All Posts Tagged With: "intellectual property"
Contra-IP
My article “Patent Nonsense,” which makes the libertarian case against “intellectual property,” was published and posted by The American Conservative magazine. Read it here.
3Feb2012 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Internet Dodges the SOPA Bullet — for Now
Last week the acronyms SOPA and PIPA were unheard of, much less decipherable, by most people.
20Jan2012 | Sheldon Richman | 15 comments | ContinuedPatently Improper
Whether you agree with the original purpose of patents in America or believe (as I do) that all patents are improper, the America Invents Act is repellent.
27Sep2011 | Wendy McElroy | 28 comments | ContinuedThe Many Monopolies
We libertarians defend economic freedom, not big business. We advocate free markets, not the corporate economy. And what would freed markets look like? Nothing like the controlled markets we have today. But how often do we hear mass unemployment, financial crisis, ecological catastrophe, and the economic status quo attributed to the voraciousness of “unfettered free [...]
24Aug2011 | Charles Johnson | 19 comments | ContinuedHow Intellectual Property Hampers the Free Market
Advocates of free-market capitalism commonly believe in the legitimacy of intellectual property (IP) because IP rights are thought to be important to a system of private property. But are they? There are good reasons to think that IP is not actually property—that it is actually antithetical to a private-property, free-market order. By intellectual property, I [...]
25May2011 | N. Stephan Kinsella | 56 comments | ContinuedWhat Economic Freedom Indexes Leave Out
In a syndicated column last October, television journalist John Stossel lamented the downgrading from sixth to eighth place—“behind Canada!”—of the United States on the Heritage Foundation/Wall Street Journal Index of Economic Freedom. The Index is based on several metrics, including freedom of movement of capital, the degree of business regulation, and levels of taxes and [...]
24Feb2011 | Kevin A. Carson | 6 comments | ContinuedIntellectual Property: Silly or Sinister?
Imagine a land recently seized from a foreign power where there is little law and a lot of gold. Since nature abhors a vacuum, prospectors quickly adopt the conventions of private property: Whoever is first to put four stakes in the ground is the proud owner of the land and any gold beneath. This would [...]
22Dec2010 | David K. Levine | 33 comments | ContinuedThis Is Free Trade?
The so-called Republic of Korea-United States Free Trade Agreement has lived down to expectations. Note this excerpt from a report in The Hill: Specifically, the agreement extends intellectual property protections by ensuring copyright holders have the exclusive right to publish their works online. It also bans the hacking of technology used to protect copyrighted work [...]
7Dec2010 | Sheldon Richman | 1 comment | ContinuedCapital Letters, March 2010
Is Intellectual Property Real Property? I feel I must respond to Kevin Carson’s article “How ‘Intellectual Property’ Impedes Competition” (The Freeman, October 2009). In his article Mr. Carson suggests that intellectual property is different than real property in that real property comes into existence in limited supply. I do not believe this to be true [...]
23Feb2010 | mnolan | 2 comments | ContinuedHealth Care and Radical Monopoly
In a recent article for Tikkun, Dr. Arnold Relman argued that the versions of health care reform currently proposed by “progressives” all primarily involve financing health care and expanding coverage to the uninsured rather than addressing the way current models of service delivery make it so expensive. Editing out all the pro forma tut-tutting of [...]
23Feb2010 | Kevin A. Carson | 23 comments | ContinuedHow “Intellectual Property” Impedes Competition
Any consideration of “intellectual property rights” must start from the understanding that such “rights” undermine genuine property rights and hence are illegitimate in terms of libertarian principle. Real, tangible property rights result from natural scarcity and follow as a matter of course from the attempt to maintain occupancy of physical property that cannot be possessed [...]
23Sep2009 | Kevin A. Carson | 13 comments | ContinuedThe Gridlock Economy: How Too Much Ownership Wrecks Markets, Stops Innovation, and Costs Lives
Without private property rights, people have incentives to overuse an asset. Conflicting private property rights, on the other hand, create a “tragedy of the anti-commons” in which resources are underused, according to Michael Heller. In The Gridlock Economy, he treats the reader to a compelling array of examples of the tragedy of the anti-commons in [...]
19Aug2009 | Art Carden | 0 comments | ContinuedIP Debate Breaks Out at FEE
At a recent FEE seminar, a debate over intellectual “property” broke out spontaneously among Ivan Pongracic (second from right), Paul Cwik (second from left), and me (left, where I belong). Who won?
15Jun2009 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedIntellectual “Property” Versus Real Property
Intellectual “property” (IP) is a sleeper issue. It seems uncontroversial: Someone invents or writes something and therefore owns it. What could be plainer? But IP contains the power to destroy liberty. IP isn’t merely about rock bands preventing kids from sharing MP3s over the Internet. (See “Weird Al” Yankovic’s musical commentary, “Don’t Download This Song,” [...]
12Jun2009 | Sheldon Richman | 9 comments | ContinuedTGIF: Intellectual "Property" Versus Real Property
Intellectual “property” (IP) is a sleeper issue. It seems uncontroversial: Someone invents or writes something and therefore owns it. What could be plainer? But IP contains the power to destroy liberty. The rest of TGIF is here.
12Jun2009 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedRegarding Intellectual "Property"
I highly recommend Kevin Carson‘s “‘Intellectual Property’: A Libertarian Critique” (pdf), published by the Center for a Stateless Society. It is first-rate. So-called intellectual property is not just about rock bands “protecting” recordings. It’s about big dinosaur corporations attempting to subordinate people through the control of ideas. This big issue will only get bigger in [...]
7Jun2009 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedHierarchy or the Market
In an article in last June’s Freeman, I applied some ideas from the socialist-calculation debate to the private corporation and examined the extent to which it is an island of calculational chaos in the market economy. I’d like to expand that line of analysis now and apply some common free-market insights on knowledge and incentives [...]
1Apr2008 | Kevin A. Carson | 2 comments | Continued-
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