Intellectual Property: Copyright and Patent in Liberty
by Wendy McElroy
"From the upcoming book The Debates of Liberty. Please cite as
unpublished manuscript."
The Intellectual Property Debate
by George Winborne
Under the law in the USA, the first-to-invent rather than the
first-to-file gets patent protection.
Intellectual Property: The Late Nineteenth Century Libertarian Debate
by Wendy McElroy
"Intellectual property was the subject of intensive and unsurpassed debate within
the pages of Benjamin Tucker's libertarian periodical Liberty (1881-1908).
Because of this, the best presentation of this question is an overview of the debate."
Mises on Copyrights
June 2004
by Bettina Bien Greaves
"However, it appears from what Mises wrote in Human Action that he wasn’t opposed to
copyrights and patents as such. A patent or copyright is defined as an agreement on
the part of the government to protect the property rights of an inventor or author to
his creation for a certain period of time. The inventor or author pays a price for this
protection: he agrees to turn his creation over to the public, at no cost, when the
protection expires."
Should Software Have Patents?
November 2003
by M. Roland Dyroff and Martin Campbell-Kelly
The Struggle Over Intellectual Property
August 6, 2001
by Declan McCullagh
"By taking the natural tensions between creators, users, and pirates out of the political
realm, it replaces law with technology and lobbying with coding. Let the best programmers
win."
Anarchism and Copyright
by Benjamin R. Tucker
"The work of copying or printing books is analogous to the production of wheelbarrows, but
the original work of the author, whether in thinking or composing, is analogous to the
invention of the wheelbarrow; and the same argument that demolishes the right of the
inventor demolishes the right of the author. The method of expressing an idea is itself
an idea, and therefore not appropriable."
An
Anarcho-Capitalist Summary of the Impotence of Copyright Law
by Robert Hutchinson
"This article aims to illustrate, through a combination of natural law and free market
arguments, that any system of copyright similar to those currently enforced by governments
worldwide is both ethically indefensible and realistically incapable of being effective."
Authors: Beware of Copyright
by Jeffrey A. Tucker
"When an author signs a publication contract, insofar as it contains strict and
traditional copyright notices, he is pretty much signing his life away. It used to be
that the publisher would maintain control only so long as the book is in print. Today,
with digital printing, this means forever: your lifetime plus 70 years."
Back to Basics on Property and Competition
by Jeffrey A. Tucker
"If you have an idea, it is yours. You can do with it what you want. If you share
it (sing, speak, broadcast, let others see the products of your ideas), others then
have copies of it. They are entitled to do with their copies of the idea precisely
what you can do with your idea. They can use it how they want provided they don't
prevent others from doing with it what they want. This is a simple application of
the non-aggression principle that governs a free society. Whether it is fashion,
language, know how, or whatever, people are free to copy."
A Book that Changes Everything
by Jeffrey A. Tucker
"Only a handful of daring people are capable of thinking along completely different lines.
But when they do, the earth beneath our feet moves.
Such is the case with Against Intellectual Monopoly
(Cambridge University Press, 2008) by Michele Boldrin and David Levine, two daring
professors of economics at Washington University in St. Louis. They have written a
book that is likely to rock your world, as it has mine. (It is also posted on their
site with the permission on the publisher.)"
The Case Against IP: A Concise Guide
September 4, 2009
by Stephan Kinsella
"Like many libertarians, I initially assumed intellectual property (IP) was a legitimate
type of property right. But I had misgivings from the start: there was just something too
utilitarian and results oriented in Rand's purportedly principled case for IP, and
something too artificial about the state's copyright and patent statutory
classifications. I started practicing patent law around 1992, and the more I learned about
IP, the more my doubts grew."
Christianity and IP
by Paul Green
"If we believe in private property then we must accept that what is ours is so absolutely,
to modify, share or do with as we wish – whether it is bought and paid for, or is given
by someone who owns it. Furthermore, if someone chooses to make music publicly available
through a radio or computer – without first getting a valid personal, voluntary
agreement – then morally it is our choice what we do with it, including recording and
sharing. Nobody forced them to make it publicly available on a radio station or the
Internet."
Copywrongs
by Samuel Edward Konklin III
An argument against the necessity and the morality of copyrights.
