C4SIF.org

Mike Masnick of TechDirt, generally pro-civil liberties and generally skeptical of copyright but not an abolitionist, just put up a podcast episode he appeared on discussing free speech versus copyright and the censorship copyright law causes. This was an episode of the podcast “Sidebar by Courthouse News” called Copyright Conundrum, and re-podcast on Techdirt by Masnick. The shownotes: [continue reading…]

“Patents, Pharma, Government: The Unholy Alliance,” Brownstone Institute (April1, 2024)

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.

1. 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.” [↩]
2. 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. [↩]
3. 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). [↩]
4. Locke’s Big Mistake: How the Labor Theory of Property Ruined Political Theory: Transcript. [↩]
5. An Objectivist Recants on IP; Yet another Randian recants on IP; “The Death Throes of Pro-IP Libertarianism.” [↩]
6. See More defenses of IP by the Federalist Society; Independent Institute on The “Benefits” of Intellectual Property Protection; others here.  [↩]

At Tom Woods’s wedding reception in June 2022, in Jacksonville, Florida, I ran into Mark Skousen and we ended up having a discussion about intellectual property, which we continued later in an email discussion. Gene Epstein was also included since Mark had also made some comments about IP in the aftermath of my Soho Forum debate with Richard Epstein in Nov. 2021 (which Gene Epstein hosts).

I thought my comments to Mark about IP might be of interest to some readers, to show how I sometimes respond to common queries about and arguments in favor of IP, so below I reprint a lightly edited and somewhat cleaned up version of our (casual, informal) interchange (reprinted with Mark and Gene’s permission, ‘natch). [continue reading…]

• See also other posts and articles on the impossibility of “owning ideas.“

Duke economist Michael Munger had some comments about copyright and intellectual property (IP) and fraud, plagiarism, and related topics, in a recent AIER column, “Property in Words: Not Even Under Suspicion,” AIER (Jan. 14, 2024). He basically seems to be skeptical of the idea of copyright, based on his skepticism of words as property, but he never quite comes out and says so. In the end he comes out against dishonesty and plagiarism, but the analysis is somewhat all over the map and makes various misstatements about the nature of IP law and property rights.

In general, the IP topic and property rights in general is so rife with confusion that almost every analysis is always somewhat … off. In part, this is because people are confused due to Locke’s mistake of basing his property arguments on the labor theory of property,¹ and in part because of confusion about how to separate or combine legal/normative/prescriptive and economic/factual/descriptive analysis. And any terms are used with somewhat different meanings, across domains of inquiry, that equivocation often creeps in. [continue reading…]

1. See KOL037 | Locke’s Big Mistake: How the Labor Theory of Property Ruined Political Theory. [↩]

A friend asked me for my comments about a video with the clickbaity title “Harvard Economist Reveals Shocking SECRET About China In 2023“—in particular, regarding the third section, “Fierce Competition,” about how China handles IP vs. the U.S. My brief, dashed off response is below:

Well, the title of this video makes it look click-baity. I think he is confused. Here are my thoughts just from quickly watching the first few minutes of that section. [continue reading…]

For the latest in my “patents kill” series…

Apple to halt sales of some Apple Watches in US.

“The decision to take one of its most popular products off the shelf follows an ongoing dispute with medical device maker Masimo over its blood oxygen feature. Apple has routinely marketed its smartwatch as a life-saving device, which has helped launch the Apple Watch into the stratosphere, making it the most popular watch sold around the world. But its skirmish with Masimo threatens to undermine that.”

As I wrote to some friends: this is an example of how IP can kill. I mean sure, Apple ” can afford it” but … can everyone? Can Apple afford all of such things, at the margin? What about the chilling effect. So if a given watch doesn’t have an O2 monitor, out of millions of users, how many deaths might this cause? 1? 2? A half? It’s not zero. IP kills.

Andreas Von Gunten, Intellectual Property is Common Property: Arguments for the Abolition of Private Intellectual Property Rights (Zurich: buch & netz, 2015).

