Sheldon Richman has a great “TGIF” [”The Goal Is Freedom,” but released on a Friday--get it?] column out today, Intellectual ‘Property’ Versus Real Property: What Are Copyrights and what do they mean for Liberty? . For a very short column, it’s packed with great insights. Admirably, Richman focuses on justice rather than more utilitarian concerns
On GMO patent infestation , Kent Hastings comments on my IP views and those of J. Neil Schulman. Schulman responded: My article “Informational Property: Logorights” begins by specifically disclaiming any state grants of monopoly. The concept stands or falls on its natural-property-rights arguments. Neither Samuel Edward Konkin III or Stephan
I previously posted “ On J. Neil Schulman’s Logorights “; Schulman and I recently had an interesting exchange in the comments section of the cross-post on my blog. The original post and the exchange are appended below. On GMO patent infestation , Kent Hastings comments on my IP views and those of J. Neil Schulman. Schulman responded: My article
potentia est ” (“knowledge is power”)–Francis Bacon’s famous expression. For thousands of years, the human standard of living was flat. It finally started significantly increasing with the Industrial Revolution –with the rise of capitalism (strong, systematic protection for property rights) and with the spread of technology and scientific
I’ve disagreed before with J. Neil Schulman on IP issues — see Kinsella v. Schulman on Logorights and IP . Here’s an edited version of a query I put to him on Facebook this morning: Neil, in your Logorights article , you say (if you’ll forgive me copying your pattern): if you think creation isn’t essential to the origin of property–then compose
In Adam Mossoff in the WSJ , Objectivist Diana Hsieh admits IP is a “thorny” issue. Progress! The WSJ piece citing Mossoff notes: The Sewing Machine War was the first instance of what is today called a “patent thicket.” The disputes prevented Singer from selling his invention, and tensions ran high in and out of court: When Howe personally called
Defenders of patents commonly say they are against innovators’ ideas being “stolen” or “plagiarized.” This implies that patents simply permit an innovator to sue those who copy his idea. This position betrays either disingenuity or ignorance about patent law. Let me explain. Under copyright law , someone who independently creates an original work
Back in 2006, Objectivist Greg Perkins wrote a defense of IP entitled Don’t Steal This Article!: On the Libertarian Critique of Intellectual Property . Perkins’s post was part of an attempt by Objectivists to mount a defense of IP given the mounting opposition to IP among libertarians (see The Death Throes of Pro-IP Libertarianism ) and even among
In Killing Slaughterhouse ( Reason Online ), Brian Doherty provides a superb, concise overview of the legal and libertarian issues regarding an upcoming Supreme Court, McDonald v. Chicago , about whether the Second Amendment should be “incorporated” into the Fourteenth Amendment so that it applies to the states, and related issues such as the
“ The patent system: End it, don’t mend it “–”From AIDS to Android phones, research shows that intellectual property rights are detrimental to the social good.” Superb, concise piece in The Christian Science Monitor , by David K. Levine and Michele Boldrin, authors of Against Intellectual Monopoly . It is common to argue that intellectual property
What is the Mises Institute?
The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.
Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.