Does Innovation Require Property in Ideas?
by Jeffrey A. Tucker
"Neither Google nor YouTube nor any other driving force is using patents to retain
competitive advantage, and those who do collect patents mostly do it in order to avoid
patent trolls, e.g. those who would patent a technology already in use in order to
possess and restrict its use."
Does Monopoly Create Wealth?
by Jeffrey A. Tucker
"Before 1981 it was not possible to patent or copyright software. The craze to patent
every mouse click began only following a 1994 court ruling (In re Alappat). Meanwhile,
the underlying guts of all that you see began long before. As with all genuine economic
revolutions, the foundation of end-user consumption was decades in preparation. The
compilers, assemblers, linked listed, databases, search algorithms, displays, languages,
word processing: all began long before the age of software patents or copyrights."
Do Patents Save Our Lives?
by Jeffrey A. Tucker
"Can we imagine a world without drug patents? No need to dream. In the sweep of history,
patents like we have today are essentially a postwar phenomenon, and prior to that, the
industry developed faster in countries without patents than those with them. One way to
show that is to examine 19th century chemical production."
The Fallacy of Intellectual Property
August 25, 2009
by Daniel Krawisz
"Intellectual property violates the libertarian principles of homesteading and
exchange, and it makes no sense as a right at all without the assumption of an
omniscient and omnipotent organization willing to enforce it. Unlike homesteading
and exchange, intellectual property is not something that anyone can reasonably expect
to be able to defend and control."
Fallacy Run Amok
by Jeffrey A. Tucker
"It was once conventional wisdom among economists that state-granted monopolies were
as bad as mercantilism. But in the meantime, sometime after the middle of the 20th
century, the conventional wisdom became confused."
Government and Microsoft: A Libertarian View of Monopolies
by Francois-Rene Rideau
"We explain how the original evil behind Microsoft's monopoly is government intervention
in the form of intellectual property privileges, and how any solution should begin by
ending these privileges."
The Hoax of Invention History
by Jeffrey A. Tucker
"You might be surprised to know that many academic economists have done empirical
studies on the relationship between patents and economic advance. Of all those studies
they reviewed, 23 in total, they found none that could establish a strong relationship
and many that found negative relationships between patents and development: that is,
that patents actually impede progress."
An Individualist Anarchist Critique of "Intellectual Property: The Views of
Benjamin Tucker (1854-1939)
by Nigel Meek
Intellectual Property 'Theft': Not Just for Disney Anymore
by J. L. Bryan
"A more liberalized approach to intellectual property and copyright, combined with
the participatory nature of the internet, opens up new avenues of creativity."
IP Crimes and Vices
by Jeffrey A. Tucker
"The thing that gets people going is the conclusion: in a free market, there should
be no legal grants of patent or copyright."
IP: It's a Market Failure Argument
by Jeffrey A. Tucker
"If the bureaucracy is charged with granting monopolies for all these things, the
business of enterprise is going to find itself in an amazing tangle. If we find
that society works at all, it is precisely due to the absence of such tangles."
Is Intellectual Property the Key to Success?
July 5, 2007
by Jeffrey Tucker
"So consider a world without trademark, copyright, or patents. It would still be a world
with innovation — perhaps far more of it. And yes, there would still be profits due to
those who are entrepreneurial. Perhaps there would be a bit less profit for litigators
and IP lawyers — but is this a bad thing?"
Leonard Read's Open-Source Vision
by Jeffrey A. Tucker
"Pick up any book or publication from FEE before the 1990s. You will see a remarkable
and visionary sentence on the copyright page: "Permission to reprint granted without
special request." This one sentence is what made it happen. Any newspaper could print
a column. Any publisher could include an essay. Indeed, he invited any publisher to
take any FEE book and publish it and sell it, owing no royalties and asking no
permissions."
The Libertarian Case Against Intellectual Property Rights
by Roderick T. Long
Argues that intellectual property rights conflict with the fundamental
right of individuals to make peaceful use of the information they possess.