Abstract:

Defenders of intellectual property rights argue that these rights are justified because creators and inventors deserve compensation for their labour, because their ideas and expressions are their personal property and because the total amount of creative work and innovation increases when inventors and creators have a prospect of generating high income through the exploitation of their monopoly rights. This view is not only widely accepted by the general public, but also enforced through a very effective international legal framework. And it is endorsed by most academic researchers and commentators in this field. In this essay, I will show that the classical arguments for the justification of private intellectual property rights can be contested, and that there are many good reasons to abolish intellectual property rights completely in favour of an intellectual commons where every person is allowed to use every cultural expression and invention in whatever way he wishes. I will first give a short overview of the classical arguments for the justification of intellectual property as they are usually stated. We will then discuss the question of whether the creator or inventor deserves his de jure monopoly, by using John Christman’s categories of income and control rights to analyse property rights. The aim here is to show that it does not make sense to create control rights for abstract objects, as they are not scarce, and that there is no logical connection between the surplus which may be generated through income rights and the labour which has been put into a cultural artefact or an invention, and therefore it is not justified to grant monopoly rights on the basis of Lockean natural rights arguments for self-ownership and the just appropriation of worldly resources. As it is possible to reject Christman’s property rights categories, I will then go on to show on the basis of Richard Dawkins’ postulation of the ‘meme’ and Ludwik Fleck’s theory of the ‘thought collective’ that creative processes should be interpreted as interpersonal or collective processes, and therefore it is not justified to grant intellectual property rights to individuals on the basis of the idea that the individual who has put labour into the creative work or the invention should be the one to whom the contents of the work belong exclusively. As it is still possible to postulate the utilitarian argument that intellectual property rights are just because they increase the amount of creative works and inventions, I will argue in the last chapter that, from a libertarian as well as from an egalitarian point of view, the justification of intellectual monopoly rights on utilitarian grounds cannot be maintained. Therefore it is time to abolish the current global intellectual property law regime in favour of an intellectual commons for the good of all human beings and societies.

Have not read yet, but from the abstract, this book seems like it might have some promise. Oddly, the book it nowhere cites me though at least it cites Boldrin & Levine, and Tom Palmer.

That said, it refers to IP as “common property,” which it is not; there are no property rights at all in nonscarce things like information or ideas. The issue is not whether IP “is property” or not, or what kind of property it is¹ (which is exactly why IP proponents classify it as “intellectual” property—a type of property, but a unique one);² it is whether IP laws are justified or not. They are not. There are reasons why. It remains to be seen whether the author really understands why. Stay tuned…

Update: From ChatGPT:

prompt: summarize this book in 1-3 pages, including a detailed explanation of the auhtor’s case against IP. It is systematic and principled, and is it compable with Kinsella https://c4sif.org/2025/05/problem-with-intellectual-property-tttc-wp-2/

Summary of Intellectual Property is Common Property by Andreas von Gunten

1. Overview and Structure
The book is a systematic and principled argument against the institution of private intellectual property (IP) rights. Andreas von Gunten frames IP not as a legitimate form of property but as a state-granted monopoly that restricts the free use and exchange of information, ideas, and creative works. It moves through philosophical, economic, legal, and moral dimensions, dismantling each standard justification for IP. The style is scholarly but accessible, with philosophical reasoning backed by empirical critique.

2. The Author’s Case Against IP

(a) IP as State-Granted Monopoly
Von Gunten argues that IP rights—copyrights, patents, trademarks, etc.—do not arise naturally from property norms but are artificial monopolies enforced by the state. Unlike tangible property, which is scarce and rivalrous, IP’s objects (ideas, patterns, expressions) are non-rivalrous: multiple people can use them without depletion or exclusion. Exclusive rights over such goods inherently restrict others’ liberty to use information they have legitimately acquired.

(b) Commons Nature of Ideas
His central thesis is that intellectual creations belong to the commons. Creativity always builds on prior knowledge, culture, and shared intellectual resources. Privatizing them is an unjust enclosure of this commons. The “intellectual commons” analogy parallels environmental commons: both are resources all can draw from without depletion, and enclosure harms human flourishing.

(c) Rejection of Incentive-Based Justifications
Von Gunten critiques the incentive argument—i.e., that creators need IP protection to produce—both empirically and conceptually. He finds no strong evidence that IP laws are necessary for creativity or innovation, pointing to thriving scientific, artistic, and technological work without formal IP protection (e.g., open source). In many cases, IP distorts markets and suppresses innovation by locking up essential building blocks.

(d) Moral and Libertarian Objections
From a libertarian angle, von Gunten maintains that ownership is justified only to prevent conflict over scarce resources—not to control non-scarce goods. Enforcing IP inevitably means infringing on others’ tangible property (e.g., their own paper, computers) to prevent them from making copies, which constitutes aggression.

