Jesus. Another confused self-proclaimed advocate of liberty advocating statist censorship in the name of intellectual property,1 just like other so-called libertarians have advocated restricting free trade for the same reasons.2
Adam Mossoff, “Congress Should Protect the Rights of American Creators with Site-Blocking Legislation” (Feb. 14, 2023). Look how many time he equates IP with normal property rights,3 and invokes the “fruits of their productive labors” misleading metaphor. Thanks, Locke, for the huge mistake.4 And also, he says:
“Unfortunately, a subset of libertarians—who advocate for anarchism in the physical world and in the digital domain of the internet—have created confusion about the protection of copyrighted works on the internet.
[footnote] Some of the more prominent libertarian critics of intellectual property, including Murray Rothbard, Jeffrey Tucker, Stephan Kinsella, and Wendy McElroy, are self-described anarchists or “anarcho-capitalists,” which is a theory in libertarianism that markets can and should replace government in providing police, military, courts, and prisons, etc. See Libertarian Perspectives on Intellectual Property … (“Anarcho-capitalists oppose the existence of even a minimal state.”).”
First, you do not have to be an anarchist to oppose IP and the case against IP made by me, an anarchist and the most prominent anti-IP libertarian, does not depend on anarchist arguments. In fact, many Objectivists are now anti-IP.5 Second, Rothbard was not anti-IP. Third, we have not created confusion, we have tried to open people’s eyes to the rights-holocaust supported by IP fascists like Mossoff.
I guess we need to now add Heritage to the list of institutions that are horrible on IP, like Cato, the Federalist Society, Independent Institute, and others.6
- Others include Reason’s moron writer Cathy Young. See, e.g., Reason: Copyright Should Last Half A Century; Libraries: Prepare to burn foreign books, courtesy copyright law; COICA: More Copyright-Backed Censorship on the Way?; “SOPA, Piracy, Censorship and the End of the Internet? Kinsella and Stefan Molyneux on Freedomain Radio”; Copyright and Free Trade; Patents and Censorship”; Copyright Censorship versus Free Speech and Human Rights; Excessive Fines and the Eighth Amendment.” [↩]
- Such as Richard Epstein, Doug Bandow, Michael Krauss, and now, embarrassingly and pathetically, David Henderson. See Cato Tugs Stray Back Onto the Reservation; Pilon on Patents; Cato on Drug Reimportation; Cato Tugs Stray Back Onto the Reservation; and Other Posts; Intellectual Property and Think Tank Corruption. And let’s not forget William Shughart writing in favor of IP for the Independent Institute. See Independent Institute on The “Benefits” of Intellectual Property Protection. [↩]
- I criticize this, e.g., in “Against Intellectual Property After Twenty Years: Looking Back and Looking Forward,” Part. IV.I, in Legal Foundations of a Free Society (Houston, Texas: Papinian Press, 2023). [↩]
- Locke’s Big Mistake: How the Labor Theory of Property Ruined Political Theory: Transcript. [↩]
- An Objectivist Recants on IP; Yet another Randian recants on IP; “The Death Throes of Pro-IP Libertarianism.” [↩]
- See More defenses of IP by the Federalist Society; Independent Institute on The “Benefits” of Intellectual Property Protection; others here. [↩]
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