LINUX!: Reflections on Commerce, 'Anti-Commerce', and the owning of Ideas
by Brian Micklethwait
Modern Day Protectionism:
How copyright has turned the record labels, software writers and film studios
against their own customers
November 9, 2009
by Vedad Krehic
"We can't let this insanity go on any longer – eliminate imaginary property!"
The Music and Book Killers
by Jeffrey A. Tucker
"Copyright law is a just another bogus modern institution we can and should do
without, just like the income tax and central banking."
Napstereconomics: What's the Most Effective Way to Protect Intellectual Property?
June 03, 2002
by Russell Roberts
"Was the old world where Napster operated freely a world of theft? I don't know. But
I will argue here that the decision to shut down Napster via the courts may ultimately
harm music lovers, even those like myself who never used Napster. In other words, I
will argue that allowing the theft of music via Napster could have actually increased
revenue for the music industry benefiting music lovers and the creators of music."
The New Frontier in IP
by Jeffrey A. Tucker
"They show that most of Watt's energies were spent lobbying for and defending a
government patent on a technology that was quickly surpassed but could not come to
market thanks to his rent-seeking behavior. Nor was this patent somehow necessary for
his economically useful behavior. It wasn’t until after the patent expired that steam
engine technology really took off, but by that time the Industrial Revolution gave
up 10-15 years of what might have otherwise been economic progress."
Open-Source Software: Who Needs Intellectual Property?
January 2007
by Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine
"The market for open-source software—uncopyrighted, freely reproducible computer
programs—is not well understood by economists. A central source of surprise is that
innovation can thrive in a market without traditional intellectual property (IP)."
Rights in Ideas Infringe Rights in Tangible Property
July 2001
by Ilana Mercer
"Say I write a novel and you decide to film a movie based on my novel’s plot, using your
own filming equipment. Were I only to proclaim I owned the ideas in my novel, I would
merely be exercising my free speech. But when I want to prohibit you from using your
equipment as you please, and can use the force of law to do so, I am violating your
property right. Under the law as it now stands, my act of creation is all it takes for
me to be able to exercise control over you."
"The copyright system ought to be abolished because there can be no justification for
the use of force against legitimate property owners. And force is, very plainly, what
flows from the enforcement of the law. Since ideas should not be treated as property,
laws that target those who have not violated person or property are wrong."
Seen and Unseen Cost of Patents
by Jeffrey A. Tucker
"The biggest costs are the unseen ones that Bastiat speaks of. These are innovations
we don't see, the products that don't come to market, the efficiencies that we never
experience, the companies that don't come into existence, and the investment that would
have taken place with the resources that are expended on patent acquisition and
enforcement. Here are the real costs of patents, and they are incalculable."
Thoughtcrime
by Roderick Long
A short argument against intellectual property.
What's Your Attitude on IP?
by Jeffrey A. Tucker
"Before I go on, I want to emphatically point to my personal debt to Michele Boldrin
and David Levine's Against Intellectual Monopoly, from which everything
in this article is derived."
Articles of Association of the Spooner Copyright Company for Massachusetts
by Lysander Spooner
"This Association shall he called the Spooner Copyright Company for Massachusetts."
Bringing the Pirates to Bay
by Gary McGath
"The attitude of software pirates is partly due to the widespread hostility to property
rights in today’s culture, but more specifically due to a misunderstanding of the nature
of those rights. To the average person, property is primarily or exclusively material
in nature. A piece of property is a physical thing, such as a kettle, a car, or a plot
of land. A computer program or a recorded performance is not a physical thing, hence it
does not appear so clearly to be property."
Freedom of innovation
October 17, 2004
by Helen Disney
"Yet, without intellectual property rights (IPRs), innovators who have invested time
and effort in creating something new may choose never to make their work known to the
public, in order to avoid theft. IPRs provide much needed incentives to invest in the
development of products that are difficult to develop but easy to copy, such as computer
software, music and new medicines. Without IPRs, many of the new technologies that have
improved our lives would never have moved beyond the drawing board."
Ideas as Property
by Roy Halliday
Inventors can legitimately retain ownership of their inventions by
divulging them only under contracts that bind others to secrecy.
Intellectual Property Viewed as Contracts
by Richard O. Hammer
In a free nation, private contracts could provide a method of
securing intellectual property rights.
