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Musk and Dorsey: “delete all IP law”

by on April 11, 2025

Update: KOL459 | Twitter Spaces: Jack Dorsey, Elon Musk, Libertarian Property Rights, and the Case for Abolishing Intellectual Property

 

Incidentally, I’m not sure if this is the reason, as of March 2024, as I noticed from this tweet, Dorsey was apparently following me. The power of ideas…

 

***

Update: Various posts and related threads:

Tech Leaders Debate Future of IP Law
Last updated
Social media posts have ignited a debate over the relevance and impact of intellectual property (IP) law, with tech leaders and influencers presenting sharply divided opinions. While some advocate for the complete abolition of IP law, citing it as a hindrance to innovation, others, including actual IP professionals, argue that these laws are crucial for protecting creators from exploitation by large corporations, especially in the context of AI and data usage. This conversation reflects broader concerns about how IP law affects creativity, personal data rights, and corporate control over technology and content.
This story is a summary of posts on X and may evolve over time. Grok can make mistakes, verify its outputs.

Update:

Matt Walsh also joined the fray and commented on it later in his show.

Go to around 33:52 to 42:36 in the video. He repeats all the confused nonsense: that IP is a property right in ideas (though other IP socialists say we IP opponents are wrong to accuse them of holding this position!); that copying, or even IP infringement, is “stealing”;1; even the overwrought, over the top claim that “this [IP] is one of the basic things that makes human life worth living… it’s one of the things that gives life meaning…” I mean… shades of Rand and Galambos and A Recurring Fallacy: “IP is a Purer Form of Property than Material Resources”! To-wit:—

Rand: “Patents are the heart and core of property rights.” and: “Intellectual property is the most important field of law.”2

“Galambos,” or whatever his real name was:

Galambos believed that man has property rights in his own life (primordial property) and in all “non-procreative derivatives of his life.”[50] Since the “first derivatives” of a man’s life are his thoughts and ideas, thoughts and ideas are “primary property.” Since action is based on primary property (ideas), actions are owned as well; this is referred to as “liberty.” Secondary derivatives, such as land, televisions, and other tangible goods, are produced by ideas and action. Thus, property rights in tangible items are relegated to lowly secondary status, as compared with the “primary” status of property rights in ideas. (Even Rand once elevated patents over mere property rights in tangible goods, in her bizarre notion that “patents are the heart and core of property rights.”3

Objectivist IP attorney Murray Franck: “intellectual property is after all the only absolute possession in the world”4 and “intellectual property is after all the only absolute possession in the world.”5

Objectivist law professor Adam Mossoff argues that “All Property is Intellectual Property.”4

Walsh does an impressive job of packing in a large number of confusions and fallacies in a short time, so let’s fisk a few of them (from 33:52 to 42:36; lightly edited):

this is not really a headline but I’m annoyed so I’m going to talk about it.  Jack Dorsey is the former CEO of Twitter and he tweeted something a few days ago that I found to be very extremely stupid and bad, but it garnered a fair amount of support including from Elon Musk—and of course I’m a huge Elon Musk supporter and fan, as you know i think he’s a one of the great men of history as I’ve said many times; I disagree with him on this issue pretty strongly—… Jack Dorsey tweeted, and Elon Musk agreed, … “delete all IP law.” That was it. That was the whole tweet: “delete all IP law”, and of course that’s intellectual property law that he’s talking about, and that’s those are the laws that give you ownership rights over your ideas,6 over your creative output—and he wants to delete it and Elon agreed and a bunch of other people agreed too.

And that’s why I find this so concerning because it is needless to say, or it should be needless to say, it is a monstrously terrible idea it would mean that anyone would have the right to steal1 any of your ideas you would have no recourse legally no protection of any kind. Anything that you create—any creative product of yours—it can be taken by anyone. It means that if you for instance wrote a book somebody else could just come and take the book and copy it word for word and put their name on it7 and sell it under their name, and if they have a bigger name than you and they have a bigger platform then they can reap the profits and you won’t and there’s nothing you could do about it because you don’t own the story. If you get rid of intellectual property, I mean you could come up with a story that’s entirely yours and without IP law you don’t own it anyone can take it and do anything a movie studio could come along and make a movie out of it and not not give you a dime for it8 or even give you credit.9

And you repeat that process with literally anything else—movie scripts, art, anything—anyone could come along and just take anything you’ve done and any idea you’ve had and pilfer1 it and the only thing stopping them would be their own sense of propriety their own sense of their own ethical sensibilities, which is to say nothing, would stop them.

