 Meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, Hello freedom fiends, tasing you with liberty, while calming the hamster in your brain. Obama's drones keeping you down, the freedom fiends have an iron shield for your brain, and it's made of liberty. Your host, Michael Dean, couldn't be with us tonight. Instead, Davi, what's he up to? Well it seems there's been an outbreak of some sort of strange virus in Wyoming where politicians are rising from their graves to consume the brains of the living. And so Michael W. Dean is currently in his windowless bunker fighting off hordes of politicians who are eager to eat out his substance. Instead, we have me, Derek J, learn about me at DerekJ.me, and Davi Barker of Davibarker.com, and Stefan Kinsella joins the fiends tonight. He's from StefanKinsella.com. Hello, Stefan, how are you tonight? Worms. Worms. A fan I see. A big fan. The fiend greeting, the fiend aloha. Did you stand for something? Worms. Yeah, I know. It stands for many things. So tonight, all week we've been touching on this topic, intellectual property rights. We're talking a lot about rights on the fiends, and this is one that hasn't really been given attention yet. So Stefan, I thought in the context of the recent Adam Corolla patent troll debacle, you as an expert could help us break it down, help us know what's really going on when we hear about patent trolls trying to take down podcasts. What's happening there? And what is, first of all, intellectual property rights? Let's start there. Okay. So this came up in the discussion I was talking with Michael. We've talked about this before. Copyright trolls and patent trolls came up, right? So these are both two different phenomena. They refer to types of users of intellectual property, and they're called trolls. The metaphor is the bridge, the troll who collects a toll before you can pass over the bridge. I had no idea that's where the term was from. Right. Does that make sense though? In fact, the term was coined by one of the, I think it was an intel patent attorney who was pejoratively describing these people. And then he later became one of the biggest patent trolls. So I think his name was Peter Dedkin or something like that. Are there any other popular patent trolls that we would be aware of that the common person has heard of? They tend to fly under the radar. Most of them have a empty shell headquarter office in Texas, in Marshall, Texas, because it happens to be the patent trolling capital of the world. What? Wow, really? Yeah. There's a little town about... Why would a location matter? Well, so there's a little town about a hundred something miles northeast-ish of Houston called Marshall, eastern district of Texas. And there are dozens of these companies that have these just empty offices in these, you know, office buildings there, just so they can have a space there. Oh, just so it's a retail location, like just so they've got something on paper and in physical location? They just have an address there. It gives them the right to file their patent lawsuits in Marshall, Texas, because that one is the best one for patent awards. The juries there and the judges, they're known for, you know, getting the cases through there really quickly. And, you know, now they're famous for this and they want to keep their reputation up as this is the place to go. So, you know, their whole industry depends upon, they're not tourism, they're patent lawsuit in the space in Marshall, Texas. It's crazy. Is anybody playing with the pun Marshall law because it's screaming out at me? No, it's just a coincidence. It's the eastern district of Texas, technically. So the biggest awards for patent lawsuits are, for some reason, have gravitated towards that federal district in Texas. So there's lots of these, there's been, you know, exposés on this. Reporters go down the hall to these little strip centers and they're just empty offices with the lights aren't even on and they're just shingles up there, you know, with these one company after the other. And one of them is called personal audio. Okay. The term patent troll refers to these companies that don't sell a product that is covered by their patent. They usually buy these patents up in like a, when a company goes out of business or when there's an auction. So they're like cheaper at certain times. Like people will just sell their patents because they're they're liquidating or something. Right. So a lot of times you'll have a startup company, let's say, which will have a venture capital that will fund it. It will start up and they'll have a lot of engineers and inventors and they will come up with patents as part of their original, you know, why would there ever even be a system for transferring ownership of patents when I mean, my understanding is the whole original purpose of patents is to sort of protect the inventor. Well, so patents like copyrights are something that is assignable. Okay. You can own in fact, if you go back to the history of the way copyright worked, the original copyright system was rooted in state censorship and control of information. And so the patents were designed to censor information. So no, so copyrights were patents were designed to protect companies from from from competition. Oh, OK. So in fact, the statute, the patent system originated in the statute of monopolies in 1623 in England, and the copyright system originated in the statute of Anne in 1709. But that had its roots in the stationers company, which was a guild, which had