Legislação e direito em uma sociedade livre, Portugese translation of “Legislation and Law in a Free Society,” Mises Daily (Feb. 25, 2010). Translations of my other writing is here.
I did a Reddit Ask Me Anything thread recently, on the anarcho-capitalist sub-reddit, here: http://www.reddit.com/r/Anarcho_Capitalism/comments/1vd8s9/i_am_stephan_kinsella_anarcholibertarian_writer/.
Previous Reddit AMA’s I did: Reddit Ask Me Anything Thread. One I did a year ago is at My reddit “ask me anything”.
Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 110.
I appeared recently on the Canadian libertarian podcast Ed and Ethan: The Voice of Liberty in Canada (Dec. 29, 2013) (I was a guest last year as well). We discussed the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and other matters. This is my segment only; for the full show, go to Ed and Ethan’s show page for Episode 90.
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Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 109. This is the audio for episode 005 of Liberty Talk, a weekly-ish Google hangout-based podcast with Jeffrey Tucker and me (Google Plus page; Youtube Channel). Though it’s been a month since our last one. Hey, it happens.
Today: we discuss Adam Kokesh and his recent brush with the “law” (see FDR2561), Liberty.me, 3D Printing, libertarian activism, nonscarce goods, intellectual property, The Mises Seminar Australia, trade secrets, and more.
Next week: we discuss Richard Posner, Richard Epstein, and the Chicago school, and their argument for IP.
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Back in 1991, I did a book review of J. Neil Schulman’s The Robert Heinlein Interview and Other Heinleiniana (originally published 1990; sample). My review was posted and discussed on the “GEnie Science Fiction and Fantasy RoundTable” (I believe GEnie was one of those pre-Internet dial-up networks some of us used back in the day). I thought I had lost my review but was able to find a copy buried on my hard drive, along with some comments by Schulman and others that was on that forum. Here is my initial letter to Schulman and the review, and some of the followup commentary that appeared on the forum (with some editing).
***
From Stephan Kinsella
Friday, April 26, 1991
Neil,
I just finished reading your book, The Robert Heinlein Interview and other Heinleiniana. I enjoyed it very much. Although there are a few gripes, which will become apparent in the course of the review listed below.
I did note errata while I was reading it. [omitted]
After the errata, I list a book review below. Go ahead and distribute it, if you wish.
If you want any biographical data on me, here it is. I’m 25, graduating from law school (the LSU Law Center) on May 31. I’m going to practice corporate law in Houston, Texas, with the Jackson & Walker law firm. But first, I’m going to London (probably) for a year to get an LL.M (master’s in law) in International and Comparative Law. …
I’m a big Ayn Rand, C.S. Lewis, and Heinlein fan, as are you.
* * *
\\ERRATA\\
[omitted]
BOOK REVIEW OF THE ROBERT HEINLEIN INTERVIEW
Reviewed by Stephan Kinsella
April, 1991
As a big fan of Robert Heinlein’s works, I was happy to discover J. Neil Schulman’s paperless book, The Robert Heinlein Interview and other Heinleiniana. I downloaded it from GEnie, and was able to read it in about four two-hour sittings (this is a rough estimate). (One hint for readers of paperless books: to keep track of where I left off, I created a small ASCII file called BOOKMARK. Every time I “set the book down,” I noted the line number or page number, and opened up BOOKMARK, and wrote something like “At line 1024, file HEINLN2” to remind myself where to pick up next time.) [continue reading…]
Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 108.
This was my (remotely delivered) presentation, “Why Intellectual Property is not Genuine Property,” at the 3rd Adam Smith Forum, Moscow, Russia (Nov. 12, 2011).
As I noted in a previous post, this event was held Nov. 12, 2011 in Moscow. It was organized by the Center for the Philosophy of Freedom, the Libertarian Party of Russia, and others. The Chairman of the ASF Steering Committee was economist Pavel Usanov, head of the Hayek Institute for Economy and Law, and Andrey Shal’nev, head of the federal committee of the Libertarian Party of Russia, was its co-chairman. I was invited to speak but could not attend in person, so my 47-minute speech “Why Intellectual Property is not Genuine Property” was presented remotely, with Russian subtitles. It is below, along with the original version and the English transcript plus the Russian translation, which was prepared by Maxim Tulenin, head of the Moscow branch of the Libertarian Party of Russia. Pictures from the event are here. The program with the list of speakers and topics is here (English translation).
Tulenin told me after the event:
I’m head of the Moscow branch of the Libertarian Party of Russia and I did the translation of your very consistent and convincing video lecture into Russian. Let me thank you, on behalf of the steering committee, Andrey Shal’nev and the participants for your contribution to the Forum, it was a great success with the audience, especially with the younger generation. I also tip my hat to you for the analytic case you’ve made against “intellectual property” because it has provided me with a pattern of argumentation suitable for my own Internet debates.
