Public Domain Dedication for Kinsella Works

I want it to be as clear as possible that anyone may use my work, past or future, without my permission. In short: you may copy, publish, translate, adapt, sell, or otherwise use any of my published work, for any purpose, without asking me, paying me, or crediting me. ¹

This site’s footer has long stated that its content is dedicated to the public domain under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication. But a footer notice covers only this site, and as I’ve noted before, it’s not clear that CC0, or even CC-BY, is legally enforceable (see the posts listed below). So, out of an abundance of caution, I have also signed a written public domain dedication (pdf) covering all my works, wherever published, including works I publish in the future.

The only exceptions are a few books whose copyright I assigned to publishers in the past. I now try to avoid doing that, but academic publishers often demand that authors assign their copyright, so it sometimes takes a fight. When Lexington Books’ form for my chapter “Dialogical Arguments for Libertarian Rights” in The Dialectics of Liberty (2019) offered a choice between assigning copyright and obtaining permission to reprint previously published material, I refused to assign and found a way around it. And for my chapters in Palgrave’s Handbook of Misesian Austrian Economics and Springer’s Handbook of the Philosophical Foundations of Business Ethics, I first published the texts myself as Papinian Press working papers under Creative Commons licenses, so the publishers could have the work without my assigning copyright. They can have my work for free, but not my copyright; if they won’t publish it on those terms, I can publish it myself. ²

Too many academics, as I noted in my tribute to Tibor Machan, “sign away their copyrights, or leave the status vague and murky.” ³ Some libertarian academics even seem to assume it’s impossible to persuade a publisher to allow a free online version, so they don’t even try. But it can be done: Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine published Against Intellectual Monopoly with Cambridge University Press in 2008 and negotiated the right to post a free version online. ⁴

Related

• Copyright is very sticky! — why you can’t simply abandon copyright: it attaches automatically, and the legal effect of Creative Commons’ public domain dedication is uncertain.
• Are Creative Commons Licenses Even Enforceable? — a CC grant is usually just a notice on a web page, with no signature or consideration, so it’s unclear whether a user could prove permission or estop a later copyright holder.
• Let’s Make Copyright Opt-OUT — the law should let authors waive copyright; even Creative Commons concedes CC0 can’t guarantee a complete waiver in every jurisdiction.
• KOL159 | Seminar: “Practical Solutions to the IP Trap” — practical advice for creators, including why I prefer CC0 or CC-BY to the ShareAlike, NonCommercial, and NoDerivatives licenses, and my doubts that any of them is legally enforceable.
• Copyright is not a Verb; A Work is not “Copyrighted” — authors don’t “copyright” their works, since copyright arises automatically; illustrated with my CC0 dedication and the Mises Institute’s incorrect copyright notice on Against Intellectual Property.
• Against Intellectual Property + Supplementary Material — the Mises Institute’s 2008 edition of AIP prints a notice naming the Institute as copyright holder, dated 2008; in fact I hold the copyright, the article first appeared in 2001, and I’ve released it under CC0, with a CC BY 4.0 fallback and a promise that neither I nor my heirs will assert copyright.
• Public License for the Works of George Reisman — Reisman’s grant of a CC BY 4.0 license in all his works upon his death; a model for this kind of blanket dedication.
• On Leading by Example and the Power of Attraction (Open Source Publishing, Creative Commons, Public Domain Publishing) — why I publish everything open-source (CC0 or CC-BY) and keep my copyrights rather than assigning them to publishers, including my run-ins with Lexington, Palgrave, and Springer, and why others should do the same.
• Remembering Tibor Machan, Libertarian Mentor and Friend: Reflections on a Giant — includes my criticism of academics who sign away their copyrights, leave their status “vague and murky,” or don’t insist on reversion of rights.
• The Academic Publishing Paywall Copyright Subsidized Racket — academics who lock their work behind publishers’ paywalls have no excuse: they could negotiate the right to post free versions, as Boldrin and Levine did with Cambridge, but most don’t even try.
• Authors: Don’t Make the Buddy Holly Mistake — why authors shouldn’t sign publishing agreements that give away control of their work: self-publish if you can, keep ebook rights, and negotiate the right to post your work free online.
• Tucker, The Magic of Open-Source Publishing — Jeffrey Tucker on making research freely available instead of paywalled.
• Mises, Rothbard, Hoppe: An Indispensable Framework — my chapter in Rothbard at 100 (2026), whose “Excursus: The Role of Ideas in Human Action” explains why attribution is a matter of social convention, not justice, so there is no general obligation to credit the source of one’s ideas.

On the “Hypocrisy” Charge

• An Anti-Patent Patent Attorney? Oh my Gawd! — the charge that a patent attorney can’t consistently oppose patents is baseless: working within a system you oppose is no more hypocritical than a tax lawyer opposing taxes or an oncologist opposing cancer, and patents, like guns, can be used defensively.
• The Most Libertarian Patent Work — far from being hypocritical, writing non-infringement opinions that help companies defend against patent suits is as libertarian as tax or criminal defense work.
• Are anti-IP patent attorneys hypocrites? — no: the charge is an ad hominem that refutes nothing, and advising clients, obtaining defensive patents, and giving non-infringement opinions are not immoral.
• Rothbard on Lawyers, Accountants, Locks and Safes–and patent lawyers? — Rothbard called tax lawyers and accountants our “shield and buckler” against the tax man; patent lawyers who defend clients against patent aggression play the same role, so the hypocrisy charge is baseless.
• “Oh yeah? How would like it if I copy and publish your book under my name?!”: On IP Hypocrisy and Calling the Smartasses’ Bluffs — the charge that anti-IP authors are hypocrites for “having” copyrights is baseless: the law imposes copyright on every author automatically, copying isn’t plagiarism, copying my work takes nothing from me, and anyone who tried passing it off as his own would only harm himself.
• Pro-IP “Anarchists” and anti-IP Patent Attorneys — the real inconsistency lies not with anti-IP patent attorneys but with self-described anarchists who defend state-granted monopoly privileges.

1. On attribution as a matter of social convention rather than justice, see Kinsella, “Mises, Rothbard, Hoppe: An Indispensable Framework,” in Stephan Kinsella & Hans-Hermann Hoppe, eds., Rothbard at 100: A Tribute and Assessment (Houston: Papinian Press and Property and Freedom Society, 2026), “Excursus: The Role of Ideas in Human Action.” See also David Koepsell, “A Question of Authorship? (attribution),” C4SIF Blog (Oct. 3, 2012). [↩]
2. See Kinsella, “On Leading by Example and the Power of Attraction (Open Source Publishing, Creative Commons, Public Domain Publishing),” C4SIF Blog (Apr. 12, 2025); idem, “The Title-Transfer Theory of Contract,” Papinian Press Working Paper #1 (Sept. 7, 2024); idem, “The Problem with Intellectual Property,” Papinian Press working paper (May 15, 2025), published as “The Problem with Intellectual Property,” in Christoph Luetge & Marianne Thejls Ziegler, eds., Handbook of the Philosophical Foundations of Business Ethics (Dordrecht: Springer, 2026). [↩]
3. Kinsella, “Remembering Tibor Machan, Libertarian Mentor and Friend: Reflections on a Giant,” StephanKinsella.com (Apr. 19, 2016). [↩]
4. See Kinsella, “The Academic Publishing Paywall Copyright Subsidized Racket,” C4SIF Blog (Nov. 9, 2025). [↩]