the government and church-oriented monopoly over approving which books could be printed in the advent of the printing press. So how does how does all that still apply like 300 years later to podcasts? They didn't know that there would be podcasts to be patented or or not. I mean, they surely couldn't have known about the technologies that they've got and protecting competition. Wouldn't that only inhibit further innovation? Yes, this is the problem with patent and copyright. They're they're totally illegitimate, totally illiberal, totally contrary to freedom and the free market and competition and freedom of expression and freedom of the press. I mean, patent and copyright are two of the worst innovations or legal legal legal systems that we that are in existence right now. I mean, they're they're only behind the drug war and real war and taxes, perhaps. So help me take this to 2014. What's happening to Adam Corolla, the guy I know and love from The Man Show? He's now got some podcasts. It's very popular and it's under attack. Yes. So this is an example of why patent and copyright, which are two types of intellectual property or IP. The other types would be trademark and trade secret and other special forms like database rights or moral rights or boat hold designs, believe it or not. There's a special law for that or even defamation law, which is like reputation rights. That's a type of IP. But the big right is a kind of so I have a right to not be spoken ill of. Yeah, well, that's what we if you see someone for liable or defamation, that's what that's based upon the idea of a reputation right. Interesting. Yeah, so that's not normally considered by mainstream media and by lawyers as a type of intellectual property, but it clearly is in my view. Yeah, it's it's it's brain fruit, right? I like that's the kind of term I like to use. Well, the idea is that so you work hard to develop your reputation so you have created something of value, which is your your your your reputation in the eyes of people in the world. Then you have some kind of property right in that and copyright is you worked hard to create something creative like a painting or a novel or some kind of expressive work. And you have a property right in that work and patents would be you worked hard to create an invention that is a useful technique or device that has value. And you have a property right in that as well. And in fact, there used to be a doctrine in copyright law called the sweat of the brow doctrine, which is that if you if you put work into something, you had a property right in it. That was a little bit eviscerated in this. Well, it says who did did the courts just recognize that because there was like sweat on it. Like, what do you mean? It meant that you could determine whether you're entitled to copyright in a work if you had put a lot of work into it, like making a map, for example, took a lot of work to make a map, even though a map is just a representation of a fact like the way the world is arranged. Yeah, what kind of like ownership can you have over the drawing of a map like drawing of the earth? Originally have a copyright in a map, but in the Feist case and I think 1991, the Supreme Court said they the sweat of the brow doctrine was no longer applicable. Wow. So which meant that so you had these map companies doing all these crazy things to take advantage of the remnants of copyright law. So for example, they would put things like called copyright traps in maps. So sometimes if you look at a map, there'll be like a cul-de-sac or a little street, which doesn't exist. Why? The map companies put them in their own purpose just so that they could find out if someone had copied it. And they would say that the copier had copied the original content, which was a false street. Right, because that street is not a record of the fact. That is exactly the work of art in the middle of a map and you're copying that work of art. So so what can they do to punish them? What do they do? What are they afraid of? They're afraid of people copying the maps without permission and selling the maps to people that want to buy maps. Yeah, I know, but what's the punishment for people who do that? I mean, what bad things happen to them if they copy the map? Well, you can go to jail, actually. I mean, there are people in jail right now. There's a guy in jail for, well, he was sentenced to a year in jail for uploading a copy of the Wolverine movie about three years ago. Whoa. Oh, it was the one where the CGI wasn't finished, right? And it was all weird, like ray tracing stuff. I don't remember the details of I think I saw that version, but it was just, you know, uploading a file. It's actually criminal penalties. So it's Adam Corolla facing jail time. No, so that's a patent case. So the Adam Corolla case. And so you ask why there can be patent rolls. The reason is these are considered to be assets in the capitalist system, right? There's a property right in and that's why they call it intellectual property. There's a property right in a patent and there's property right in a copyright and the owner can assign it to someone. And typically they these are done by employees of a corporation and they're assigned to the to the corporation. The reason I brought up the copyright case of the stationers guild is because the original system was the stationers guild, which is chartered by the government back in England, had the authority to decide which which books could be published. And then when the monopoly ran