KOL175 | “Rethinking Intellectual Property: History, Theory, and Economics: Lecture 4: IP Statutes and Treaties; Overview of Justifications for IP; Property, Scarcity and Ideas; Rights-based Arguments
Kinsella On Liberty - En podcast af Stephan Kinsella

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Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 175. This is the fourth of six lectures of my 2011 Mises Academy course "Rethinking Intellectual Property: History, Theory, and Economics" (originally presented Tuesdays, Mar. 22-April 26, 2011). The first lecture may be found in KOL172. Transcript below. Youtube and slides for this lecture are provided below. The course and other matters are discussed in further detail at KOL172. The “suggested readings” for the entire course are provided in the notes for KOL172. Lecture 4: IP STATUTES AND TREATIES; OVERVIEW OF JUSTIFICTIONS FOR IP; PROPERTY, SCARCITY AND IDEAS; RIGHTS-BASED ARGUMENTS FOR IP: CREATION AS A SOURCE OF RIGHTS SUGGESTED READING MATERIAL See the notes for KOL172. ❧ Transcript Rethinking Intellectual Property: History, Theory, and Economics—Lecture 4: IP Statutes and Treaties; Overview of Justifications for IP; Property, Scarcity and Ideas; Rights-based Arguments for IP; Creation as a Source of Rights Stephan Kinsella Mises Academy, April 12, 2011 00:00:00 STEPHAN KINSELLA: … economics association groups, and Sheldon Richman is an anti-IP libertarian guy with the Foundation for Economic Education. He’s editor of The Freeman. He’s written some good stuff on IP as well, and he was there. Roderick Long was there, who’s also good on IP, and some other people and also this guy named Adam Mossoff who I’ve mentioned before I think. He’s an objectivist law professor at George Mason. He’s pro-intellectual property, and he gives this typical Randian line for it. And Sheldon was relating to me his interaction with this guy and how the debate went. It was quite fascinating. 00:00:37 Apparently, Mossoff really didn’t like getting questions and didn’t really know how to respond to a lot of questions to defend the IP view. So I think that spurred Sheldon to pose this morning a question for Randian IP advocates. It’s already got a lot of comments on the thread. Check it out. He basically said I want to ask the Randians if you believe that their property rights come from getting property in things that you value, which is their theory, which we’ll go into later today or next class. 00:01:15 Imagine a simple society where there’s a tribe and there’s one guy who explores – does a lot of investigation trying to figure out the best kind of fruit to eat, and he discovers that there’s a lot of berries around and people eat them. Sometimes they do better. Sometimes they get sick. And he discovered there’s one berry that is really good, healthy, and nourishing, and he also discovers there’s a few that you should not eat. 00:01:42 And according to the Randian theory, it would seem like he has an intellectual property right in that knowledge, in that technique. And so the question is do the other people in the village who have observed what he’s doing and they see which berries he’s eating and not eating now, do they have the right to eat the berries they want to eat and not eat they berries they want to eat? Or do they have to get his permission first? So he asked them this question as sort of a test of their theory, and of course the answer is, according to their theory, he would not be able – these people need his permission, which is, of course, absurd, which is the point of the hypo, to make them uncomfortable. I don’t expect any serious Randians that would attempt to address it, but it’s interesting. 00:02:23 I had a post this week on Mises, and C4SIF, “Let’s Make Copyright Opt-OUT.” I think I mentioned this already to the class before that copyright would be better if it was opt-in, which means you don’t get a copyright unless you apply for it, register for it,