One of the participants in the Forum provided a brief overview of my talk (rough English translation). The Forum’s promo video excerpt, with Russian subtitles, is below, followed by the subtitled version presented at the Forum; the original version of my speech (without subtitles) follows these. The audio file is here. The English transcript is below; a Russian translation which was used for subtitles for the version presented at the Forum. The powerpoint presentation I used is also streamed below.
Youtube:
Vimeo version: Stephan Kinsella speech at IIIrd Adam Smith Forum from ivangoe on Vimeo:
Stephan Kinsella’s speech at the IIIrd Adam Smith Forum from ivangoe on Vimeo.
Alternative youtube version:
Slides:
Podcast (kinsella-on-liberty): Play in new window | Download (Duration: 47:24 — 76.5MB)
Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 107.
This was one of my guest appearances on Adam vs. the Man (Oct. 25, 2011), episode “on “AVTM + Stephan Kinsella: “Intellectual Property” vs The 4th Amendment,” discussing Copyright and Neo-Mercantilism and related issues. We discussed U.S. Copyright Czar Cozied Up to Content Industry, E-Mails Show and related issues such as neo-mercantilist aspects of modern patent and copyright law (discussed in my post Rothbard on Mercantilism and State “Patents of Monopoly”).
This was the new, 3.0 version of Adam’s show. The previous version was carried by RT (Russia Today). I had appeared a couple times on the 2.0 show—On Adam vs. The Man re Drug Patents and Adam the Man vs. IP.
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Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 106.
I was a guest today on the Peter Schiff Show (guest host Stefan Molyneux), discussing:
ObamaCare’s Next Legal Hurdle.
Stephan Kinsella, patent attorney & director of the Center for the Study of Innovative Freedom, on how ObamaCare still fails any reasonable legal test, whether anything constructive may come from the Apple/Samsung battle, and why entrepreneurs needn’t worry about their intellectual property.
Links to issues discussed:
- Oklahoma lawsuit to derail Obamacare?
- House passes Innovation Act by vote of 325-91: a small solution to a big patent problem
See also Another Problem with Legislation: James Carter v. the Field Codes: From an 1884 paperby James C. Carter, The Proposed Codification of Our Common Law: A Paper Prepared at the Request of The Committee of the Bar Association of the City of New York, Appointed to Oppose the Measure, defending New York’s common law from David Dudley Field’s attempt to (legislatively) codify it:
At present, when any doubt arises in any particular case as to what the true rule of the unwritten [i.e., judge-found, common-law developed] law is, it is at once assumed that the rule most in accordance with justice and sound policy is the one which must be declared to be the law. The search is for that rule. The appeal is squarely made to the highest considerations of morality and justice. These are the rallying points of the struggle. The contention is ennobling and beneficial to the advocates, to the judges, to the parties, to the auditors, and so indirectly to the whole community. The decision then made records another step in the advance of human reason towards that perfection after which it forever aspires. But when the law is conceded to be written down in a statute, and the only question is what the statute means, a contention unspeakably inferior is substituted. The dispute is about words. The question of what is right or wrong, just or unjust, is irrelevant and out of place. The only question is what has been written. What a wretched exchange for the manly encounter upon the elevated plane of principle!
For more on problems of legislation, and discussion of legal codes and codification efforts, see myLegislation and the Discovery of Law in a Free Society; and the articles collected here; also my posts Book Recommendations: Private, International, and Common Law; Legal Theory and The UN, International Law, and Nuclear Weapons. In particular, for further related commentary, see my Legislation and the Discovery of Law in a Free Society, e.g., note 78 and related text.
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Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 105.
This is an interview I did a couple years ago with my friend, Dr. John McGinnis, on his radio show, “Open Mike with Dr. John McGinnis,” WRTA (Sep. 19, 2011), discussing the America Invents Act. I met John when I lived in Philadelphia in the 90s, when we were both involved with the Freeman Society of Valley Forge (FEE-related), which helped me meet Hans Sennholz and Jacob Hornberger. A former economics professor, he is now a member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives.
For background information on the AIA, see my Mises Academy webinar, The American Invents Act and Patent Reform: The Good, the Meh, and the Ugly (audio and slides).
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Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 104.
This is my appearance as a Guest panelist on This Week in Law, Episode 97 (Feb. 4, 2011), entitled “God Creates. We Patent.” Brief description: “It’s a Bing trap, Internet rights, tracking data persistence, attorney motivation, abolishing IP, life patents, and more”, such as net neutrality (see: A Libertarian Take on Net Neutrality).
My previous blog post about this is here.
The video is below; it’s also on the TWiL page for this episode; you can also subscribe to the audio or video podcast for this show; here’s their FaceBook page.
TWiL is part of Leo Laporte’s impressive and growing private TWiT (This Week in Tech) netcast network (I regularly listen to the TWiT network’s This Week in Tech, MacBreak Weekly, and TWiL, in addition to my some of my other favorite podcasts, such as Mises podcasts, Lew Rockwell, and the Slate Culture Gabfest and Slate Political Gabfest.)