out, the Statute of Anne was passed in 1709 and it gave the right to the authors. But because the authors had no choice but to go back to the publishing guild to publish their works, the publishers immediately reassumed their previous position of control. And we still have that system today, although it's eroding because of the internet. So in other words, authors of books still go to the publishing system and there's like millions of works that are now in a black hole because of the copyright system. The patent system is similar in some respect and has led to the advent of the patent trolling problem, which is what it's played in Adam Karola right now. And he's going to have patents and copyrights always been a government thing. Yes, patent copyright are purely statutory and invigorating alternative to those other shows. Hey, there's some squiskers, squiggles from death clocks and you are listening to the freedoms, themes on the, you know, the radials. And I guess I said worms now. So there you go. You've read books, attended lectures, and you know, the Constitution well enough to know it's a well crafted blueprint to create an ever-increasing federal empire. But there's still one thing missing. Freedom Fiends now has buttons. You'll get state speeches, hate speech, guns and weed, by sheep or sheep on sheep and two designs for the freedom fiends. Wear them with pride. Use them to start conversations with statists. It's only ten dollars for five buttons, including shipping. Go to freedomfiends.com and click on the link at the top that says buttons. What does freedom mean? Tune in to LRN.FM to find out. LRN.FM is the Liberty Radio Network, a collection of live talk, radio and podcasts, all coming from a principled pro-liberty perspective. LRN.FM's show hosts aren't left, right or conspiracy kooks. You can tune in 24-7 to LRN.FM via your phone, computer, satellite and more. Listen free anytime at LRN.FM. That's LRN.FM. Hello, Freedom Fiends. Worms, we are back. Chatting with Stefan Kinsella about Adam Corolla's patent troll that he can't get off his back, is he going to jail, Davi was asking. No, because this is a patent case, says Stefan. So tell us more. We always hear the old adage or people say they claim that copyrights and patents were originally designed to protect the artists. We must protect them, but who's being protected? Who's Adam Corolla threatening? Right, so one reason this came up in recent, the last week or so, was because of the controversy about Stefan Malinu and the DMCA takedown, which has been discussed on your show and Free Talk Live. Yes, Stefan Malinu is a popular YouTube philosopher. Right, and so there's a phenomenon called copyright trolls, which is not as common as the patent troll. And the copyright troll is someone who uses the threat of copyright to try to extract or to extort, I would say, money from other people. It's not as common. Copyright is used more often to censor speech. This case that we're talking about now with Adam Corolla is an example of where there's a kind of a crossover, where there's a patent, which is an inhibition on innovation and attacks on innovation. But what innovation and what is the official complaint? OK, so here's how it works. There was a patent and I can give you the patent number. I was telling you guys earlier before we started that I was talking to my friend Jeff Tucker about this earlier about my idea that I could go through with you guys the actually way that you because I'm a patent lawyer, by the way, so I could explain how you interpret a patent claim. And this might be the most boring radio show in all existence. So maybe we'll get started. We'll see how it goes. I'll guide you. Well, let's take a start at it and we'll see how it goes. Yeah. So I want to hear. But you know, people talk about this Adam Corolla patent troll thing, but how many people really dig into and look at the actual paperwork that's going on here? This is the these are the chess pieces that are moving around the board, right? So what's happening here? So and not only that, Adam Corolla probably himself, he got he had like a he had like a Kickstarter or not Kickstarter, one of those other sites he campaigned to raise out of four hundred thousand dollars to defend himself from this. So there is a company called Personal Audio, which owns a patent, which is patent number 8112504. So that's eight million, by the way. That means it's the eight millionth patent granted. There's a lot of patents in the U.S. that have been granted eight million things you're not allowed to invent. Well, some of them are expired by now. But, you know, a few hundred thousand issued every year. They last about 17 years. And so this is from the beginning of the patent system. When did it begin in the U.S.? Like, well, so the U.S. Constitution was ratified in 1789. Except patented. And that authorized the Congress to enact patent and copyright law. And the very next year, 1790 or 91, there was a patent and a copyright act granted. And Thomas Jefferson, by the way, was kind of against patents, was anointed as the first patent commissioner. It's a totally bizarre historical fluke. I mean, they figured he knew a lot about inventions and technology. So he should be the first patent commissioner, even though he had written these eloquent oppositions to the idea of having a natural right in innovations. Thomas Jefferson had this famous thing where he said, if you light your taper, which is like a candle with mine, then we both have a flame. So and