Resources

Key Sites and Resources

Books and Articles

Kinsella

• Kinsella, Against Intellectual Property (including Selected Supplementary Material)
• ——, “Against Intellectual Property After Twenty Years: Looking Back and Looking Forward” (May 12, 2022)
• ——, Hello! You’ve Been Referred Here Because You’re Wrong About Intellectual Property
• ——, A Selection of my Best Articles and Speeches on IP
• ——, You Can’t Own Ideas: Essays on Intellectual Property (Papinian Press, 2023)
• ——, “The Case Against IP: A Concise Guide“
• ——, KOL341 | ESEADE Lecture: Should We Release Patents on Vaccines?, including: An Overview of Libertarian Property Rights and the Case Against IP
• ——, How Intellectual Property Hampers the Free Market
• ——, “Intellectual Property and Libertarianism“
• ——, Rethinking Intellectual Property: History, Theory, and Economics (Mises Academy course)
• ——, KOL364 | Soho Forum Debate vs. Richard Epstein: Patent and Copyright Law Should Be Abolished
• ——, KOL190 | On Life without Patents and Copyright: Or, But Who Would Pick the Cotton? (PFS 2015)
• ——, KOL062 | “Intellectual Freedom and Learning versus Patent and Copyright” (2010)
• Kinsella, “Law and Intellectual Property in a Stateless Society,” Libertarian Papers 5 (1) (2013): 1-44
• Kinsella, “Law and Intellectual Property in a Stateless Society,” Libertarian Papers 5 (1) (2013): 1-44
• ——, Do Business Without Intellectual Property (Liberty.me, 2014) (PDF)

Others

• Kinsella, ed., The Anti-IP Reader: Free Market Critiques of Intellectual Property (Papinian Press, 2023)
• Boldrin & Levine, Against Intellectual Monopoly
• ——, Boldrin and Levine: The Case Against Patents
• ——, The Economics of Musical Copyright
• Boldrin & Levine on Covid-19, Vaccines, the Pharmaceutical Industry, and Patents (Dec. 17, 2021)
• Sheldon Richman, “Patent Nonsense“
• ——, The Patent, Copyright, Trademark, and Trade Secret Horror Files
• Jacob H. Huebert, “The Fight against Intellectual Property“
• Gary Chartier, “Intellectual Property and Natural Law“
• David S. D’Amato, “Libertarian Views of Intellectual Property: Rothbard, Tucker, Spooner, and Rand,” Libertarianism.org (May 28, 2014)
• Tucker, “Ideas, Free and Unfree: A Book Commentary” (commentaries on Boldrin and Levine’s Against Intellectual Monopoly)
• Intellectual Property (MisesWiki)
• Without Intellectual Property (MisesWiki) (“How would the world look like without Intellectual Property? What are the current success stories and possible alternatives if some or all forms of IP were repealed (or became unenforceable)?”)
• Brian Martin, Information liberation: Challenging the corruptions of information power (1998)
  • including “Against intellectual property” (1995)
  • Brian Martin, Chris Moore and Colin Salter, “Sharing music files: tactics of a challenge to the industry“
• General overview of IP theories: Adam Moore, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on Intellectual Property Theories
• Anti-IP Youtube Videos: A Selection
• KOL409 | IP Law Tutorial, Part 1: Patent Law
• KOL411 | IP Law Tutorial, Part 2: Copyright Law
• KOL412 | IP Law Tutorial, Part 3: Trademark, Trade Secret, and Other

Overviews & Surveys of IP and Policy Arguments Pro and Con

• Adam Mossoff, “Intellectual Property,” in The Routledge Companion to Libertarianism (Matt Zwolinski & Benjamin Ferguson, eds., 2022)
• Adam Moore & Ken Himma, “Intellectual Property,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2018)

Blogposts

• Kinsella, Intellectual Nonsense: Fallacious Arguments for IP (Libertopia 2012)
• ——, “Innovations that Thrive without IP“
• ——, “Yet Another Study Finds Patents Do Not Encourage Innovation”
• —–, “Funding for Creation and Innovation in an IP-Free World“
• —–, “Examples of Ways Content Creators Can Profit Without Intellectual Property“
• —–, “The Creator-Endorsed Mark as an Alternative to Copyright“
• —–, “What are the Costs of the Patent System?” and Costs of the Patent System Revisited
• —–, “$30 Billion Taxfunded Innovation Contracts: The ‘Progressive-Libertarian’ Solution”
• —–, “Are Patents “Monopolies”?“
• —–, The Origins of Libertarian IP Abolitionism
• —–, The Four Historical Phases of IP Abolitionism
• —–, Cordato and Kirzner on Intellectual Property
• —–, Hume on Intellectual Property and the Problematic “Labor” Metaphor
• —–, Locke on IP; Mises, Rothbard, and Rand on Creation, Production, and “Rearranging”
• —–, Locke, Smith, Marx and the Labor Theory of Value
• —–, Libertarian Creationism
• —–, Rand on IP, Owning “Values”, and “Rearrangement Rights”
• —–, this comment to “Trademark and Fraud,” Mises Economics Blog (Nov. 7, 2007) (archived comments)
• —–, Elaborations on Randian IP
• —–, Objectivists on IP
• —–, Hoppe on Intellectual Property
• —–, State Antitrust (anti-monopoly) law versus state IP (pro-monopoly) law
• —–, Copyright is very sticky!
• —–, Masnick on the Horrible PROTECT IP Act: The Coming IPolice State
• —–, Leveraging IP
• —–, The Evil of Patenting Food and Seeds

