Against Intellectual Property + Supplementary Material

by Stephan Kinsella on June 26, 2016

Note: For a compilation of my more recent writing on IP, see You Can’t Own Ideas: Essays on Intellectual Property (Papinian Press, 2023). And see also Stephan Kinsella, ed., The Anti-IP Reader: Free Market Critiques of Intellectual Property (Papinian Press, 2023). I stand by AIP but You Can’t Own Ideas contains a streamlined and updated version of the arguments in AIP, “Law and Intellectual Property in a Stateless Society” (ch. 6) followed by Against Intellectual Property After Twenty Years: Looking Back and Looking Forward (ch. 7) (these are also included in Part IV of Stephan Kinsella, Legal Foundations of a Free Society (Houston, Texas: Papinian Press, 2023)). Together, these two chapters my main arguments against IP. AIP and other chapters in You Can’t Own Ideas thus contain the bulk of my anti-IP ideas and will have to suffice until I tackle writing Copy This Book: The Case for Abolishing Intellectual Property (probably in 2026 or so).

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My monograph Against Intellectual Property has been published in different formats, the most recent version being Against Intellectual Property (Laissez Faire Books, 2012). First published as a long article, “Against Intellectual Property,” Journal of Libertarian Studies (Spring 2001), based on “The Legitimacy of Intellectual Property,” a paper presented at the Law and Economics panel, Austrian Scholars Conference, Ludwig von Mises Institute, Auburn, Alabama (March 25, 2000). The article was presented the Mises Institute‘s O.P. Alford III Prize (2) for scholarly article published during 2001–2002 that best advances libertarian scholarship, at the Mises Institute’s eighth Austrian Scholars Conference, March 16, 2002, in Auburn, Alabama. A version was also republished as a monograph by the Mises Institute in 2008.

Files

LFB Edition 2012
- Introduction and Jeff Tucker’s Editorial Preface, and also his Column introducing the book
- epub | mobi | pdf
Mises Edition 2008
- Amazon (kindle and paper)
- HTML | large print version | PDF | epub | Scribd | Mises.org files
JLS Version 2001: “Against Intellectual Property”
Translations into other languages, including Czech, French, Georgian, German, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish and Persian (forthcoming)
- Roberta Modugno’s Preface for the Italian edition
Audio book versions

In the Introduction to the LFB edition, I link to the selected supplementary material contained on this page. As the Introduction explains:

Since I wrote in AIP in 2001, I and others have written a good deal more on the topic of so-called intellectual property law, as it has become a greater and more apparent threat to property rights, freedom of expression, and the Internet. I am in the process of writing a new book on IP, tentatively entitled Copy This Book, taking into account more recent arguments, evidence, and examples. In the meantime, readers of AIP may find useful the list of selected writings and talks that supplement the arguments made in AIP, which I have compiled in my C4SIF blogpost “Selected Supplementary Material for Against Intellectual Property” (March 1, 2012), and which will be updated from time to time. For further information see various works linked at www.c4sif.org/resources and material posted going forward at www.c4sif.org.

Links to the supplementary material and readings are provided below. Material below is by me unless indicated otherwise.

Selected Supplementary Material for Against Intellectual Property

Introductory Works