that's what ideas, spreading ideas is like. So maybe Thomas Jefferson invented the Internet. Well, Thomas Jefferson had some eloquent arguments as to why the patent system makes no sense. And yet he was the first patent commissioner. So wow, that is strange. I wonder what his motivation was. Anyway, I got a soft topic. You were saying that this is patent number eight million something. And I was like, wow, that sounds like a lot. And it's only been, I guess, you know, 200, 300 years. And so yeah, there's hundreds of thousands issued every year in the US and in other countries. Yes, 8 1 1 2 5 0 4. So I'm looking at it right now on my screen. You go to Google, you can just Google patent 8 1 1 2 5 0 4. And you'll see the patent. And what it is, is it's a printed document issued by the United States Patent and Trademark Office in Washington, D.C. It's the result of the filing of a patent application, typically one, two, three years before this one was actually filed back in 1996 and issued only in 2012. So it took a while. But they last only 17 years, right? Well, under the old system until about 10, 12, 13 years ago, they lasted 17 years after they issued. Now they last 20 years from the date of filing. Hmm. Oh, well, I'm curious, we've we've got more coming up. I want to know our patents and copyrights. Could they be a thing in Libertarian Paradise? We'll find out more with Stefan Kinsella, Freedom Fiends. Freedom Fiends with Michael Dean. This is what radio sounds like now. Are you a political activist who does things that the government might not like? Then this free ebook may save your life. Rats is your guide to protecting yourself against snitches, informers, informants, agents, provocateur, narks, finks, and similar vermin. Rats was written by O.G. Libertarian Claire Wolf. Rats is a short book easy to read and available free in many formats. Download Rats free at rats dash no snitch dot com. That's rats dash no snitch dot com. Creamy radio audio want caviar sound on a cat food budget? Creamy radio audio by the Freedom Fiends has great free tips so you can sound like a pro without spending like one. The most powerful form of human communication is one person speaking to another. But if people have to suffer through your sound, they'll change the channel and miss your message. With articles on microphones, preamps, recorders, mastering, recording remotely over the Internet, doing a podcast, even getting a show on actual radio. The Freedom Fiends show you what they use and where to get it. Whether you're a talk show host, voiceover artist, podcaster, evangelist, or just want to record your loved ones for the ages at Creamy Radio Audio, the Freedom Fiends will help you make the most of your sound. Creamy Radio Audio will help you speak to the world with sound that will make people want to keep listening. Check out Creamy Radio Audio dot com. That's Creamy Radio Audio dot com. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Meow, meow. Worms. Freedom Fiends. Talking about intellectual property rights, Wikipedia says they are legally recognized exclusive rights to creations of the mind. And here we are to calm the hamster in your mind. Talking with Stefan Kinsella, who is a patent attorney. So walk on us through the recent Adam Corolla podcast war with a patent role. The company Personal Audio, who somehow owns a patent on. Well, what exactly, Stefan? What do they own a patent on? So this is patent 8.1.1.2.5.0.4. The title of the patent is System for Disseminating Media Content, Representing Episodes in a Serialized Sequence. OK, that's the title of the patent. Sounds complicated, but this is something anyone can find right on Google. Yeah. Well, yeah, the title is fairly meaningless, usually, in a patent. And again, this was filed originally back in 1996, really before the internet even really got going. I think one of the first quasi-podcasts was done in 1993, the advent of the internet from what I hear. Were there even MP3s then? I mean, what was it? I don't think there were MP3s quite yet. So it must have been really tough to consume a podcast because the file sizes would be so big it wouldn't even make any sense to do a program. So what these guys do is the patent lawyers, of which I'm one, get really creative in trying to draft the claims of the patent in a way that is as broad as possible, which means it covers as many possible new inventions that could come up in the future as possible that are described by the current invention without being so broad that you're going to get stricked down when you submit it to the patent office. This is how the system works. It's kind of terrible and messy, but this is what happens. And so you have a patent that's issued. And look, I will see mistakes all the time in the media and the libertarian discussions. They'll confuse patents with trademarks, with copyrights. If Apple files a patent and it gets published, then I'll hear reports that it was, there's, Apple has a new patent on the following when it's not really a patent. It's just a patent application, which is just pending. Really? Is that like news that patent attorneys follow? Like, ooh, who's got the latest patent? Like you follow, there are like eight million of these things. No, so we don't follow them, but the media follows them and they just report them all the time. So for example, if Apple has a new patent application on a trackpad kind of innovation, probably nine-tenths of the time, it's not an idea they're going to implement in one of their