IP Answer Man: Combatting Piracy in and Free World; Mises on Copyright

by Stephan Kinsella on August 22, 2025

Dear Mr Kinsella,

Thank you for your work in libertarianism. I have several questions for you, and I hope you have the time to check them out.

1. In your opinion, in an ideal libertarian world without state-enforced IP, how would we deal with piracy of content (movies, sports livestreams, music, etc.). Would it be purely resolved contractually? If a lot of information and entertainment is spread through code and radio waves, does that mean it cannot be ‘property’ because two people can use a radio wave or line of code without infringing on each other? What am I missing here?

There would be no such thing as piracy in an IP free world since piracy implies illegality and copying and competing would not be illegal. Stop calling patent and copyright “property”; stop calling copying “theft” and “piracy”; Copying, Patent Infringement, Copyright Infringement are not “Theft”, Stealing, Piracy, Plagiarism, Knocking Off, Ripping Off.

But I take it you mean how would people deal with competition and copying of their products and books and movies (not piracy, but copying). They’d have to figure it out. Somehow. They could whine as they do now but no one would respond by giving them a patent or copyright. It’s not the job of political theory to tell entrepreneurs how to make a profit in the face of competition. As is displayed on my site:

That said, some ideas here:

But it’s not my job to do entrepreneurs’ jobs for them or to guarantee they have some way to make a profit. No one has the right to make a profit or a right to the “fruits of their labor” blah blah blah. Profit is unnatural and always temporary without a state granted monopoly, and success invites imitation, copying, emulation, and competition, which always tends to eat away at the temporary unnatural profits so that they tend to the natural rate of interest. Down with profit, the profit motive, and incentives! (I kid … partly.)

2. In Mises’s great brief book (compiled from a speech he gave in Argentina), [Economic Policy: Thoughts for Today and Tomorrow] he writes on page 4:

“Freedom of the press does not mean that you have the right to copy what another man has written and thus to acquire the success which this other man has duly merited on account of his achievements. It means that you have the right to write something different. ”

Does this go against your stance on intellectual property? Seems to me like he is defending copyright laws… or is he merely saying you do not have the right to copy, albeit you may be permitted to do so?

I have addressed this in Mises on Intellectual Property. Mises was wobbly on IP but I think this passage is not really pro-copyright. As I write there: “This passage implies some possible support for copyright but it only loose; here his focus is on competition and how success invites it, and how the right to compete, say with an existing railroad, doesn’t mean just do what they do but compete in other ways. He is not saying you don’t have the right to exactly emulate an existing market player, only that this is probably not the way to do it. I think he is making a similar point about authors copying others, and he throws in the line about trying to take credit for others’ achievements but this comment if anything seems to have more to do with reputation (covered by defamation and trademark, not copyright) than with copyright, and with honesty and integrity, not copyright.”

3. Small final question: Do you think you will return to the Mises Institute sometime soon? Maybe for a Mises University? I hope to see you in person!

I doubt it. I think my time there has run its course.