Sites and Resources

• Against Monopoly blog
• Intellectual Property Page, by Boldrin and Levine
• The IP Policy Wiki
• Long, Molinari Institute’s Anti-Copyright Resources
• TechDirt (Mike Masnick archive)
• QuestionCopyright.org
• PatentLawPractice wiki (practical, non-normative)
• Public Knowledge (various issues)

Publications by C4SIF Advisory Board Members

Michele Boldrin

• “Does Intellectual Monopoly Help Innovation” (with Levine)
• “Reforming Patent Law: The Case of Covid-19,” (with Levine)
• Boldrin and Levine: The Case Against Patents
• The Economics of Musical Copyright
• Against Intellectual Monopoly (with Levine)
• “IER Lawrence Klein Lecture: The Case Against Intellectual Monopoly,” International Economic Review, 45: 327-350 (2004) (with Levine)
• “What’s Intellectual Property Good for?,” Revue Economique, forthcoming 2011 (with Levine)

Julio Cole

• “Patents and Copyrights: Do the Benefits Exceed the Costs?”
• “Would the Absence of Copyright Laws Significantly Affect the Quality and Quantity of Literary Output?“
• Propiedad Intelectual: Comentarios sobre Algunas Tendencias Recientes [“Intellectual Property: Comments on Some Recent Trends”]
• Review of Patent Failure by James Bessen and Michael J. Meurer

Karl Fogel

• • The Surprising History of Copyright and The Promise of a Post-Copyright World

• What Is Free Software?
• QuestionCopyright.org — Introduction and FAQ

Stephan Kinsella

• My IP publications, including:
• Against Intellectual Property (comprehensive libertarian case against IP)
• You Can’t Own Ideas: Essays on Intellectual Property (Papinian Press, 2023)
• “Law and Intellectual Property in a Stateless Society,” Libertarian Papers 5 (1) (2013): 1-44
• “Why Intellectual Property is not Genuine Property,” edited transcript of speech delivered at 3^rd Adam Smith Forum, Moscow, Russia (Nov. 12, 2011)
• “The Great IP Debate of 1983,” Mises Daily (July 18, 2011)
• “How to Slow Economic Progress”
• “Rethinking IP”
• “Intellectual Freedom and Learning Versus Patent and Copyright”
• “Ideas are Free: The Case Against Intellectual Property: or, How Libertarians Went Wrong“
• “Goods, Scarce and Nonscarce” (with Tucker)
• “The Death Throes of Pro-IP Libertarianism”
• “Reducing the Cost of IP Law”
• “Intellectual Property and Libertarianism,” Mises Daily (Nov. 17, 2009)
• “Radical Patent Reform Is Not on the Way”
• “The Case Against IP: A Concise Guide”
• “How Intellectual Property Hampers the Free Market“
• In Defense of Napster and Against the Second Homesteading Rule, September 4, 2000, LewRockwell.com
• There’s No Such Thing as a Free Patent, Mises Daily (Mar. 7, 2005)

