by Stephan Kinsella
on April 15, 2025
Re Examples of Ways Content Creators Can Profit Without Intellectual Property and Conversation with an author about copyright and publishing in a free society … God I tire of this. It’s a never-ending littany or series of questions. It never ends. No one can think in principled terms.
As I noted previously,
Just one follow up question: If you can, could you give an idea of how the “creative industries” might operate in a world without copyright and intellectual property? I.e. how would things like films and television, which require significant capital investment, be funded and ultimately constitute a profitable enterprise outside the current paradigm where copyright owners profit from selling copyrighted material/from royalties? Would the “creative industries”, as we know them today, even exist?
To me that seems to be the sticking point for many people — they might admit the principled objections to copyright and IP, but can’t get their head around how cultural content would be made without copyright. I’m not sure I fully grasp it myself. [continue reading…]
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by Stephan Kinsella
on April 15, 2025
KOL459 | Twitter Spaces: Jack Dorsey, Elon Musk, Libertarian Property Rights, and the Case for Abolishing Intellectual Property
by Stephan Kinsella on April 15, 2025
Kinsella on Liberty Podcast: Episode 459.
In response to lots of froth on Twitter related to Jack Dorsey’s call to “delete all IP law,” which was echoed by Elon Musk (Musk and Dorsey: “delete all IP law”) I decided to attempt to host an impromptu Twitter Spaces about this. After overcoming some technical glitches, here is the result (and thanks to @Brunopbch, @NotGovernor (Patrick Smith), and @TrueAmPatriot86 for assists). I proposed to the space: “Fielding Questions About Abolishing Intellectual Property, about IP, and About Libertarian Property Rights”, and that’s basically what we ended up talking about. The Twitter spaces can be viewed here; I have clipped off the first 8 minutes or so of setup talk for this podcast episode.
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by Stephan Kinsella
on April 13, 2025
About 15 years ago one Russell Madden was angry with my anti-IP article “The Death Throes of Pro-IP Libertarianism,” so he emailed me a suspiciously similar version, but with “his name” “slapped on” it, titled “The Death Throes of Pro-IP Libertarianism, by Russell Madden.” His accompanying note said, “SURE. NO SUCH THING AS INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY…” So, to be helpful, I published it for him, on my own site. After all, maybe the poor fella didn’t have a site or way to publish his intriguing anti-IP article!
Well now, pro-copyright author J.P. Chandler tells me he is also wants to publish a book called Legal Foundations of a Free Society—hey, that’s the same title as mine! [continue reading…]
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by Stephan Kinsella
on April 13, 2025
One of the greatest opponents of IP is my friend and comrade-in-arms Jeff Tucker. See:
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by Stephan Kinsella
on April 12, 2025
As everyone knows, I oppose all forms of IP law. I have also endeavored for many years to publish as much as I can free from copyright, at least in my libertarian writing (it has not been possible with my legal books published with mainstream, for-profit publishers), although it’s really that easy to get rid of copyright.
When I submit a chapter for inclusion in a book, the book is often from a for-profit academic publisher. Though they pay the authors nothing, they often charge insane prices for the books and of course employ copyright paywalls. They also often demand the author assign their copyright. I always refuse. Sometimes I resort to tricks to get around this. [continue reading…]
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by Stephan Kinsella
on April 11, 2025
From the execrable site IPWatchdog, run by Gene Quinn: Eileen McDermott, “NO FAKES Act Reintroduced to Support from Both Big Tech and Creators,” IPWatchdog (April 9, 2025):
“According to a press release by the Recording Industry Association of America today, the updated bill ‘takes a measured approach to protecting Americans from invasive deepfakes while reducing litigation and promoting American AI development.’”
Today, Senators Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Chris Coons (D-DE), Thom Tillis (R-NC) and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) reintroduced the NO FAKES Act, which would create a federal IP right to an individual’s voice and likeness.
In September 2024, U.S. Representatives María Elvira Salazar (R-FL), Madeleine Dean (D-PA), Nathaniel Moran (R-TX), Joe Morelle (D-NY), Rob Wittman (R-VA) and Adam Schiff (D-CA) introduced the bill in the House of Representatives, two months after Coons, Blackburn, Klobuchar and Tillis had in the Senate. [continue reading…]
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by Stephan Kinsella
on April 11, 2025
Daniel Lacalle on Twitter: “China bans US exports ans businesses and steal intelectual property.” I have no doubt that most of Lacalle’s criticisms of China are true. But not this one.
Lacalle seems to be unaware that mis-named and dishonestly-named “intellectual property” (IP) is actually antithetical, hostile, and contrary to free markets, capitalism, private property, and so on, and that Austrians and libertarians—especially Austro-libertarians, and especially those affiliated with the Mises Institute (see this recent Tweet by the Mises Bookstore, for example)—by and large now recognize this. IP is socialistic and destructive, and downright evil to the core. We would never endorse the institution of IP. As I wrote previously, [continue reading…]
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by Stephan Kinsella
on April 9, 2025
From my Tweet:
I’ve really come to like the @theallinpod podcast, with @chamath, @jason, @davidsacks, and @friedberg. In a recent episode, however (https://overcast.fm/+AAYlhlXNXk8), there is confusion about IP and China. At about 1:00:45, Friedberg starts talking about 3 of his concerns about protectionist tariffs– but the worst, for him (at 1:05:15) is he is “most worried about” — is China just ignoring IP rights (patents and copyright, I assume?) of Americans or foreigners and then, I guess, “take” American IP rights and, I guess, use it to make copies and sell it “all around the world”.