IP and Third Parties
by John deLaubenfels
"If, for example, I write a book whose entire contents are "Jethro's land has oil," I
would not expect it to be subject to copyright. A program of 100,000 bytes, the
accidental replicating of which would be astronomically unlikely (1/256 to the power
100,000), is in an entirely different universe. Somewhere in between lies a reasonable
definition which can be agreed upon by reasonable men and women."
The Law of Intellectual Property
by Lysander Spooner
"The right of property in intellectual wealth, has manifestly the same foundation,
as the right of property in material wealth. Without intellectual wealth - that is,
without ideas - material wealth could neither be accumulated, nor fitted to contribute,
nor made to contribute, to the sustenance or happiness of man. Intellectual wealth,
therefore, is indispensable to the acquisition and use of other wealth. It is also,
of itself, a direct source of happiness, in a great variety of ways. Furthermore,
it is not only a timing of value, for the owner's uses, but, as has before been said,
like material wealth, it is a merchantable commodity; has a value in the market;
and will purchase, for its proprietor, other wealth in exchange. On every ground,
therefore, the right of property in ideas, has as deep a foundation in the nature
and necessities of man, as has the right of property in material things."
A Letter to Scientists and Inventors on the Science of Justice and Their Right of
Perpetual Property in Their Discoveries and Inventions
by Lysander Spooner
"It is your own right, and for your own interest, that you should have all the
inducements and means that you honestly can have, for prosecuting your investigations
and experiments, and producing all the discoveries and inventions that you are capable
of. It is also the right, and for the interests, of mankind at large, that you should
have all those inducements and means, because it is only through the greatest number
of discoveries and inventions, that mankind are to be most highly enlightened and
enriched."
Long Live Intellectual Property Rights!
by John deLaubenfels
"Some forms of intellectual property are much easier to steal than the source code
of my example program, especially if I offer only enhancement services. But the
fact that it is easier does not make it any more legitimate. Theft made easy is
not theft made moral."
A New Form of Intellectual Property Protection
by Bobby Yates Emory
RightCopy: An alternative to copyright and the public domain.
Patents and Monopoly Privilege
by Christopher Mayer
"The proper free-market policy is to extend copyright protection to inventors of
machines, processes, and the like and to eliminate the whole body of patent law.
Inventors could mark their creations “copyright,” serving notice that anyone who
buys the machine buys it on the condition that it will not be reproduced and sold."
The Problem of Copyright
by Fred Reed
"Suppose that, instead of paying twenty dollars for a hardback, I could download
the same book from a website, pay a dollar by credit card, and know that the author
would receive it. I would buy a lot more books. The author of each would earn as
much as if I had bought his hardback. I would be happier with more books, the authors
would be happy with more sales-and New York would be out of the loop."
Proper Intellectual Property
September 3, 2009
by Gene DeNardo
"As we mentioned, to achieve a full monopoly, those who purchase the product from the
selected producer could be contracted to prohibit any "copying" of the product. But,
they could also be allowed to copy, as long as they paid a remittance or fixed amount
back through the contract to the creator or producer or both. If it were a fixed amount,
it would in effect set two prices for the item, a price for the item with restriction
on copy and a higher price with no restrictions. The key is that although the contract
calls for restrictions that encourage monopoly and restrict the use of private property
by its owner, all parties have given their consent to the agreement."
The Right of Incorporeal Property
1897
by Herbert Spencer
"Constructive imagination is requisite for conceiving the existence of a mental product;
and a higher constructive imagination is requisite for conceiving that a product of mental
labor may as truly be considered property as a product of manual labor."
Security of Information in a Free Nation
by Richard Hammer
Argues that in a free nation personal data would be more secure.
A Short Argument for Intellectual Property
by John T. Kennedy
"Once I've composed the poem, I have an exclusive right to do whatever I choose
with it; you cannot legitimately compel me to reveal the poem. Thus, I am free
to set the terms upon which I will reveal the poem."
Software is Patentable by Nature
May 2005
by Philippe Simonnot
Standards as Intellectual Property: An Economic Analysis
by David Friedman
Shows how standards fit into intellectual property law and how
a private law system would produce rules to protect standards as property.
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This page was last updated on November 12, 2009.