I mean the idea of abolishing intellectual property right is really no different than abolishing physical property rights.10 Saying I have no ownership over my own ideas is like saying I have no ownership over my home, and you could even argue that it’s worse in many ways,11 because most of us don’t build our own homes from scratch, most of us don’t build our homes at all you know, but we do build our own ideas, our own stories,  our own art—sure you’re inspired by other things when you’re, you know, making something creatively—but that’s that’s like the lumber that you use to build your own home—you’re using pieces of other things to but you’re creating your own thing out of it.12 So to say that you don’t have that ownership it’s just pure communism,13 that’s what it is.

But here’s what makes it relevant—I think why is Jack saying this—is this just trolling, is this engagement farming by Jack, is he falling on hard times and he needs to do some engagement farming on X to, you know, for the monetization? Well no he’s saying this because Jack is a big tech guy and as a big tech guy he is of course very involved with AI and this is all about AI. This is why every tech bro will be a communist soon enough. That’s why so many of them are starting  to sound like communists. Strangely enough it’s because they want to be able to build their AI platforms without having to worry about pesky things like intellectual property and that’s because all of these AI platforms are based on theft. I mean they all just steal [sic] with abandon and because the AI obviously doesn’t come up with their own ideas—the AI has no brain—and so all it does is just take [sic] from what already exists and spit out an amalgamation based on that. You know, people are very impressed that you can go to ChatGPT and ask it to write you a screenplay about a, you know about anything, just put in “write me a screenplay about this and that” and then it generates a screenplay in 5 seconds. And that is really impressive technology, I mean I can’t even like wrap my head around what goes into that on the back end, you know, to make that kind of technology possible. But it all it’s doing is just stealing [sic] from other screenplays that have been written and ripping them and just creating this kind of amalgamation of all of them.

And so it creates this big problem with intellectual property. Something has to give: either we’re going to start enforcing IP laws against these AI platforms, either we’re going to say that, you know, AI is a cool technology but that doesn’t mean that … intellectual property no longer exists. We’re not just going to give up on that concept because this technology is super cool. So either we’re going to enforce IP laws against these AI platforms or we’re going to abandon the entire concept of IP14 so that AI can take over and destroy human creativity entirely—which is what would happen you know if Jack gets his way.

If Jack Dorsey gets his way and we just get rid of IP law, that’s the end of human creativity. It’s the end of it. … There’s no incentive anymore to create anything, there’s no way to profit off of it so … it’s over. I mean you have a great story that you want to write,  how… what are you going to do with it? Are you going to send it to a publisher? Well they could just take [sic] the story—that’s the problem.15 You going to send your great manuscript to a publisher to publish it? Well, without without IP law they could just take [sic] it. They could say “Oh thanks for this gift we’re going to do whatever we want with it and we will pay you nothing and there is nothing you can do legally about it.” Are you going to self-publish it? Well again, you’re just a, you know, you’re just a a normal person, you’re not famous, … anyone else could just come along and find this book that sold five copies and they could say “We’re just going to take [sic] that.” And you know we’ve got the platform we’ve got the ability to distribute it we’ve got the marketing dollars and we’re going to take [sic] it and we’re going to uh reap the rewards so it just is the it’s the death of human creativity is what it is.