This is very confused. First, it is not true, Calacanis implies, that China doesn’t respect IP rights now. Sure, they don’t do a “great job” of it, but no one does since it’s impossible to stop all piracy. Even the US can’t, with with its insane IP laws. Just as the US drug war doesn’t stop drugs; we can’t even stop them in prisons. It’s impossible to prevent copying (not “theft!”) in any system since it is a unnatural and immoral law. The fact that China doens’t stop it as well as the US does doesn’t mean they have no IP system. They do, do all other countries. (( IP can’t be socialistic, since the Soviet Union didn’t recognize IP law )) [continue reading…]
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by Stephan Kinsella
on April 8, 2025
Kinsella on Liberty Podcast: Episode 458.
As mentioned in Speaking at APEE IP Panel in Guatemala, yesterday (April 7, 2025) I spoke on a panel at the APEE 49th Meeting in Guatemala. The theme of this year’s meeting was “The Economic History of State and Market Institutions,” April 6-8, 2025, Guatemala City, Guatemala (program). My panel was Panel 50. [1.E.06] “Intellectual Property: Old Problems and New Developments,” Monday, April 7, 2025, 3:50 pm-5:05 pm, Breakout06. Organizer: Monica Rio Nevado de Zelaya, Universidad Francisco Marroquín;
Chair: Ramón Parellada, Universidad Francisco Marroquín. My full panel:
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by Stephan Kinsella
on April 7, 2025
Whereas retarded pro-IP libertarians and most Objectivists favor intellectual property (IP) such as patent and copyright law,
Whereas patent law impedes innovation and violates property rights, and
Whereas copyright law censors speech and the press, distorts culture, violates property rights, threatens Internet freedom, and is now already hampering and impeding the development of AI technology,
I hereby move: To Ban and Estop Objectivists and Pro-IP Libertarians from Using Artificial Intelligence (AI) since by advocating IP they seek to hamper AI technology itself.
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I’m reminded here of Ayn Rand’s angry cursing of Nathaniel Branden after she discovered his lies and affairs: “If you have an ounce of morality left in you, an ounce of psychological health—you’ll be impotent for the next twenty years! And if you achieve any potency, you’ll know it’s a sign of still worse moral degradation!” Likewise, one would think that Sandefur, after having the terrible judgment to support the Iraq War, might refrain from commenting in public on libertarian matters for a while, or at least on matters of war.
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by Stephan Kinsella
on April 6, 2025
Paraphrasing Murray N. Rothbard, who said:
It is no crime to be ignorant of economics, which is, after all, a specialized discipline and one that most people consider to be a ‘dismal science.’ But it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance.
I would say:
It is no crime to be ignorant of intellectual property law economics and policy, which is, after all, a specialized discipline and one that most people consider to be eye-glazingly boring. But it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on intellectual property law while remaining in this state of ignorance.
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by Stephan Kinsella
on April 6, 2025
In yesterday’s podcast episode, KOL457 | Sheldon Richman & IP; Andre from Brazil re Contract Theory, Student Loan Interest Payments, Bankruptcy, Vagueness, Usury, I mentioned Brian Gladish, a (former? quasi?) Galambosian whose confused views on IP I have criticized before. A couple days ago he sent me a nice note complimenting my article “No Mises Bust at the University of Vienna.” In response I asked him to remind me where he currently stood on the issue of IP—whether he was still for it or what (I talk to a lot of people and could not quite remember).
Right away he got defensive and acted hurt because when we had previously discussed it I was “pretty dismissive,” but that he had emailed me “once suggesting that there might be market protection for IP that you responded wouldn’t be objectionable.” I suggested we discuss his IP views, his views on Galambos, etc., in a informal zoom call for an episode of my podcast, Kinsella on Liberty. I thought some of my audience might find it interesting and I could get some Galambosian, or at least former or semi-Galambosian, on record about all this since they are notoriously difficult to find or pin down. Again he seemed wary and suspicious.
After he saw my episode with Richman, he must have remembered my previous criticisms (including Gladish on Galambos at ASC) and went all dimwit-serioso on me and wrote, in High Dudgeon: [continue reading…]
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by Stephan Kinsella
on April 3, 2025
Related:
As I relate here, My Failed Libertarian Speaking Hiatus; Memories of Mises Institute and Other Events, 1988–20192025, I’m trying this year to slow down, or at least change, the number of libertarian and related events I attend this year. For example I recently attended a completely non-normative (well mostly) and non-libertarian scholarly legal conference which I thoroughly enjoyed.
I had initially planned to speak at the APEE 49th Meeting in Guatemala City, making it into a 5-day guy trip vacation with my buddy Greg Morin. In January I bowed out because I was juggling too much. But recently I changed my mind and decided to attend and speak after all, but only attending for one full day. So this year I am presenting on “Patent and Copyright versus Innovation, Competition, and Property Rights,” APEE 49th Meeting, “The Economic History of State and Market Institutions,” April 6-8, 2025, Guatemala City, Guatemala (program; other info). [continue reading…]
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