Stephan Kinsella Bait

Stewart Baker over at Volokh.com wonders why most libertarians have laid down when it comes to their willingness to tolerate the current copyright regime:

Conservatives and especially libertarians seem like a cheap date on this issue. You’d think libertarians would have been in the forefront of objecting to governmental intrusions into our lives at the behest of a special interest let alone the creation of a new class of quasicriminals, defined as more or less everyone who entered high school after 1996, who can be investigated and prosecuted whenever the government or some member of industry decides that they are too troublesome.But no. For a lot of libertarians, judging by the comments to David’s post, all the RIAA has to do is call its new government-created entitlement a form of property, and, presto bingo, it’s sacrosanct.

Come to think of it, maybe I can persuade readers here that TSA’s new enhanced security measures are just fine as long as we enforce the rules by giving all the passengers on the plane a “property” right not to travel with people who refuse body imaging and enhanced patdowns. Instead of relying on oppressive government regulation, we’d just let the passengers collect millions in “statutory damages” from noncompliant travelers.

Read the full context of his thoughts here:

http://volokh.com/2010/11/20/girl-talk-and-intellectual-property/