And I think that that is a big deal. I think that that’s a problem. I think that’s something that we need to avoid like we avoid the plague or even more so. I mean this is one of the basic things that makes human life worth living, it’s one of the things that gives life meaning,16 it’s one of the most basic, fundamental things is creativity, art, you know—this this is like what separates us from animals. And we we cannot sacrifice it or give it up under any circumstance. I mean we must defend that to the death17. It’s one of the most important things on this earth to defend. But Jack prefers that we get rid of all that because it means that he makes billions of dollars on his AI stuff that’s all this is about all these AI guys like get the IP law is kind of the one thing standing in the way sort of right now.18 It’s a it’s an inconvenience for them, and they’re worried about laws that that protect the IP even more and that’ll be inconvenient to them and they just want to erase all of that and make a trillion dollars all you know so they can each become trillionaires and human creativity is dead as a result that’s the cost the rest of us pay. I don’t think that’s a great deal. I don’t think that … humanity has to give up art and then Jack Dorsey gets to be a trillionaire. … to me, that’s not … I don’t find that deal very appealing. I don’t think that we quite—it’s great for him, I can see why he likes it—but for the rest of us, not so much.

 

  1. It’s not: Stop calling patent and copyright “property”; stop calling copying “theft” and “piracy” [↩] [↩] [↩]
  2. Inventors are Like Unto …. GODS….. ; Locke on IP; Mises, Rothbard, and Rand on Creation, Production, and “Rearranging”. [↩]
  3. The Galambosians strike back. [↩]
  4. Was the most fervent believer in intellectual property rights an IP thief? [↩] [↩]
  5. Objectivists: “All Property is Intellectual Property.” [↩]
  6. See the section “IP isn’t about owning ideas; those who oppose ownership of ideas are commies” in Hello! You’ve Been Referred Here Because You’re Wrong About Intellectual Property . [↩]
  7. Copyright infringement has nothing to do with plagiarism or attribution. KOL207 | Patent, Copyright, and Trademark Are Not About Plagiarism, Theft, Fraud, or Contract. [↩]
  8. “Conversation with an author about copyright and publishing in a free society” [↩]
  9. Copyright has nothing to do with plagiarism or attribution. [↩]
  10. Stephan Kinsella, “Against Intellectual Property After Twenty Years: Looking Back and Looking Forward,” in Legal Foundations of a Free Society (Houston, Texas: Papinian Press, 2023), Part IV.I. [↩]
  11. A Recurring Fallacy: ‘IP is a Purer Form of Property than Material Resources’” [↩]
  12. Except you only own a home you build using lumber if you already own the lumber. See Kinsella, “Law and Intellectual Property in a Stateless Society,” in Legal Foundations of a Free Society (Houston, Texas: Papinian Press, 2023), Part III.B. Moreover, all artistic creativity and innovation is incremental in that it necessarily builds on and incorporates previous ideas. Nothing is truly new or in a vacuum. A Recurring Fallacy: “IP is a Purer Form of Property than Material Resources” [↩]
  13.  IP can’t be socialistic, since the Soviet Union didn’t recognize IP law  [↩]
  14. This is correct: it’s life or death; it’s AI or copyright/patent. You can’t have both, just like you can’t have both freedom of the press and copyright, or property rights and IP, or negative property rights and positive welfare rights. Whereupon Grok admits it (and AI) is severely gimped by copyright law, Libertarian and IP Answer Man: Artificial Intelligence and IP, and other posts. [↩]
  15. Ever heard of contracts, Walsh? [↩]
  16.  A Recurring Fallacy: “IP is a Purer Form of Property than Material Resources”!; Inventors are Like Unto …. GODS…..; Locke on IP; The Galambosians strike back. Was the most fervent believer in intellectual property rights an IP thief?; Objectivists: “All Property is Intellectual Property.” [↩]
  17. Schulman: “If you copy my novel, I’ll kill you” [↩]
  18. Correct. IP is threatening AI. Whereupon Grok admits it (and AI) is severely gimped by copyright law, Libertarian and IP Answer Man: Artificial Intelligence and IP, and other posts. [↩]
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The Center for the Study of Innovative Freedom (C4SIF) is dedicated to building public awareness of the manner in which so-called “intellectual property” (IP) laws and policies impede innovation, creativity, communication, learning, knowledge, emulation, and information sharing. We are for property rights, free markets, competition, commerce, cooperation, and the voluntary sharing of knowledge, and oppose IP laws, which systematically impede or hamper innovation. IP law should be completely and immediately abolished.

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