Media

• “Intellectual Property and Economic Development,” Mises University 2011 (July 27, 2011)
• “Rethinking Intellectual Property: History, Theory, and Economics,” Mises Academy (Tuesdays, Mar. 22-April 26, 2011) (discussed on the Mises Blog in Study with Kinsella Online and in Rethinking Intellectual Property: Kinsella’s Mises Academy Online Course) (audio and slides)
• “Obama’s Patent Reform: Improvement or Continuing Calamity?,” Mises Academy webinar and article (Sep. 2011)
• “SOPA, Piracy, Censorship and the End of the Internet? Kinsella and Stefan Molyneux on Freedomain Radio” (Dec. 21, 2011)
• “Why Intellectual Property is not Genuine Property,” 3^rd Adam Smith Forum, Moscow, Russia (Nov. 12, 2011) (via remote video)
• “AVTM + Stephan Kinsella: “Intellectual Property” vs The 4th Amendment,” Guest on Adam vs. the Man (Oct. 25, 2011), discussing Copyright and Neo-Mercantilism
• “Property and Science: The Twin Pillars of Prosperity and Civilization–versus Patent and Copyright,” Panelist, Open Science Summit, Mountain View, CA (Oct. 22, 2011)
• “IP Debate: John Templeton Foundation’s Big Questions Debate series on Intellectual Property and Wealth Creation,” The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law Student Chapter of The Federalist Society (Moritz College of Law, Ohio State University, Columbus OH, March 3, 2011)
• Panelist, “Intellectual Property Law and Policy,” Symposium: “Plain Meaning in Context: Can Law Survive its Own Language?”, New York University School of Law/Journal of Law and Liberty (February 18, 2011)
• “Intellectual Freedom and Learning versus Patent and Copyright,” 2010 Students For Liberty Texas Regional Conference, University of Texas, Austin (Nov. 6, 2010) (video; audio; edited transcription).
• “How Intellectual Property Hampers Capitalism,” Mises Institute Supporters’ Summit 2010: “The Economic Recovery:  Washington’s Big Lie” (Oct. 9 2010, Auburn Alabama
• Speech, “Ideas are Free: The Case Against Intellectual Property: or, How Libertarians Went Wrong,” 2010 Annual Meeting, Property and Freedom Society (June 6, 2010) [I also participated in a Q&A Discussion Panel featuring “Hoppe, van Dun, DiLorenzo, Kinsella, Daniels, Kealey”- video]
• “Freedomain Radio #1616: “Stephan Kinsella on Intellectual Property” (March 15, 2010): “This is a Freedomain Radio book club discussion of one of Stephan’s most popular books: ‘Against Intellectual Property’” (MP3)
• “Intellectual Property and Libertarianism,” speech presented at Mises University 2009 (July 30, 2009; audio; video); speech podcast on The Lew Rockwell Show, #131, as The Intellectual Property Racket (Aug. 19, 2009) (see also: “Intellectual Property and Libertarianism,” Mises Daily (Nov. 17, 2009); earlier version (without endnotes) published as “Intellectual Property and Libertarianism” [local PDF], Liberty vol. 23, no. 11 (Dec. 2009), p. 27 [blog post])
• Delivered the Rothbard Memorial Lecture, “The Intellectual Property Quagmire, or, The Perils of Libertarian Creationism” (Powerpoint; Slideshare.net Presentation; PDF version), Austrian Scholars Conference 2008, Ludwig von Mises Institute, Auburn AL, March 13, 2008 [“The Intellectual Property Quagmire, or, The Perils of Libertarian Creationism” [Audio; Video; Google Video version)]

David Koepsell

• Koepsell on IP
• “Revising Intellectual Property: Liberating Intellectual Capital,”  Innovation, Sustainability, and Development: A New Manifesto
• “The Ethical Case Against Intellectual Property” (slides; video)
• “A Patent Too Far,” Washington Times (Op-ed with Kenneth Alfano)
• How Genes are Like Plutonium (Neither Should Be Patentable)
• “Back to Basics: How Technology and the Open Source Movement Can Save Science“

Bertrand Lemennicier†

• Brevets d’invention, droits de reproduction et propriété intellectuelle (Patents, Reproduction Rights and Intellectual Property)

David Levine

• “Does Intellectual Monopoly Help Innovation” (with Boldrin)
• Boldrin and Levine: The Case Against Patents
• The Economics of Musical Copyright
• Against Intellectual Monopoly (with Boldrin)
• Intellectual Property: Silly or Sinister?, The Freeman (January/February 2011), vol. 61, no. 1
• “IER Lawrence Klein Lecture: The Case Against Intellectual Monopoly,” International Economic Review, 45: 327-350 (2004) (with Levine)
• “What’s Intellectual Property Good for?,” Revue Economique, forthcoming 2011 (with Levine)

Roderick T. Long

• “Bye-Bye for IP,” Austro-Athenian Empire Blog (May 20, 2010)
• Owning Ideas Means Owning People
• The Libertarian Case Against Intellectual Property Rights
• Thoughtcrime
• Bear Becomes Mushroom; Trout Implicated
• Comments on Bedirhano?lu and Schaefer

Mike Masnick

• Masnick blog archive on TechDirt
• “The Case For Patents Harming Innovation“
• “High Order Bit: From Content to Conversational Marketing,” 2009 Conversational Marketing Summit (how he took Techdirt from a content site to a conversational marketing platform)

Wendy McElroy

• The Last Gasp of Copyright Dies Within Me
• On the Subject of Intellectual Property
• Copyright and Patent in Benjamin Tucker’s periodical Liberty
• Contra Copyright, Again
• Musical Condoms: Make Mine Whistle “Dixie”
• Patently Absurd

