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Dear Mr Kinsella,

Thank you for your work in libertarianism. I have several questions for you, and I hope you have the time to check them out.

1. In your opinion, in an ideal libertarian world without state-enforced IP, how would we deal with piracy of content (movies, sports livestreams, music, etc.). Would it be purely resolved contractually? If a lot of information and entertainment is spread through code and radio waves, does that mean it cannot be ‘property’ because two people can use a radio wave or line of code without infringing on each other? What am I missing here?

[continue reading…]

Related:

• Intellectual Property and Think Tank Corruption

I’ve pointed out before how too many allegedly free market groups are pro-patent (and pro-IP in general).¹ And many were pro-vaccine and pro-lockdowns,² and of course many are not only pro-pharmaceuticals but outright shills for Big Pharma. Their support for patents is one reason many supposed free market advocates even oppose free trade in drugs and drug reimportation:³ it would undercut the monopoly prices Big Pharma is able to charge US consumers of drugs—the price is inflated not only because of unnecessary, artificial FDA costs, and because of US pharmaceutical patents, but also because FDA regulation and import controls restrict the importation of cheaper but identical drugs sold abroad for lower prices (due to local price controls or price discrimination).⁴ The Federalist Society,⁵ Cato, Independent Institute, and others, are all disappointing on IP. Independent Institute senior fellow William Shughart, for example,⁶ has embarrassingly argued: [continue reading…]

1. Intellectual Property and Think Tank Corruption. [↩]
2. Tucker, Why Elite Libertarians Failed so Miserably on COVID; What Kind of Libertarian Are You? (collecting various Cato pro-vaccine/covid lockdown views). Even my old friend Walter Block went awol on this issue, as did many others. See A Tour Through Walter Block’s Oeuvre. [↩]
3. Cato Tugs Stray Back Onto Reservation (archive); Cato on Drug Reimportation; Cato Tugs Stray Back Onto the Reservation; and Other Posts; Jude Blanchette’s The Reimportation Controversy; Protectionist Cato?; Drug Patents and Welfare; see also Epstein and Patents and Richard Epstein on “The Structural Unity of Real and Intellectual Property”; Tabarrok and Murphy: Why Are US Drug Prices So High?; KOL469 | Haman Nature Hn 149: Tabarrok on Patents, Price Controls, and Drug Reimportation. [↩]
4. Copyright has also impeded the ability to use imports to engage in international arbitrage in the case of text books, at least until Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (2013) clarified matters. [↩]
5. More defenses of IP by the Federalist Society; James Stern: Is Intellectual Property Actually Property? [Federalist Society No. 86 LECTURE]; Anti-IP Material Needed in the IP Section of the Federalist Society’s “Conservative & Libertarian Legal Scholarship: Annotated Bibliography”; Federalist Society Asks: What’s the Right Amount of Censorship?; Federalist Society Panel: Undermining or Preserving Property Rights? The New Administrative Patents. Though they have featured me on occasion, to their credit. Federalist Society IP Debate (Ohio State); KOL253 | Berkeley Law Federalist Society: A Libertarian’s Case Against Intellectual Property; KOL235 | Intellectual Property: A First Principles Debate (Federalist Society POLICYbrief). [↩]
6. In “Ideas Need Protection: Abolishing Intellectual-property Patents Would Hurt Innovation: A Middle Ground Is Needed” (archive). [↩]

From the Mises Blog years ago: Robert P. Murphy, “(Minor) Criticisms of Kinsella,” 5/05/2005: and my reply in the comments section. Archived comments below.

For an Austrian II class we read Kinsella’s famous “Against Intellectual Property.” I generally found it to be every bit worth the hype, but naturally I can’t help but offer a few criticisms. I do so here on this blog because I don’t know of a more appropriate forum: [continue reading…]

The All-In podcast (@theallinpod) hosts Chamath Palihapitiya (@chamath), Jason Calacanis (@Jason), David Sacks (@DavidSacks), and David Friedberg (@friedberg) screw up yet another IP discussion. (See All-In Podcast Concern over China and IP “Theft”.) This time they sense how copyright is going to screw up IP and want some changes, but… not enough. This is one of these examples of Brandolini’s Law (the Bullshit Asymmetry Principle); it would take about 30 pages to debunk all their confusions about IP (Calacanis claims to know it more than the others but he mangles it too; none of them understand IP law); they conflate patents, copyright, trademark, stealing, plagiarism, and contracts/terms of service;¹ they are confused about independent invention, originality, authorship, what China is doing,² and on on… they are just all over the map. [continue reading…]

1. Stop calling patent and copyright “property”; stop calling copying “theft” and “piracy”; Copying, Patent Infringement, Copyright Infringement are not “Theft”, Stealing, Piracy, Plagiarism, Knocking Off, Ripping Off. [↩]
2. The China Stealing IP Myth. [↩]