products. It's just something that their inventors are encouraged to submit and then put it in their stack of patents and they can use it for shakedown purposes or for defensive purposes when same-sunks use them with their stack of patents later. But that's really frustrating to people like me because I used to have an iPhone and I liked the swipe to unlock feature, which I understand is patented somehow by Apple. Other companies either can't use the swipe to unlock or have to pay some sort of fee to use it. And I think that's ridiculous. It's restricted my future phones from having that feature and they've had to find creative ways to get around it so that you can still swipe to unlock, but it's a little bit different or more complicated. So- Yeah, imagine if that had happened with keys. What do you mean? No, exactly. Like imagine if some company had patented metallic keys. Yeah, no one else can do this. Yeah, it would be that ridiculous. I mean, is this ever gonna go away? Will my phones in the future finally, will that expire and we can do the swipe to unlock thing? Or I mean, what's the point of that even? So as much as I hate the patent system, and I think the patent system probably causes about half a billion dollars a year of deadweight cost to the world economy, at least patents expire in about 15, 16, 17 years. Copyrights on the other hand, which don't cost as much on a financial basis, but they repress free speech and they give the state the excuse to police the internet, right? And restrict internet freedom. They last about 100 plus years. So copyright is even worse. Yeah, I mean, the creator will be dead by the time the copyright is still being enforced. Now, would there be either of these things, copyrights or patents in a libertarian paradise? I think it's totally impossible. And this is the frustration I see as a libertarian. I get the argument all the time from libertarians who say, well, you're against plagiarism, aren't you? Or you're against fraud, aren't you? Or you're against lying, aren't you? Are you? You're for contract, aren't you? With the sort of vague insinuation that in a free market, if you had a contract system and you're opposed to fraud and plagiarism, that would give rise somehow to something like the current patent and copyright system. And this is stated either by people who know that they're just lying or who don't know what they're talking about, who shouldn't be talking, because there is just no way in hell you could recreate the current patent and copyright system in a common law decentralized system. These are purely creatures of statute and copyright and legislation. How do you know that? Are you just speculating? Well, I know it because of the way they arose. I know it because I'm a lawyer. And how is it that? Please talk more about its protectionist beginnings. Well, so like I said, so the copyright arose from the practice of the state and the church in preventing people from publishing books that were not approved by the official organs of the state. And this slowly morphed into the statute of Anne, which morphed into the copyright clause in the US Constitution, which morphed into the copyright act. And in fact, there is just simply no doubt that the copyright clause, the copyright act in the US inhibits freedom of speech. You cannot publish certain things. There have been books that have been banned by federal judges, destroyed, ordered to be destroyed, movies, a remake of some vampire movie, a sequel to The Catcher and the Rye. This has happened over and over again. I mean, the Harry Potter books, one time the book was released early and a judge ordered people not to read it. He would bought it too early. Well, so this is under what penalty? What do they go to jail if they read Harry Potter? Yes, so there are literally criminal penalties for copyright violation and extremely stiff civil penalties. In fact, in my view, the copyright act is completely unconstitutional. So is the patent law, but the copyright law is more clearly unconstitutional. That's the one that came right after the Constitution? Well, so the copyright law was came after the Constitution in 1790 because of the Constitution in 1789, but in 1791, the Bill of Rights was adopted which had the First Amendment. And there's a conflict in my view between the First Amendment and between the copyright statute, which came before it. And if there's a conflict between two federal laws, the earlier one has to fall because the later provision has to prevail. That's how we can overrule bad laws. And the courts have admitted that there's a conflict or they call it attention between First Amendment, free speech, and the copyright law, but they just sort of try to balance them out and say, well, we don't know. So which one came first? Well, the copyright law came first. So that's the one that has to stand? No, no, that's the one that has to go. Oh, okay. The later one governs, just like the later one. Okay, so the newest rule is the one that comes up. If I strict interpretation, you'd have to say that the First Amendment nullified the copyright law. Is that what you're saying? Yes, I think the First Amendment nullified the copyright law and not only the First Amendment, but the Eighth Amendment, which deals with cruel and unusual punishment because the statutory damages for copyright infringements are insane. Like $75, $150,000 statutory damages per infringing work. That's why this woman, Jammy Thomas, who just uploaded or I think downloaded 20 files or something