KOL196 | The Jason Stapleton Program: Intellectual Property: A Libertarian Debate

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 196.

This is my appearance on the Jason Stapleton Program: Intellectual Property: A Libertarian Debate with Stephan Kinsella (archive).

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The video is now down as is the podcast page. From the archived version:

• mike jones

  Kinsella was not an honest debater here. At least a dozen times he avoided engaging Stapleton’s argument about the creation of a perhaps perpetual property right by work. He did so by switching to a discussion of current IP law twice. He did so once by accusing Stapleton of using a utilitarian argument which he never did. He did so once by going on some random and terrifying tangent about their being no right to ones own labor. He did so twice by saying the Stapleton had the obligation to pick a non arbitrary end point of the property right, which was of course the argument itself, perpetual.

  I was so disappointed with the shucking and jiving.

  • Karl Oehling

    I was disappointed too. When Stephan had a chance to answer directly and simply, he did what you said, referring to current conditions and complicated the answer. This is the correct answer, posted at YouTube in response to the opening comment:

    ” IP cannot be protected once it is released because information is not
    scarce in an economic sense. The condition you laid out. “the author has
    a right to dissem… to sell his work, and the property, which is the
    property, the work itself. Now he cannot prevent someone from using that
    information to better themselves, but he can prevent them from
    redistributing the work he has created.” “Why can he prevent him from
    copying information?”

    The answer, and I’m surprised Stephen missed this, is because he owns
    the book. He bought it. He owns it. He can do with it as he wishes. Once
    you sell the book, the book is no longer yours.”

• Scott Snyder

  Stephan’s last argument, that everyone’s work rests on the past discoveries, and knowledge of others sounds a lot like Obama’s “You didn’t build that” statement.

• Alex Borbiro

  Came here after hearing Jason on Tom Woods’ show and you mentioned IP; a subject I’ve been wrestling with. I know my basic principles tell me IP is wrong. For example, I tell a joke and then no-one else can tell that joke because I now “own” it? (even though someone somewhere may have thought of it before but maybe they were alone at the time and then died) Or I overhear someone describe a short cut to a location so I use that information to cut my travel time?
  It does seem unjust that I may write a fictional (for example) book, however, and then someone can reproduce it and sell it, but hey, that’s just the way it is. If you are the original author, you’ll at least get a head start on selling it before the copies come out. And there would be prestige attached to owning an original (even a signed “copy”[!]). Very interesting topic which I’m sure I’m not finished with thinking about. I think it is hard to answer these questions in a simple way because of the way we use language and words like “own” and “have”, as Stephan alluded to.

Podcast (kinsella-on-liberty): Play in new window | Download (Duration: 45:02 — 50.2MB)