Text at: Stephan Kinsella, “The Death Throes of Pro-IP Libertarianism,” Mises Daily (July 28, 2010).
Archived comments: page 1, page 2:
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Twitter alerted me to this article. As I tweeted in reply,
This is just sloppy and incoherent. First, he misspells my name. Is it that hard? Second, he totally mischaracterizes Roderick Long, who does have a principled case against IP. And this reads like it was written in Latvian and translated by Google translate.
A good article could be made about this issue, but this is not it.
For Roderick’s actual views:
- Owning Ideas Means Owning People
- The Libertarian Case Against Intellectual Property Rights
- Thoughtcrime
- Bear Becomes Mushroom; Trout Implicated
- Comments on Bedirhano?lu and Schaefer
Just came across this article: John M. Kraft & Robert Hovden, “Natural Rights, Scarcity & Intellectual Property,” 7 NYU J.L. & Liberty 467 (2013)
Introduction
Property rights are a fundamental aspect of all classical liberal and libertarian philosophies. Within these ideological paradigms, there is little disagreement over the concept of selfownership and property rights in tangible goods. But when looking to property rights in non-tangible or ideal objects—like those granted by copyright, patent, and trademark law—a considerable disagreement can be seen within the classical liberal approach. [continue reading…]
From my podcast:
Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 367.
I appeared on Patrick Smith’s Disenthrall channel (Disenthrall Youtube channel) to discuss and rebut—to fisk, really—an article by one “Strangerous Thoughts” from 2010 criticizing my IP abolitionism—or my “intellectual communism,” as he called it. The main article is: The economic principles of intellectual property and the fallacies of intellectual communism; see also his related article The ultimate justification for natural and intellectual property.
Good critique of copyright law, inspired by the great Nina Paley’s artistic work and her critiques of copyright.
Important recent work by Michele Boldrin & David Levine, authors of Against Intellectual Monopoly, about why, contrary to arguments given by pro-patent shills and the pharmaceutical industry and its lobbyists, patents are actually not necessary in the pharmaceutical industry and in the production of vaccines.
- Michele Boldrin, David Levine & Flavio Toxvaerd, “Should patents on Covid-19 vaccines be waived?“, Economics Observatory (May 14, 2021), and
- Boldrin & Levine, “Reforming Patent Law: The Case of Covid-19,” Cato Journal (Fall 2021)
- See also “How to think about vaccines and patents in a pandemic,” The Economist (April 24, 2021)
See also:
- Boldrin & Levine, Against Intellectual Monopoly, Chapter 9: The Pharmaceutical Industry (pdf)
- and Boldrin and Levine: The Case Against Patents
Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 364.
This is my Soho Forum debate held Nov. 15, 2021, in Manhattan, against professor Richard Epstein, moderated by Gene Epstein. I defended the resolution “all patent and copyright law should be abolished” and Professor Epstein opposed it. Oxford debate rules applied which meant that whoever changed the most minds won. My side went from about 20 to 29 percentage points, gaining about 9; Richard went from about 44 to 55%, gaining about 11, so he won by 1.7 percentage points.
Owning Thoughts and Labor
Mises Economics Blog (Dec. 11, 2006)
[Archived comments pasted below]
TAGS Calculation and Knowledge Monopoly and Competition Private Property
The issue of whether non-scarce things like thoughts or labor are ownable has arisen in recent debates—see, e.g., Thoughts on Intellectual Property, Scarcity, Labor-ownership, Metaphors, and Lockean Homesteading; Intellectual Property and Think Tank Corruption; and New Working Paper: Machan on IP.
Johan Ridenfeldt called to my attention recently a 1988 panel discussion on ethics with Rothbard, Hoppe, David Gordon, and Yeager, which has this exchange:
Question: I have a question for Professor Hoppe. Does the idea of personal sovereignty extend to knowledge? Am I sovereign over my thoughts, ideas, and theories? …
Hoppe: … in order to have a thought you must have property rights over your body. That doesn’t imply that you own your thoughts. The thoughts can be used by anybody who is capable of understanding them.
This is compatible with (and, of course, pre-dates) my own views on property and scarcity. As usual, Hoppe got it right early on.
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