was sued for a million dollars and she just let him, you know, some single mother. I mean, there's these crazy things that have nothing to do with actual damage. Oh, it's crazy. What's the worst penalty that could happen to a person who's creating something that's copyrighted or patented by somebody else? Okay, so you can actually go to prison. Prison for infringing copyright. Another one would be being revoked from your right to use the internet for life, which is the new six strikes and your out rule, which is a quasi-private rule which the ISPs in the country have agreed to with the government. So if you start pirating content and you get a notice from your ISP, then that's the first strike. Can you just use Tor and then be connecting to the internet from China? Yes. Yes. So that can, in fact, I mean, there was like a student in England, I think his name is Dwyer, Richard Dwyer, who had a website and on his website, in England, he had links to another site and on that other site was one of these pirate sites which had pirated movies or files. Right. And he was accused of violating American copyright law, even though he's an English, you know, British citizen and an extradition order was issued. This is like a grad student in England. So he's facing extradition charges to come to America. He's gonna be forced from his home in the UK to come to the US to face criminal charges for having a website with links. That's stone cold, insane evil. But it's broad in the country he's not even in. Yes, I know. And this is the problem with, I mean, I don't have to tell you, it's worse than you can imagine. Wait a minute, what's really going on here? Aren't there some people who have some selfish motives? Doesn't this make any sense somewhere? It just seems all too crazy to me that a person who lives in the UK could be extradited for what, downloading a few movies and then he goes to prison in the US? He had a website with links. Oh yeah, yeah, he had links, right. What a criminal. He's telling people how to find something. So I think what's going on here is America is the world's bully. We're the biggest, strongest power. And our government is controlled by special interest groups like Hollywood and the software industry and the music industry. And they export American style IP law to the rest of the world, even though it's not in the other country's interests pretty much at all. And they twist the arms of other countries like our lap dogs, like the UK. And even our alleged kind of rivals like China and Russia and India to adopt American style IP law, patent and copyright. And for the pharmaceutical industry as well, which has a big interest in the patent law being exported. It's a crazy system. Almost every free trade agreement you can look at. NAFTA, bilateral free trade agreements, the upcoming, these upcoming agreements that the US government is trying to push, they try to enforce on other countries to get them to adopt American, US style patent and copyright enforcement and protection for the benefit of American companies. Yeah, it's always for the benefit of American companies. They've hijacked the system, man. This is the freedom fiends. You're listening to Freedom Fiends with Michael Dean and some of his weird friends. And yes, we're broadcasting this into space. Have you recently defued a cult that demands constant devotion to a figurehead? The guy who claims to be anti-IP but uses IP to silence critics? That charming gentleman who thinks all your problems are from bad parenting. If you're tired of tithing to messiahs who demand a lot of your money, consider donating to the Freedom Fiends. We're more fun and don't require constant praise. In fact, we don't even like audience involvement. We talk, you listen, if you want. And if you send us a dollar, we won't complain. We'll dig it. That's FreedomFiends.com. Worms. Wake up and smell the freedom. One of the easiest things you can do to help liberty is to torrent Freedom Fiends episodes to help keep them drone-proof. You can set up your home computer to download and share Freedom Fiends archives over BitTorrent. You can even set up scheduling so it only shares while you're a sleeper at work. Put your unused computing power to work and help keep the Freedom Fiends around well into the future. Simply go to FreedomFiends.com and click on the torrent club link and learn how to torrent and share Freedom Fiends archives. Ow. Me, ow. Hello, Freedom Fiends. You know, the zombies got Davi, Stefan. While we were away at break, the zombies ate him. He's wandering around in his backyard somewhere, looking for brains. I blame the government. This just in. A listener informs me now that a computer programmer who filmed Fast and Furious 6 from the back of a cinema and then uploaded it to the internet has been jailed for almost three years. The pirated copy of the film was downloaded 780,000 times, costing one of Hollywood's biggest filmmakers more than $4 million. I'm joined tonight by Stephen Cansella. He's a patent attorney with the Libertarian Principles. So, Stephen, why shouldn't this kid go to jail for theft of $4 million? Oh. Well, well, I guess the question is, why should he go to jail? Why should anyone ever go to jail? Well, he stole $4 million, essentially, from this filmmaker. Those people would have paid for those tickets. Yes, and so this is the essential argument underlying intellectual property claims is that you have a right to potential future profits that you could have made or would have made if your state-granted