In addition to Howell and me, there were two other IP/tech lawyers. We had a very civil and wide-ranging discussion of a number of topics, from the Google vs. Bing “search cheating” dispute, Internet access rights as “human rights,” abolishing IP and gene patents, defensive patent publishing, lawyers as vigorous representatives of their clients’ interests, and more (most of the topics we discussed are linked on Howell’s Delicious bookmarks page for that episode).
I already knew Howell was a very good host, having seen the show before, but I have to say I was very pleasantly surprised at how tolerant and even libertarian-leaning the other lawyers were of my very radical anti-state, anti-IP views. We had a very good conversation and the other panelists were very receptive to my outspoken libertarian stance. Maybe there is hope!
Podcast (kinsella-on-liberty): Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:38:36 — 45.2MB)
Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 103.
This is my appearance as a Guest panelist on This Week in Law, Episode 133 (Oct. 13, 2011), entitled “Beyonce, Bad Laws, and Breastaurants.” The two hosts and fellow guest panelist were all lawyers. We had a wide-ranging two-hour discussion about a variety of legal and policy matters, including a number of IP problems covering patent, copyright, trademark, and even trade secret. We also discussed the Occupy Wall Street movement, Apple’s use of IP to squelch clones and competition, copyright threats against Beyonce for her dance moves, and many others as indicated by the links on the episode’s show notes.
The video is below; it’s also on the TWiL page for this episode; you can also subscribe to the audio or video podcast for this show; here’s their FaceBook page.
A few more backup links and points below about some of the issues discussed.
- At one point we got into a discussion of Obama’s use of a signing statement to approve ACTA as an “executive agreement” (see ACTA, Executive Agreements, and the Bricker Amendment), I noted that under international law, violation by a host state of the citizen of another state gave rise to a right for the violated citizen’s home state to use military force against the host state. I remarked that one danger of internationalizing intellectual property by means of executive agreements and treaties is that it could give western nations an excuse to military force against countries that allow piracy. However, this was a bit of an overstatement since, as I explain in International Investment, Political Risk, and Dispute Resolution: A Practitioner’s Guide (see this excerpt), this type of “gunboat diplomacy” is ostensibly no longer permitted since the founding of the UN in 1945: “Today, some investors hailing from militarily and politically powerful States might favor the threat or use of force to obtain restitution or compensation for expropriated property. Such an option is no longer available, however, due to fundamental changes in international law and politics. In particular, the United Nations Charter has since 1945 prohibited the use of force to resolve disputes, except in the case of self-defence. Today, it is generally accepted that a State may not use force against another State in response to a taking of the property of one of its nationals.”
- The quote I mentioned about the problem with making law by legislation is by James Carter, who wrote, in 1884, in opposing the attempt to codify New York’s common law:
At present, when any doubt arises in any particular case as to what the true rule of the unwritten [i.e., judge-found, common-law developed] law is, it is at once assumed that the rule most in accordance with justice and sound policy is the one which must be declared to be the law. The search is for that rule. The appeal is squarely made to the highest considerations of morality and justice. These are the rallying points of the struggle. The contention is ennobling and beneficial to the advocates, to the judges, to the parties, to the auditors, and so indirectly to the whole community. The decision then made records another step in the advance of human reason towards that perfection after which it forever aspires. But when the law is conceded to be written down in a statute, and the only question is what the statute means, a contention unspeakably inferior is substituted. The dispute is about words. The question of what is right or wrong, just or unjust, is irrelevant and out of place. The only question is what has been written. What a wretched exchange for the manly encounter upon the elevated plane of principle!
- I mentioned the tension between antitrust and patent/copyright law; more discussion of this issue can be found in endnote 1 here;
- We discussed the America Invents Act; I’ve since completed a detailed writeup about this: The American Invents Act and Patent Reform: The Good, the Meh, and the Ugly;
- Concerning our discussion of the copyright lawsuit against Beyonce based on her dance moves in a music video, see also my posts: Copyrights and Dancing, Copyrighting Dance Steps–The Death of Choreography, and others at The Patent, Copyright, Trademark, and Trade Secret Horror Files. On the show we briefly discussed also Pro wrestler sues rapper over hand gesture: Yet Another Example of how Intellectual Property is Partial Enslavement.
[previously discussed on the Mises blog]
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Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 102.
I was reminded recently of the excellent Canadian libertarian podcast Ed and Ethan: The Voice of Liberty in Canada when they were guest co-hosts on a recent episode of the superb Freedom Feens radio show. And that I had been a guest about a year ago. Here is my November 2012 appearance on their show, which I think was a very good and concise IP discussion. My segment is podcast here, which starts at aboot 57 minutes into the full episode, which is also linked below. The audio quality is very good on this one. I have to say—sometimes I give good podcast. And this was one of those times.
- “Intellectual Property Law in Canada,” Ed and Ethan Podcast: The voice of liberty in Canada (Nov. 17, 2012) (full MP3; Youtube—link down at present for some reason).
Podcast (kinsella-on-liberty): Play in new window | Download (Duration: 37:50 — 43.3MB)
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