Wang, Review of Against Intellectual Property

by Stephan Kinsella on November 9, 2025

Sebastian Wang, “Review of Against Intellectual Property by N. Stephan Kinsella,” Libertarian Alliance [UK] Blog (March 25, 2025).

Kinsella, Stephan. The Problem with Intellectual Property. Papinian Press Occasional Paper, No. 2. Houston, Texas: Papinian Press, May 15, 2025 (v.1.1). 30pp. ISBN Ebook 979-8-9890306-8-2. Available online at C4SIF. Published under Creative Commons Zero (CC0).

Stephan Kinsella’s The Problem with Intellectual Property (2025) is a concise but thorough demolition of the case for patents and copyrights. It draws upon the author’s decades of scholarship and advocacy to set out with clarity why intellectual property (IP) is not property at all, but a state-created distortion of genuine ownership. In doing so, it strengthens a long tradition of Austrian and libertarian criticism of monopoly privileges.

This is an excellent piece. Below is an email I sent the author:

Very nice. I suppose it might be possible for a better writer than me to have a piece that is fairly comprehensive and thorough (and sound), and also concise, and also not dense, but for this mere mortal, it seems only 2 of the three are possible 🙂

One very minor quibble, and one which I would be curious if you agree with me or think this is needlessly errant pedantry up with which you might not put: you write “to set out with clarity why intellectual property (IP) is not property at all, but a state-created distortion of genuine ownership.” I of course know what you mean and you get the main point as your second clause makes clear.

But over the years I have found it necessary, when pushed, to clarify that the debate is not one about what is property or not, but about what property right assignments are legitimate or justified. I found it necessary to do this because of erroneous arguments I kept encountering, e.g. Kinsella denies that ideas can be property. The more I thought about this I realized the framing of the question is the problem. (IP is Not “Not Property”)

As careful legal scholars point out, “Accurate analysis should reserve the use of the word property for the designation of rights that persons have with respect to things.” See Libertarian Answer Man: Self-ownership for slaves and Crusoe; and Yiannopoulos on Accurate Analysis and the term “Property”; Mises distinguishing between juristic and economic categories of “ownership”

So in other words, if I have a property right or ownership right in a thing, I own it, but it is not property. The question then is never “are ideas property” or “is X property”. It is rather, “For this ownable, scarce resource X, which is is a type of thing that can be possessed and wielded as a means of action, who is the rightful owner? Who has a property right in X?”

See also The Title-Transfer Theory of Contract, note 1 and 2, and The Problem with Intellectual Property, n.40

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