As I have noted previously, the two most harmful types of IP, patent and copyright,¹ have gotten increasingly worse since their inception in 1790, with few exceptions. Originally the term was about 14 years for each (based on the idea of protecting the master from competition from his apprentices for the arbitrary period of two 7-year apprentice terms).² Patents are now about 17 years (20 years from date of filing, with about 3 years for prosecution being typical), and the scope has expanded somewhat, to cover business methods and computer software (even though software is also now covered by copyright, as it is a form of “expression,” but should’t be, as it is functional, hence the possibility of patents on software inventions).³ Congress has has expanded the term several times over the decades from 14 years renewable once, to, incredibly, the life of the author plus seventy years. Copyright  originally covered books, maps, charts; it now covers subject matter either because of new developments and judicial recgnognition or by legislation now covering things like musical compositions (sheet music), photographs, motion pictures, sound recordings, compilations (databases), computer programs (software), and even “look and feel.”⁴ [continue reading…]

1. “Patent vs. Copyright: Which is Worse?”; The Overwhelming Empirical Case Against Patent and Copyright; “The Death Throes of Pro-IP Libertarianism” (Mises Daily 2010); IP Answer Man: Death Toll of Patent Law; “Death by Copyright-IP Fascist Police State Acronym”; “Masnick on the Horrible PROTECT IP Act: The Coming IPolice State”; posts tagged under Patents kill. [↩]
2.   Where did the patent term come from?; Optimal Patent and Copyright Term Length; see also Thomas Jefferson’s Proposal to Limit the Length of Patent and Copyright in the Bill of Rights.  [↩]
3. KOL409 | IP Law Tutorial, Part 1: Patent Law; Grok report. [↩]
4. KOL411 | IP Law Tutorial, Part 2: Copyright Law; Grok report. [↩]

KOL469 | Haman Nature Hn 149: Tabarrok on Patents, Price Controls, and Drug Reimportation. Read more>>

Related:

•  Jeffrey A. Tucker on Intellectual Property
• From It’s a Jetsons World (Mises Institute, 2012): [continue reading…]

From StephanKinsella.com:

I’ve always been against defamation law (libel, slander, etc.). I assumed it was the plumbline libertarian position, even though many libertarians and most Objectivists seem to favor reputation rights. As I wrote in “Defamation as a Type of Intellectual Property”: ¹ [continue reading…]

I asked my two go-to AIs to write an article for me based my previous publications. Here is the initial prompt I gave both:

Write a draft article, in Stephan Kinsella’s style and voice, presenting his case against intellectual property law. Draw on the articles and posts linked below and attached. Include as many nuances and details as possible and make the argument systematic and as comprehensive as possible. Make the article concise if possible but take as much space as needed to fully flesh out the various arguments and explanations.Consult attached documents and the following: [continue reading…]

Related:

•  Whereupon Grok admits it (and AI) is severely gimped by copyright law
• ​ Libertarian and IP Answer Man: Artificial Intelligence and IP

See Reginald Godwin, “Copyright, AI, and the Great Illusion,” Libertarian Alliance (June 28, 2025).

I was asked by an old friend for my thoughts on this. I reproduce them below. [continue reading…]

From Juani:
You know, we talked a lot about AI and all the other day in your podcast,¹ and on this topic, Google has made a particularly nice AI-powered app that allows you to explain concepts using AI-generated drawings of cats.

I decided to ask the AI to explain your anti-IP stance, and below is the result. You might find it rather interesting, and perhaps useful, to explain this and other concepts, in particular to younger people or those with little understanding of these topics.
[continue reading…]

1.  KOL467 | Discussing AI and IP with Juani from Argentina. [↩]

• KOL469 | Haman Nature Hn 149: Tabarrok on Patents, Price Controls, and Drug Reimportation
• Optimal Patent and Copyright Term Length
• Tabarrok: Patent Policy on the Back of a Napkin
• Pharmaceutical Shills and Think Tank Corruption: Sally Pipes’s The World’s Medicine Chest: How America Achieved Pharmaceutical Supremacy―and How to Keep It

In a recent Human Action podcast episode, “Why Are US Drug Prices So High?,” Bob Murphy and Alexander Tabarrok discuss drug prices, President Trump’s recent “Executive Order: Delivering Most-Favored-Nation Prescription Drug Pricing to American Patients,” and related policy like patent law. (See also Trump’s “Worst Idea”: Undercutting Patent-Inflated Monopoly Pharmaceutical Patents.)

Their shownotes: [continue reading…]

In S1:E7 of the TV series Doc, the main character, Dr. Amy Larsen, has to take the medical boards again because of an accident giving her amnesia. Preparing for the boards, she recited part of the modern, 1964 Hippocratic Oath:

I swear to fulfill, to the best of my ability and judgment, this covenant:

I will respect the hard-won scientific gains of those physicians in whose steps I walk, and gladly share such knowledge as is mine with those who are to follow.

An admirable, implicitly anti-IP sentiment. Which some doctors seem to thwart by filing patents on medical procedures–seeking to block other doctors from using the knowledge they have to treat patients. [continue reading…]