monopoly privilege would have been respected. I just simply don't think that there's a property right in the money in potential future customers' pockets. Huh? I mean, well, so the $4 million was money that they could have made that people would have spent on it, right? So, Joe Black and John Green might have spent $8 on a movie ticket, but they didn't have to do that because they could pirate the movie now. Exactly, that's the problem, all these people. But they own their money. So the movie studio doesn't have a property right in the money in the pockets of these potential future customers. But isn't it implied agreement that when you're consuming media, like a movie that you're supposed to pay for it? Well, no, I don't think it is an implied agreement. I think that, I think if people make information public, then other people are entitled to learn from and copy and emulate and compete with them based upon that information. If you don't, Benjamin Tucker, a great 19th century anarchist said, you know, if you wanna keep something to yourself, keep it to yourself. But if you wanna make information public, then people are going to learn from it and compete with you on that basis. I don't think we're gonna probably have time to go through the patent claims, which is probably a good idea of this one patent we were discussing earlier. But let me say really quickly, as much as I've been criticizing patent trolls and copyright trolls and studies indicate that patent trolls have probably cost the US economy about half a trillion dollars over the last 10 years, something like that. I think patent trolls are the least of our problems and I would prefer patent trolls to patent non-trolls. A patent troll is someone who doesn't practice the invention and they just want to extort a payment from you. That's all they want to do. Well, that's a patent non-troll? How are they a non-troll if they don't do anything? Oh, that is the patent troll, got it. But a regular patent user, the one that people don't criticize would be like, say, Intel or Apple. They actually have patents. Oh, they're non-trolls, right, but they still use patents. Yeah, but what they want to use their patents for is to stop competition. So they will use the courts to get an injunction, which makes it illegal for someone to practice that claimed idea. That's how it's dangerous. So they actually want to shut out competition. So let's say I'm a small company, a small high-tech startup company and I get sued by a patent troll, all they want is some money, okay? It's not good. It's like a tax. I can pay that maybe. And the patent troll doesn't want to ask for too much because if I can't pay it, they don't give anything. So they don't want to ask for too much of a tax. A competitor like Apple wants to kill me. They don't want me to exist. They want to kill you? Yes. Surely you're being hyperbolic. I am not. You say you're not, but we're gonna have to leave it there. I want to know, I wish I could ask you more. I want to know what it's like being a patent attorney who seems to not believe in patents that must be like hitting your head against the wall. Oh, it's like a dream, it's like a dream. Subject to another show. Well, we'll have to leave it there. StefanConcella.com is the website. Anything else you want to plug? C4saf.org, it's my innovation organization. Center for the Study Innovative Freedom. Center for the Study of Innovative Freedom. I like the ring of that. Worms. Worms. All right, Freedom Fiends. Love the fiends and want to help out? We do take donations and we put them back into our Liberty Projects. You can make a donation by clicking on the spinning coin on any post. But what if you want to help but you ain't got no cash or you made a donation and you want to help more? Here's how you can help. Download and seed our torrents to help keep us drone proof. There's a Torrent Club link at the top of FreedomFiends.com. You can also blog the fiends and share episode links on Facebook, Twitter, and elsewhere. You can rate and review our movies on Amazon and IMDb. You can rate and review the Freedom Fiends and our songs on iTunes. That really helps a lot. You can buy our movies and share them with friends or give them out as gifts. And one of the best ways to spread Liberty is to buy a bunch of Freedom Fiends buttons and give them out as gifts. Wholesale prices are available and you can also comment on our site or better yet, comment about us on other sites and please email the site link to all your friends. Thanks for helping spread the fiends message worldwide to as many Liberty people as you can, especially to those who don't yet get it. You rock. Worms. Davi and Michael Dean got eaten by zombies. So here, filling in is me, Derek J from DerekJ.me and Stefan Kinsella from StefanKinsella.com. And one other website, thanks for joining me again, by the way, I said goodbye to you in the earlier, at the end of the last segment, but you were gracious enough to stay on with me and stay co-host while Davi's brains are eaten by zombies. Yep, yep. Thank you very much. So what's it like being a patent attorney who doesn't believe in patents? Well, so I've been a patent lawyer since 1993 or four and I've been anti- Select the beginning of the internet. Yeah, and that's, I became a lawyer in 1992. So, and I've been anti-IP since about 1993 or four, like I was really came to my conclusions around then. So at first- What tipped it off for you? I just kept thinking about these issues because they nagged at me