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From a facebook post by David Veksler:

There is no such thing as “intrinsic value” in economics. Value exists only in the eyes of the beholder. The concept of “value” is made possible by being valuable to a specific person, for a particular purpose. The only thing in the universe that is intrinsically valuable is human beings.

TLDR: Stop with nonsense like “Bitcoin has no intrinsic value”

My comment (lightly edited here):

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My latest article: Stephan Kinsella, “Decouple Trade and IP Protection,” Brownstone Institute (Dec. 4, 2024; perma).

Many of us who support free trade and private property rights tend to look favorably on regional and bilateral treaties that claim to further these goals. There is a vast network of bilateral investment treaties, or BITs, for example, designed to promote foreign direct investment by Western firms into developing nations by limiting the host state’s ability to expropriate the investments.

These BITs aim to strengthen the property rights of international investors in the host state so as to make investment less risky. There are more than 2,500 BITs in force worldwide; the US itself currently has BITs in place with 39 countries. BITs and other measures can benefit both host states and international investors by strengthening local property rights, as I explain in International Investment, Political Risk, and Dispute Resolution.

In addition to investment treaties that concern the property rights of foreign investors in host countries, there is also a global network of bilateral and multilateral free trade agreements ostensibly aimed at promoting trade between nations. Many of us favored so-called free trade agreements like NAFTA even if we would have preferred more radical approaches. Regional, multilateral, and bilateral trade agreements are viewed as incremental improvements even if thousands of pages of regulations could be easily replaced by a couple of sentences or, better, unilateral abolition of import tariffs.

But over time it has become apparent that “free trade” agreements often serve as a pretext for exporting Western intellectual property (IP) law—mainly US-style patent and copyright law—onto the rest of the world. This is what I call IP imperialism. Here’s how it works. First, we are told that intellectual property rights are legitimate, and in fact are part of the reason for the relative success of the industrialized countries in the West. (It’s not. For more on this, see You Can’t Own Ideas: Essays on Intellectual Property.)

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See also

• “Patents, Pharma, Government: The Unholy Alliance,” Brownstone Institute (April 1, 2024)
• Patents and Pharmaceuticals;
• Kinsella, “FDA and Patent Reform: A Modest Proposal” (May 5, 2023)
  • “Are Patents Needed to Make Up for FDA Kneecapping?” (July 2, 2011)

I sent this recently to the CEO and President of the Houston Symphony, regarding its 2030 Strategic Plan (pdf), which aims to “establish the Houston Symphony as a world-class orchestra.” Pillar 1 of the 2030 Strategic Plan includes the following goal/initiative:

Regularly engage in touring and recording projects:

To establish ourselves as a world-class orchestra, we need to increase our visibility beyond Houston through touring and recording. A comparison with other major U.S. orchestras shows that most orchestras have returned to some touring over the past two years, while Houston has not toured. Additionally, the orchestra has released only three albums in the last five years. To address this, we will prioritize periodic international touring and focus on building our recording identity with unique commissions and performances that showcase Houston’s distinct character. Touring and recording projects are critical for the orchestra’s artistic development, for making our artistry more broadly accessible, and for cementing our reputation as a world-class orchestra.

My letter is below. The copyright mindset runs deep, so it is unlikely this advice will be heeded. Still, I thought it worth a shot.

Update: Jeff Tucker informs me of something I was not aware of in the music industry. Apparently there are modern editions or arrangements or “engravings” of classical, public domain works which the publishers claim copyright in, and modern orchestras usually use the more recent engravings when they record or perform. If this is right, then to be able to release a recording of a classic work into the commons the orchestra might want to use the original score or a later public domain engraving. Still, I see no reason it could not be done.
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In a recent tweet I bemoaned that even many people skeptical of IP still favor it and oppose abolition, and I glancingly mentioned tech journalist Glyn Moody (I have cited him positively many times for his work critical of IP; see his techdirt posts). He replied and said he is actually for IP abolition, and pointed me to his book, Walled Culture, which is also free online and CC0!

