Back in 2021 I sent Ken Schoolland some comments on his IP chapter, ch. 31, in his The Adventures of Jonathan Gullible: A Free-Market Odyssey. It seemed pretty good but I offered to give him some constructive feedback. Our email chain fell into desuetude and recently we reconnected. As I point out in Classical Liberals, Libertarians, Anarchists and Others on Intellectual Property, n.59, he is fairly solid on IP law. See He is also good on defamation law, which is also fairly rare, as I note in Defamation as a Type of Intellectual Property; see his Sticks and Stones: A Critique of Libel and Slander Laws (from 2002).
I ended up offering him some comments to improve his chapter. I repeat them below. Afterwards, he asked me how I became so interested in libertarianism. I gave a long answer, so repost some of that here.
Excerpts from my suggestions re his IP chapter:
I quickly re-read it and did not find any problems. I think previously I thought you might be off on the IP by. contract stuff, but that was Burris. I did a quick Grok report and did not see any obvious issues. Grok report
He thought I was criticizing him for having a copyright in his book, and for marking his entry “red” (bad) instead of blue.
no! It is because I have been sloppy and not kept up with that scheme. It is red b/c it has a hyperlink! 🙂 I have made a note that this color scheme is not accurate anymore.
As for using copyright:
No, not at all. We all have copyright in things we right. It is automatic. See “Copyright is very sticky!” and “Let’s Make Copyright Opt-OUT”
We then discussed the difficulties dealing with publishers used to relying on copyright. I said:
I have had these battles over the years. For some legal books I had to relent and assign it to the publisher, e..g Oxford and Quid Pro, International Investment, Political Risk, and Dispute Resolution, Second Edition, co-author, with Noah D. Rubins and Thomas N. Papanastasiou (April 2, 2020, Oxford University Press, 2020) and Louisiana Civil Law Dictionary (Quid Pro Books, 2011; co-author: Gregory Rome). It’s the way it is. I’ve dealt with similar accusations over the years:
- Are anti-IP patent attorneys hypocrites?
- The Most Libertarian Patent Work;
- An Anti-Patent Patent Attorney? Oh my Gawd!;
- The Morality of Acquiring and Enforcing Patents
- Patent Lawyers Who Oppose Patent Law
- A collection of recent blogs about patent hypocrisy and “success” stories
For all my other stuff, libertarian publications, I always release it CC0 or CC-BY. I have had battles with publishers over this, including recently. I always refuse to give in. Usually I win by stubborneness and persistence, and better arguments, but if not, I still do not give in. See e.g.
- On Leading by Example and the Power of Attraction (Open Source Publishing, Creative Commons, Public Domain Publishing)
- The Academic Publishing Paywall Copyright Subsidized Racket
- Tucker, The Magic of Open-Source Publishing
- Kulldorff, The Rise and Fall of Scientific Journals and a Way Forward
- Academic publishers have become the enemies of science: yet more real piracy
- Tucker, The Magic of Open-Source Publishing
- Tucker, “Authors: Beware of Copyright,” in Bourbon for Breakfast (Mises Institute, 2010)
- Authors: Don’t Make the Buddy Holly Mistake
…
There is nothing wrong at all with having copyright or displaying it, or even with assigning it to others. (I would draw the line personally at suing someone or threatening to.) The problem is the copyright system, not how people use it.
What I would say is that if you retain copyright to your book (which you probably did, given that you put a copy online; if you didn’t sign a written copyright assignment, you still own copyright) then you have bargaining power. What I would recommend for your book, if you want my advice, and if you want to try to improve matters slightly, is try to work out something with your publisher. The authors of Against Intellectual Monopoly, Boldrin and Levine, published their book with Cambridge U. Press and b/c it’s against copyright they were able to persuade Cambridge to let them post a free PDF online. So it’s sometimes possible. The law professor in New Orleans behind Quid Pro Books, who published my Louisiana Civil Law Dictionary–I tried to get him to use CC-BY but he told me flat out no, that he would sue others for copying. Because I had a co-author who wanted to use that publisher, I relented. Otherwise I would have self-published and made it CC-BY or CC0. For my big 2023 Legal Foundations of a Free Society, I self-published it to retain control. And so on.
In your case if you are happy with your arrangement, just keep doing it. I would make sure you negotiate the right to post a free PDF online. I would say you have no obligation to not use copyright. That said, here is what I would suggest, IF you want to bother considering any of this:
- If you did not sign copyright, be aware you still own it. And do NOT EVER assign it in writing.
- If you sign an exclusive publishing agreement, negotiate an exception to post a free PDF online.
- If you did not sign any of this (and many publishers are too half-assed to have this in writing) then you are free to do what you want.
- You could say hey if you dont let me post a free PDF and epub and publish this book with a CC-BY notice, I am going to self-publish. That’s what I always do. Just do it yourself. Why do you need him? After all for what we do it’s important to get the message out. Not to make money, And anyway making it easy for poor students in Africa or China to read your book doesn’t hurt your sales anyway. If anything it helps. You don’t have to use copyright or cockblock potential readers to sell books…
My two cents–
I then added this:
Ken, all this said:
1. If you want to make your IP chapter slightly more comprehensive and accurate, I would be happy to have a short zoom call with you about it. You are like very close to getting it, so I’m sure it would be a quick call.
