Stephan Kinsella on Intellectual Property from Freedomain Radio

Podcast Version: http://www.fdrurl.com/kinsella1

Stephan Kinsella is an American intellectual property lawyer and libertarian legal theorist. His electronically-published works are primarily published on his blog and websites associated with the Ludwig von Mises Institute and anarcho-capitalist organizations. This is a Freedomain Radio book club discussion of one of Stephan's most popular books: "Against Intellectual Property" (linked below).

http://www.mises.org/journals/jls/15_2/15_2_1.pdf

Freedomain Radio is the largest and most popular philosophy show on the Web -- http://www.freedomainradio.com

Category:

Education

Tags:

• intellectual
• property
• libertarian
• objectivist
• rights
• ayn
• rand
• ip
• patent
• copyright

[RogueSwordThesco]

audio is meh

[bwelkk]

who's the british guy?

[swu880]

The audio is very very bad. can hardly hear him

[Hashishin13]

Okay I watched it now, what he is basically doing is what he always does, puts a well defined concept into his own words in the hopes of clarifying it. He was basically just repeating the homesteading principle which is exactly what I started by refuting in three comments. Your right to a certain extent, but ultimately the homesteading principle is just the most moral arguement you can make when you are trying to convince the people around you to respect your property. Paying others is also okay

[Hashishin13]

@alalelalex You own your own body, this simple fact has more implications for law then everything else combined. Its where the laws against murder, rape, assault, torture, imprisonment etc all come from as they are tresspasses on self ownership. Laws against theft are implied in the extension of property to the claims made on animals, land and other objects. How far do you want to go with implementation? About a dozen hours of video might cover it, might not. Do you have any specific complaints?

[alalelalex]

@Hashishin13

Well, you are just laying out the concept of property. But you are not implementing OA in the real world. We remain in an abstract universe where OA somehow exists. Whether property is intellectual or something else is not established. Stef says something about it here: watch?v=z1M2CnEg3GE&feature=pl­ayer_detailpage#t=375s

[Hashishin13]

@alalelalex original appropriation is extrememly easy to defend, its just the logical extention of the first property we all own and are obviously given through OP, our bodies. I think the arguement for appropriating your own body to your self is quite obviously correct so I won't bother explaining it. The next step to owning property outside of your body is that anything which isn't owned by anyone else is obviously up for grabs, if nobody has a claim on something how could they dispute yours?

[Hashishin13]

@alalelalex I think Stefan is wrong, and either he knows it or he can't come up with any reasons why hes right. The reason I say this is that oddly enough I was just looking for stefan's take on IP and he doesn't have one on his channel. Hes always bragging about his 1500+ podcasts(only 600 of which are on youtube) and he still hasn't laid down his theory, seems like proof enough that he doesn't have a decent one.

[alalelalex]

@Hashishin13

The problem lies with the homesteading concept. People are used to step over it and assume that property already exists in the form the state has created it, and it is intuitively clear how to exchange it. In a free society property will be based on original appropriation (OP)/ homesteading. You would have to defend OP using argumentation. Intersubjectivity is not enough.

[alalelalex]

@Hashishin13

You are using the current concept of IP. But there are other concepts of IP. For example Stefan Molyneux also supports IP, but I cannot get clear exactly how he wants to implement it. He uses the concept of idea creation, which Ayn Rand also supports. The point is that these DRO's will try to resolve conflict by argumentation, which means you are bound by the constraints of argumentation ethics. I suspect that this leads to some form of IP.

[Hashishin13]

@alalelalex I would also say that the arguement from effect isn't as strong as the moral arguement, think about what IP actually does. If I write a book and you buy a copy then reprint it, have I lost anything tangible? I still have my book, I'm still the only one who can be acredited as the author, what did I lose? I lost the ability to force others to buy something from me alone, I lost a monopoly on something infinitely reproducible and conceivably recreatable.

[Hashishin13]

@alalelalex Well when I said people would judge these claims and made reference to the community all I wasa trying to say is that property is defined by an agreement between the individual and those around him/her. Whether its through a defense agency, as I agree it probably would, or by individuals and their neighbours ina jury fashion the effect is the same, someone makes a calim and the strength is based on how well everyone else agrees.