Nina Paley

• All Creative Work Is Derivative
• Copying Is Not Theft
• Copying And Surveillance
• I’m the subject of the documentary, “The Revolution Will Be Animated“
• IP Comics (Mimi & Eunice) and minibook; my tweet
• Redefining Property: Lessons From American History
• The Cult of Originality:
• Paley vs. Doctorow
• Four Freedoms of Free Culture
• Understanding Free Content
• “Intellectual Property” is Slavery
• Free as in Phreedom

Sheldon Richman

• Sheldon Richman on Intellectual Property versus Liberty
• Sheldon Richman, Intellectual “Property” Versus Real Property: What Are Copyrights and What Do They Mean for Liberty?, The Freeman (12 June 2009)
• ———, “Patent Nonsense,” The American Conservative (Jan. 1, 2012)
• ———, “Slave Labor and Intellectual Property: On a misplaced analogy,” The Freeman Online (June 3, 2011)

Jeffrey Tucker

• “Goods, Scarce and Nonscarce” (with Kinsella)
• “Violating Rights in the Name of Property“
• “Ideas, Free and Unfree: A Book Commentary” (commentaries on Boldrin and Levine’s Against Intellectual Monopoly)
• various chapters in the “Technology” section of Bourbon for Breakfast
• “A Book that Changes Everything“
• “A Theory of Open” (archived comments)
• “up with iTunes U“
• Jeff Tucker Free Talk Live Interview on Open Information and IP
• Mises.org in the Context of Publishing History

Other Publications and Resources

• John Perry Barlow, “The Economy of Ideas: A framework for patents and copyrights in the Digital Age,” Wired (1994)
• Tom W. Bell, Intellectual Privilege: Copyright, Common Law, and the Common Good (draft)
• ———, The Great Debate on Intellectual Property, in Cato Policy Report (January/February 2002)
• ———, other copyright writing
• Böhm-Bawerk on Patent and Copyright
• Boudewijn Bouckaert, “What Is Property?”
• Kevin Carson, Intellectual Property — A Libertarian Critique
• Pierre Desrochers, On the Abuse of Patents as Economic Indicators, Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics (Winter 1998)
• ———, “Excludability, Creativity and the Case Against the Patent System,” Economic Affairs, vol. 20, no. 3 (September 2000), pp. 14-16
• Doug French, “The Intellectual Revolution Is in Process“
• Hayek: see Hayek’s Views on Intellectual Property; also Tucker, “Misesian vs. Marxian vs. IP Views of Innovation“; Tucker, “Hayek on Patents and Copyrights“; Salerno, Hayek Contra Copyright Laws
• Charles Johnson (RadGeek), “Patents Kill” (I) and “Patents Kill” (II);
• ———, “Libertarians for Protectionism” (1, 2, 3)
• Samuel Edward Konkin, III, “Copywrongs,” The Voluntaryist (July 1986), reprinted as “Copywrongs,” LewRockwell.com (Nov. 15, 2010)
• Daniel Krawisz, The Fallacy of Intellectual Property, Mises Daily (Aug. 25, 2009)
• Francois Leveque & Yann Meniere, The Economics of Patents and Copyrights
• Fritz Machlup, U.S. Senate Subcommittee On Patents, Trademarks & Copyrights, An Economic Review of the Patent System, 85th Cong., 2nd Session, 1958, Study No. 15 (text excerpt) [“Report to the US congress from 1958, which also extensively narrates the history of the patent movement and of earlier economic research on this subject. Machlup, a renowned American economist of Austrian origin, is the first author of a large treatise on knowledge economics and other treatises which belong to the teaching repertoire of economics departments in universities. His report cites a wealth of historical and economic evidence to refute most of the reasoning used by lawyers to legitimate the patent system.”]
• Fritz Machlup & Edith Penrose, “The Patent Controversy in the Nineteenth Century,” Journal of Economic History 10 (1950), p. 1
• Re Mises, see Kinsella, “Mises on Intellectual Property“
• Gary North, Don’t Invest in Copyright-Protected Companies (Nov. 5, 2003)
• Tom Palmer, “Intellectual Property: A Non-Posnerian Law and Economics Approach“
• ———, “Are Patents and Copyrights Morally Justified? The Philosophy of Property Rights and Ideal Objects“
• Arnold Plant, “The Economic Theory Concerning Patents for Inventions,” Economica, New Series, 1, no. 1 (Feb., 1934)
• Leonard Read, “On Plagiarism” (1972), reprinted in Kinsella, “Leonard Read on Copyright and the Role of Ideas“
• George Reisman, Capitalism, pp. 388-89 & 417-20; also 40, 96, 187, 216, 233
• Murray N. Rothbard, Knowledge, True and False
• ———, Man, Economy, and State and Power and Market, Scholars Edition, pp. 745-54 & 1133-38
• ———, Rothbard’s comments here

Non-English Resources

Spanish

• Propiedad intelectual
• Albert Esplugas, ¿La piratería es liberal?