And/or: Read some of the following and let me know if you have any questions, or you might want to link to some of this in your chapter for those who want more detail:
TO READ:
2. The Problem with Intellectual Property (2025)
3. Intellectual Property Rights as Negative Servitudes
3a. discussed in detail in many talks, e.g. my most recent one: KOL483 | The Economics and Ethics of Intellectual Property, Loyola University—New Orleans
4. Others such as:
- Libertarian and Lockean Creationism: Creation As a Source of Wealth, not Property Rights; Hayek’s “Fund of Experience”; the Distinction Between Scarce Means and Knowledge as Guides to Action
- “KOL037 | Locke’s Big Mistake: How the Labor Theory of Property Ruined Political Theory
- The Structural Unity of Real and Intellectual Property
- Another way to explain the problem with IP: Resources v. Knowledge; Ownership v. Possession
- The “Ontology” Mistake of Libertarian Creationists
- A Recurring Fallacy: “IP is a Purer Form of Property than Material Resources”
5. For further reading (you could link to some of this if you want):
- https://c4sif.org/aip/
- https://c4sif.org/resources/
- The Problem with Intellectual Property (2025)
- Intellectual Property Rights as Negative Servitudes
- Libertarian and Lockean Creationism: Creation As a Source of Wealth, not Property Rights; Hayek’s “Fund of Experience”; the Distinction Between Scarce Means and Knowledge as Guides to Action
- Legal Foundations of a Free Society (Houston, Texas: Papinian Press, 2023), Part IV
- “Examples of Ways Content Creators Can Profit Without Intellectual Property,”
- The Overwhelming Empirical Case Against Patent and Copyright
- A Selection of my Best Articles and Speeches on IP
the basic points to make is:
- all/most IP is an illegitimate grant of nonconsensual negative servitudes
- most IP is based on legislation, not organically developed law, an illegitimate means of making law
- IP thus violates natural property rights that based on original appropriation and contractual title transfer
- the history of patent and copyright are rooted in protectionism against competition, monopoly privilege grants, thought control, censorship, and restriction of freedom of the press, and have this effect still today: price are raised, innovation is reduced and impeded and distorted, culture is distorted and censored, Internet freedom is threatened and now AI is threatened by copyright
- utilitarian justifications for IP are all flawed because (a) this is not how law is justified, (b) there is no evidence anyway in support of the utilitarian case for IP
- The root cause of the error behind support for IP, besides propaganda and outright lies about its support for innovation, is the mistake stemming from Locke’s argument that the reason you can homestead unowned property is that you own your labor. That is wrong, and unnecessary, but it permeates what I call Lockean or libertarian “creationism”: the mistaken notion that you own what you create; that creation is a source of property rights, instead of merely a source of wealth.
He thanked me, remarked on my use of AI to analyze some stuff (e.g. his chapter) and asked me what has kept me so motivated and driven all these years, “What sparked this and what keeps it lit?”
So I sent him this:
I use AI but sparingly. I do not trust it overmuch and never, ever use it to write for me like some people do.
Who knows what motivates me. Probably same as all of you. I talk about it a little in various bio pieces including a little memoir see https://stephankinsella.com/publications/#biographical; How I Became A Libertarian, Alan D. Bergman, Adopting Liberty: The Stephan Kinsella Story (Papinian Press, 2025)
Long-short: I was apolitical but interested in philosophy and science in high school so lit up when I read Ayn Rand. I was an engineer major and loved it but I loved the other side too–the humanities, the arts, literatures, philosophy, then economics, political philosophy and eventually law. I went to and loved law school but had an academic bent, but wanted a good career and turned down some think tank jobs and now I an so happy I did. I did not want to be dependent on fickle donors or benefactors. I wanted independence. I became my own benefactor. I supported my hobby on my own. Instead of watching football etc. my hobby was legal writing and libertarian writing which was sort of an augment or complement to my legal practice, and my legal knowledge, and it turns out, my unique knowledge of both Roman/civil/Louisiana law, as well as Common law (since I went to LSU law) and then my international law (from a master’s in London) plus my deep knowledge and interest in Austrian economics and radical Rothbardian libertarianism, seemed to enable me to make lots of progress in various fields of libertarian legal theory in my libertarian writing. I edited and integrated writing over a 29 years period into my book in 2023, Legal Foundations of a Free Society (Houston, Texas: Papinian Press, 2023), which covers IP in Part IV but lots of other things too, though lots of people know me primarily due to my IP expertise (both legal and libertarian-Austrian). I only write about IP b/c I was the only one who could do it but the other areas always were my main interest–rights theory, legal theory, causation, contracts, and so on. So I’ve been in various parts of our movement since the early 90s.
I’ve gotten better and better at it and deeper and wider, so I keep doing it b/c I enjoy it. It’s my part in the intellectual battle for liberty and the human race. Activism, Achieving a Free Society, and Writing for the Remnant.
Why I’m a Libertarian–or, Why Libertarianism is Beautiful, The Titanic (society) may be going down, we may lose, but I want to be on the right side of things. Like Puddleglum. Lewis in the Silver Chair
Just turned 60, mostly retired 15 years ago, so have increasingly dedicated my time to libertarian theory–to expanding our understanding of liberty in our young field. (re young field: Libertarianism After Fifty Years: What Have We Learned?) It’s just my role. Others have others, which is all to the good.
I’ve found my unique combination of knowledge of law, both common law, Roman/civil, and international, plus Austrian econ and radical Rothbardian theory, plus my dogged passion and determination and modicum of talent at writing and sticking to all this, has led me to make some progress in a number of areas. Some long hanging fruit, others more difficult to reach. I touch on some of this in my chapter in the Rothbard book released just last week, “Mises, Rothbard, Hoppe: An Indispensable Framework,” in Rothbard at 100: A Tribute and Assessment, Stephan Kinsella and Hans-Hermann Hoppe, eds. (online; March 2, 2026).
Most people just answer such questions more pithily–I have a problem! 🙂
In short, I like being good at things. And being of use. And doing what I can. I was an excellent patent lawyer but of course I did not love it (I loved being paid to help clients solve problems of course). But I love libertarianism.