(e) IP as Censorship and Restriction of Freedom
IP enforcement limits how people can use their own property to express or embody ideas they have learned. This is akin to censorship, curbing free speech, education, and technological advancement.

3. Systematic and Principled Nature
The work is systematic in scope—covering law, economics, and philosophy—and principled in foundation, holding to the idea that only scarce, rivalrous goods can be justly owned. It takes each standard IP justification (natural rights, utilitarian incentive, personality theory, fairness) and dismantles it on its own terms, while anchoring the critique in libertarian principles: non-aggression, voluntary exchange, and preservation of the commons for non-scarce goods.

4. Compatibility with Kinsella’s View
Von Gunten’s framework is highly compatible with Stephan Kinsella’s anti-IP theory:

• Shared Premises: Both see IP as a state-created monopoly incompatible with legitimate property norms.

• Scarcity Principle: Both hold that real property rights exist to allocate scarce resources to avoid conflict; ideas are non-scarce and thus not ownable.

• Rights Violation in Enforcement: Both stress that IP enforcement aggresses against tangible property owners.

• Commons Language vs. Libertarian Norms: While von Gunten often uses “commons” and egalitarian framing, and Kinsella more often uses strict libertarian rights theory, the conclusions converge.

5. Conclusion
Intellectual Property is Common Property delivers a principled, multi-angle attack on IP law. It challenges both utilitarian and natural rights defenses, advocating outright abolition. The reasoning is highly consistent with Kinsella’s own, making it a strong complementary resource for those seeking a systematic libertarian case against intellectual property.

If you want, I can also make a side-by-side table comparing von Gunten’s key arguments with your own anti-IP framework so the overlaps and differences are visually clear.

Table:

1. See “What Libertarianism Is,” in Legal Foundations of a Free Society, at Appendix I; see also Legal Foundations of a Free Society, p. 421. [↩]
2. See Legal Foundations of a Free Society, p. 427–30 & 427 n.77; 444 at n.11.  [↩]

I’ve bemoaned stupid arguments for IP for a long time,¹ one of which is, when I point out that property rights apply only to scarce (that is, rivalrous) resources,² you hear the retort, “Well, shucks, it seems to me that good ideas is pretty scarce!”³  Equivocating on different senses of scarce: to mean rivalrous, on the one hand, for economic and political discourse; or to mean not abundant, in colloquial terms. Thus, to counter this tedious disingenuous and semantical/equivocational argument, I tend to use the term rivalrous, or sometimes “conflictable,” to focus on the aspect of things that makes then subject to possible conflict, and thus, to property norms. Ideas, even “good ideas,” do not have this characteristic–or “property,” one might say. They are not conflictable.⁴

Of course, just as some IPtards go apeshit when we point out that ideas can’t be owned—we don’t claim you can own ideas!—they indignantly retort; meanwhile, half the other IPtards call us commies if we don’t respect property rights in ideas⁵ — the same here. IP advocates say ideas, or at least, good ideas, are “scarce” in the colloquial sense that doesn’t mean rivalrous, since they sense that ideas are not rivalrous, as all economists (even pro-IP economists) recognize. So they don’t want to be limited to a property theory limited to rivalrous resources; no, it extends to “scarce” things, even in the colloquial sense. After all, people have used the word “scarce” before to explain the problem with IP rights! So .. soo….. blah blah blah.

Yet others are a mite more honest. Case in point: “Property Rights in Non‐rival Goods,” by Bryan Cwik. It’s another flawed argument, but at least he recognizes that ideas are not scarce (in the sense of rivalrous) and thus, to justify IP, one must come up with some way to justify property rights in non-rival goods. No surprise, he elsewhere makes other bad arguments for IP, e.g. “Labor as the Basis for Intellectual Property Rights.” (Interestingly, another Cwik, Paul Cwik, also makes bad arguments in favor of IP. Unlike the other Cwik, Paul should know better, as he is an Austrian and libertarian. See Classical Liberals, Libertarians, Anarchists and Others on Intellectual Property.)

