove hunger, not to get fully fed, and the leftovers were collected in twelve baskets.

The first public miracle of Jesus, and one of my favorites, was at a wedding party in Cana (John 2, 1-12). At one point Mary, the mother of Jesus, realized that the wine was finished. There was no need to continue to drink wine, or to continue with the party at all. But Jesus, at the request of his mother, decided to turn water into wine to continue the celebration. Here again, the lawyer will say that Jesus stole wine, although he did not copy but made a transformation. The problem is that it helped people to avoid the purchase of more wine. If I were an organizer I wouldn't bought wine because Jesus' was better. But let's focus on the fact that Jesus did not copy any wine, but he made wine from water. This means that he violated the patent on the manufacture of wine, and he could be accused of doing reverse engineering. Although he did not use the same manufacturing method, the charge of violation of patent and plagiarism could apply anyway.

The essence of the miracles of Jesus discussed here is to teach sharing which is the consequence of the second commandment "to love our neighbor as yourself". Jesus was even able to share his body and blood with his apostles at the Last Supper (Luke 22, 14-20), where he took the bread and wine to split among them all asking to eat and drink, and told them to share it. He said "Do this in remembrance of me"

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