I worked with patent lawyer Steve Mendelsohn when I practiced law in the mid-1990s at Schnader Harrison in Philadelphia. He was a witty writer; one of his funnier pieces is this one, “Confessions of a Law School Asshole,” published when he was a law student at U. Penn in The Penn Law Forum (Sept. 26, 1990). I love his description of “asshole bingo,” and his question in class, “What’s a magistrate?”
I was interviewed yesterday by Mark Edge, as part of his “Edgington Post Interview Series,” for his Free Talk Live radio show, about my Mises Daily article, “Reducing the Cost of IP Law.” The interview is lasts about 35 minutes, and starts at 2:02:36 in the Jan. 20, 2010 show (MP3). Edge conducted an excellent interview–very informed and interesting. And, like many others, he’s come around to the anti-IP position.
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From LRC 2005
Thank God! The draft of the Iraqi Bill of Rights just shows America is helping to spawn liberty in the mid-east. For example, the neo-con pro-Israeli hawks will no doubt love these provision: “Any individual with another nationality (except for Israel) may obtain Iraqi nationality after a period of residency … An Iraqi may have more than one nationality as long as the nationality is not Israeli.” [continue reading…]
From LRC 2008:
According to Lincoln idolizing, Bush-voting, Iraq war armchair general, and soi-disant libertarian Tim Sandefur:
Christopher Hitchens has a review here of Douglas Feith’s book War And Decision, which I’m currently reading. It is an outstanding book, serious, scholarly, reasoned, and fair, although of course Feith has an opinion which he makes clear. And Hitchens is right that there is something deeply dishonest about the way the President’s opponents (i.e., the press) have refused to even note the book’s existence.
This “outstanding” (and “serious,” natch) book, according to Hitchens, makes [continue reading…]
From LRC 2007
Update: See
Re Eric’s and Anthony’s comments about Paul on international law (Anthony wrote: “The fact that even many in the audience cheered Ron’s comment on international law (the others probably ignorantly thought he meant the UN, not the great libertarian tradition of international codes of civilized behavior such as the law of neutrals and non-aggression) is heartwarming and breathtaking.”) — on a libertarian Republican email list, one of the posters criticized Paul for referencing international law–in particular Paul’s condemning the war on Iraq because it was illegal under international law. Why would any liberty-lover oppose the rules of international law as another limit on the behavior of states? The rules of international law, being based on “the general principles of law recognized by civilized nations” (as well as on international custom and treaties), and far less corrupted by legislation than municipal legal systems have become, are far more civilized and libertarian. A return to international law, just like a return to constitutional limits, would move any modern state in the direction of liberty.
So the neocons just hate international law. They hate the idea of the state being limited by anything–a constitution, international law, whatever. They seem not to understand that the United States is bound by international law. The do not recognize the limitations it places on waging war, and that this is a good thing. They apparently are oblivious to the fact that all treaties, all international relations, are governed by international law–that without the international law principle of pacta sunt servanda, for example, no treaties between nations would be binding–including treaties the US has signed. They apparently believe that a President, a country, should flout international law–that it should not abide by international agreements; that we should not recognize international law as binding.
It’s a wonder more neocons aren’t anarchists, if they believe the 200 nations of the world co-exist in an utterly lawless order.
As I note in my article “Radical Patent Reform Is Not on the Way,” Mises Daily (Oct. 1, 2009), there is a growing clamor for reform of patent (and copyright) law, due to the increasingly obvious injustices resulting from these intellectual property (IP) laws. However, the various recent proposals for reform merely tinker with details and leave the essential features of the patent system intact. Patent scope, terms, and penalties would still be essentially the same. In the second article of this two-part series, “Reducing the Cost of IP Law,” Mises Daily (Jan. 20, 2010), I propose various reforms to the existing patent system–short of abolition–that would significantly reduce the costs and harm imposed by the patent system while not appreciably, or as significantly, reducing the innovation incentives and other purported benefits of the patent system. I list these changes below in generally descending order of importance, without elaboration, as they are discussed further in “Reducing the Cost of IP Law”:
From twitter.com/shitmydadsays:
No, I’m not a pessimist. At some point the world shits on everybody. Pretending it ain’t shit makes you an idiot, not an optimist.
This guy’s hilarious, and wise. He’s better on this issue than rah-rah libertarian “optimists” who crawl into a hole when they hear a peep of realism.
The upcoming documentary, Copyright Criminals, shows how copyright has outrageously criminalized the use of sampling, which has been disproportionately popular in hip hop music. In this, it calls to mind the racially disproportionate impact of drug laws on minorities…
Copyright Criminals – Trailer from IndiePix on Vimeo.
From various Mises and LRC posts:
September 19, 2006 9:14 AM by Stephan Kinsella (Archive)
Yet another ridiculous result of the US legal system: Spamhaus fined $11.7 million; won’t pay a dime reports the case of the heroic UK spam-fighting blacklist site Spamhaus, which was sued in the US by spammer e360. Spamhaus simply refused to participate and let e360 win a “default judgment,” since default judgments are not recognized in the UK. As Spamhaus notes: [continue reading…]
Some spam I received a while back had this quote in it:
“Why does the Air Force need expensive new bombers? Have the people we’ve been bombing over the years been complaining?” –George Wallace
4 hours ago · ·
From Mises blog:
February 4, 2005 8:35 PM by Stephan Kinsella (Archive)
In a recent thread, a commentator (Feirman) wrote: “Rand herself didn’t agree with everything Mises wrote, such as his a priori methodology, subjectivism and utilitarianism, and I am sure that other Randians pick bones with other of his ideas as well. But this doesn’t amount to not endorsing von Mises, even by contemporary Randians.”
I have long thought this is in part because Rand and/or some Objectivists misundestand Mises. His subjectivism is not subjectivism in her sense–the idea that everything is relative and non-knowable. Rather he just means that a value is a value of a person, and that they are ordinal, not cardinal, not interpersonally comparable, and only demonstrated through action. This is actually similar to Rand’s concept of value–something that mans ACTS to gain and/or keep–rand even said somehwere she added “acts” because if you say you value achieving something your whole life and never do anything about it, in what sense can you be said to value it? This is the same insight underlying Mises’ “subjectivism” and value theory. Even Randians’ confusing belief that values are “objective” does not really seem to deny the idea that in fact, individuals are the ones who do the valuing. [continue reading…]
Stephan Kinsella is a libertarian writer and retired patent attorney in Houston, Texas. He has published widely on various areas of libertarian legal theory and on legal topics such as intellectual property law and international law. His publications include Legal Foundations of a Free Society (Papinian Press, 2023), Against Intellectual Property (Mises Institute, 2008), International Investment, Political Risk, and Dispute Resolution: A Practitioner’s Guide (Oxford, 2020), and The Universal Principles of Liberty (2025).
My Failed Libertarian Speaking Hiatus; Memories of Mises Institute and Other Events, 1988–20192025
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