1. “Absurd Arguments for IP”; “There are No Good Arguments for Intellectual Property”; There Are No Good Arguments for IP-Redux. [↩]
2. See Kinsella, Legal Foundations of a Free Society, e.g. pp. 14–15, 26–27, 140-41, 206, 266, 402, 622, 628, 690; Hoppe, “Of Private, Common, and Public Property and the Rationale for Total Privatization”. [↩]
3. I lament this, e.g., in Legal Foundations of a Free Society, pp. 177 n.19, 265, 411. [↩]
4. On Conflictability and Conflictable Resources. [↩]
5. IP isn’t about owning ideas; those who oppose ownership of ideas are commies. [↩]

I haven’t read this yet, but it looks interesting.

Wojciech Gamrot, “Inconsistencies in Himma’s Intellectual Property Theory,” Analiza i Egzystencja 63, 24 (2023): 109–132 [pdf]. ISSN: 1734-9923 eISSN: 2300-7621 OAI DOI: 10.18276/aie.2023.63-05

Abstract:

From an old discussion thread on Ed Ucation, “Intellectual Property: As usual, Rothbard gets it right,” Economic Policy Journal. Comment by Conza (Michael Conaghan):

The latest Rothbard commentary on IP outdating all of the above. Note the intellectual honesty. Note the admission of seeking further commentary. Note the request for more information. Note the shattering of your position that Rothbard saw copyright in perpetuity. [continue reading…]

This Term’s alignment of rights in trademarks and copyright with traditional rights in real property is a welcome baby step (indeed, two steps) forward for the Court, which in recent years has refused to put other intellectual property rights on par with real property. One can only hope that the Court will soon explicitly tie the intellectual property rights to the law of real property. One also hopes that while doing so, the Court will take a third step in the right direction by again treating patent rights on par with real property.

—Gregory Dolin, M.D., “Intellectual Property in OT 2022: Two Baby Steps in the Right Direction,” Cato Supreme Court Review 2022–2023 (hat tip Jeff Tucker)

Well, Taco is at it again. This is sad. This joker, or the editor of that review, seem oblivious to the fact that one of their former top scholars, Tom Palmer, was at the forefront of the battle against IP (before he softened his stance since many of Taco donors are Big Pharma, that is).¹ No wonder they disinvited me from an IP panel discussion (Disinvited From Cato). (And I guess it’s further confirmation I was right back in 1999, when Cato approached me about heading up their Supreme Court Law Review, to immediately say “not interested, thanks.”)

Dolin also refers to copyright infringement as “stealing,”² which is sloppy and inaccurate, and typical of the emotivist and dishonest way IP proponents argue—by simply labeling copying as stealing, theft, piracy, “ripping off,” and other inaccurate terms. Even the Supreme Court has observed that IP infringement is not “theft.”³

E.g., in Dowling vs United States, the Court held that copies could not be regarded as stolen goods under the law:

Instead, “interference with copyright does not easily equate with theft, conversion, or fraud. The Copyright Act even employs a separate term of art to define one who misappropriates a copyright: ‘[…] an infringer of the copyright.’”

But Dolin and his socialistic comrades who favor abolition of private property rights in real resources in the name of the evil, murderous utilitarian bullshit of patent and other forms of IP law⁴ like to denigrate copying and free market emulation and competition and freedom of speech as “stealing.”
[continue reading…]

1. Sadly, David Henderson appears to have softened his own stance on IP too. Jeff Tucker winning economist David Henderson over to the anti-IP side. [↩]
2. “Whether that’s true or not, it is certainly true that the painting (like Warhol’s soup cans) ‘is immediately recognizable as a “Warhol.”‘ … But as a matter of copyright law, the retort is ‘so what?’ For example, the movie No Country for Old Men may be ‘instantly recognizable’ as a ‘Coen Brothers,’ but it does not follow that the movie’s adaptation of the original No Country for Old Men novel is, ipso facto, ‘fair use.’ If that were so, as the Court majority correctly observed, it would give famous, recognizable artists license to steal from lesser-known ones.” [↩]
3. See Stop calling patent and copyright “property”; stop calling copying “theft” and “piracy”. [↩]
4. See, e.g., Patent vs. Copyright: Which is Worse?”; “Legal Scholars: Thumbs Down on Patent and Copyright”; “The Overwhelming Empirical Case Against Patent and Copyright”; “Costs of the Patent System Revisited”; patents kill (search).  [↩]

From “KOL420 | There Ain’t No Intellectual Property: The Personal Story of a Discovery (PFS 2023)” (Sep. 24, 2023).

Read more>>