The book may not explicitly be anticopyright but the vibe is there. He writes (last few pages of the last chapter): [continue reading…]

I’ve long noted how the West, primarily the US, uses its leverage to pressure developing nations to adopt and strengthen intellectual property (IP) protections and adopt international IP treaties, primarily for benefit US corporate interests, namely pharmaceuticals (patent) and Hollywood and music (copyright). This is a form of what I call IP imperialism. It is often done by insisting on local IP protection even in agreements that have nothing to do with the local property law of developing nations, namely bilateral and multilateral free trade agreements.¹ The purpose of a free trade agreement is simply to lower tariffs and barriers to international trade, but the US and other western powers usually insist on developing nations strengthening local IP law even though this has nothing to do with trade but instead is a matter of local property rights.² [continue reading…]

1. I discuss bilateral and multilateral investment and trade agreements in detail in my book International Investment, Political Risk, and Dispute Resolution, 2d ed. (Oxford, 2020). [↩]
2. See various posts on IP imperialism here. [↩]

I just came across this talk by Brian Gladish, “Andrew J., Galambos’s Ideas and the Future of Private Protection for Intellectual Property” from the 2012 Austrian Scholars Conference. Jesus, what insipid nonsense. Why the hell this would be welcome at the ASC is beyond me. Totally incoherent, crankish shit. Statist, illiberal. Galambos is worthless. It is good he is so insane on IP that he has persuaded his idiotic, cultish followers to agree not to spread his wrong-headed ideas.

Gladish’s fumbling mutterings here are embarrassing and have no place at the ASC, at the institute which previously awarded me the O.P. Alford III Prize for Against Intellectual Property.

Gladish says Galambos makes a good case for Paine being the author of the Declaration of Independence. No. He does not. He was a total crank and loon, on IP as well as this insane theory. See Galambos on Paine. Here (Why Objectivists Hate Anarchy (Hint: IP)), Gladish whines that we are piling on Galambos. He should be piled on. He is one of the worst thinkers I have ever come across. He is worthless. At least Gladish had the sense not to mention retard Galambos in his more recent Mises.org article.

William C. Robinson, The Law of Patents for Useful Inventions, vol. 1 (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1890) (Amazon; google books; HathiTrust), §24 (first footnote omitted):

In pursuing this investigation the relations of an inventor and the public to an unpatented invention first demand attention. In its earliest stage this invention is a mere addition to the stock of ideas possessed by the inventor. He has imagined or discovered something which to himself, and presumably to all the world, is new, and has conceived a method by which his idea may be so applied as to produce a tangible and valuable result. In this stage he has a natural exclusive right to his invention. No one can compel him to disclose his secret. He may reduce it to actual practice, or preserve it as a matter of subjective contemplation. The law can take no other notice of it than it does of his moral sentiments or his personal recollections. If, however, he endeavors to avail himself of this idea in his exterior life, his position in regard to it is somewhat changed. The material forms in which he then empbodies it are his, but the idea itself is not to be imprisoned within their narrow bounds. Every one who examines and can understand them immediately conceives the same idea, whether he will or not, and thenceforward that idea remains as much a part of the observer’s fund of knowledge as it ever was of that of the inventor. In order, therefore, to retain exclusive ownership of his idea, he must withhold its material embodiment from observation; and as long as he can do this, the invention is as truly his by natural right as if it never had been thus externally expressed. But with his submission of the tangible result of his idea to the inspection of others, in such a manner that the idea itself become apparent, its control over it is gone. An idea once communicated can no longer be exclusively appropriated and enjoyed. Every one who receives it possesses it in the same degree as if he alone had apprehended it, and its inventor has no power to restrain him from its practical and useful application. Under the laws of nature the exclusive public use of an invention is thus impossible, and hence there is no natural right to such a use. The inventor, who voluntarily discloses his invention to the public, necessarily and freely dedicates it to the public; and that which formerly was his alone by virtue of his sole possession becomes by universal possession the common property of all mankind.²

2. Coryton:¹ (45) “So far as natural right is concerned, the application of a law of nature, a philosophical or abstract principle, is capable of exclusive appropriation only so long as the secret of such application is within the inventor’s breast. Once passed, it becomes the property of all mankind.”

Norman:² (2) “Independently of an express restriction by the sovereign authority in a state, there is no such thing as exclusive property in an invention. The subject-matters of human inquiry are free to all men. An addition once made to the stock of knowledge is common property forever, nor is it less the property of the discoverer because others possess it as well as himself. It is in its nature infinite and incapable of appropriation. The first builder of a house could claim as his own the substantial and tangible materials, the logs and wood of which he constructed it; but the idea of wuch an erection became instantly the property of all mankind. The abstract natural right of the inventor is only to exercise his own invention freely.”

In The Attorney-General ex rel. Hecker v. The Rumford Chemical Works (1876), 9 O.G. 1062, Shepley, J.: (1064) “So long as such writings and discoveries were not communicated to the public, authors and inventors had a possession of, which was equivalent to a property in, their writings and discoveries. When communicated to the public, by the common law that property was lost.”

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1. Apparently this is a reference to Coryton on Patents (1855).  [↩]
2. Apparently: John Paxton Norman, A Treatise on the Law and Practice Relating to Letters Patent for Inventions (1853; Amazon).  [↩]