and they bothered me. Why? How did they even come up? Well, because I was libertarian already and I was not satisfied with the arguments for IP I had heard from Ayn Rand and others. I knew there was something wrong with it. And then when I started practicing in the field, it escalated for me. So I looked at it and I concluded pretty quickly that I think my first anti-IP article is 1994, 1995, right around the time I started practicing. But I was at first kind of quiet about it because I figured that if you're a patent lawyer who opposes a system, you're gonna get pushed back from clients. But over the years, I found out that no one really cares. I mean, clients don't care what you believe. In fact, to be honest, if you have a strong opinion about something, they assume you know what you're talking about. They don't care what you think. They just want you to be competent. And what I've done in my career is I focus only on defensive uses of patents. I think that what I do for a living largely would not exist in a free market, but it's necessary right now. So for example- So you're like a defender of, you're a defender against people who are accused of patent infringements and copyright infringements. And you're saying that wouldn't happen in a libertarian paradise because there would be no attackers for you to defend against. There would be no tax attorneys in a libertarian paradise, right? Tax attorneys that help defend people from the IRS or help them arrange their affairs to minimize taxes. But in the current system, we need tax attorneys. I imagine that doctors that oppose cancer and they're trying to fight it off that are oncologists, imagine a future where there would be no cancer and their jobs would be necessary either. But given the existence of cancer, they have to do something. So yeah, it's kind of a distasteful career. It's where the grease on the wheels, in a sense, we grease the wheels, we help lubricate the system, given what exists. But so like I said, I have had the luxury and I've steered my career so that I only, I do not participate in aggressive attacks against people. So I help companies obtain patents, which they can use to defend themselves against attacks from other competitors. It's a terrible huge waste and they know it. The companies know it, I know it. Are you upfront with that about that with your customers? Wow. How do they know it? What do they say? When you're like, hey, you're spending a bunch of, I mean, it must be what, tens of thousands of dollars, hundreds of thousands in some cases to create these patents. Basically just to defend against future attacks by companies that want to innovate or steal their innovation. It's like a very expensive insurance policy basically. What a mess. I mean, how does this become unraveled? Like if to a person who sees like, this is a big waste, this is a lot of overhead, it's producing nothing, it stops innovation. So how do we unravel this not? Well, what we have is we have, what I've seen is an increasing number of people in the industry, like Mark Cuban and innovators, engineers, they've become increasingly skeptical of the patent system, but most of them have no sort of proper terrain principles. So what they'll say is the patent system is broken. It's not doing what it was originally meant to do. So they're like being consequentialists, I guess. They're incrementalists and I don't mind incrementalism, but the problem is they never strike at the root. They'll say that we oppose stupid patents, we oppose patents that shouldn't have been granted, or we oppose the abuse of the patent system. And I find that frustrating because from my knowledge of the system and the way it works and my libertarian kind of foundations, if you got rid of the patent rolls, okay, which some legislation is proposed, if you just eliminated the patent roll problem, and if you got rid of so-called abusive patents, and if you improve the quality of the patent system, the fundamental problem would still remain, it would still be the big problem, is that you have large companies with lots of patents that they can use to intimidate, upstart small companies from competing with them. Like who's doing that now, like Apple? Yeah, so an example is the smartphone industry. So you have these huge multi-hundred million dollar lawsuits going on between Samsung and Apple. But I'm seeing a lot of innovation in smartphones. Yes, there is innovation. So you're saying it's stopping innovation, but I'm not seeing that. Well, I play devil's advocate here. No, no, so there is innovation, there's innovation by the companies that remain behind the walls, but it's like a cartel. So there's a small number of companies that are entitled to compete in this area. And of course they innovate because they're competing with each other, but they're protected from competition because small companies can't compete with them, because they will be sued out of existence by the patent threat. So I think there's just less innovation than there would be. Wow. We do have innovation despite the restraints imposed on us. By the state. You say the critics of patents aren't striking the root. What is the root of the patent issue? So the root of the patent issue is that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with competition. And competition means that if you observe someone starting to be successful in the market because of a new technique or a new business model or a new innovation, then you observe that they're making profits. There's a price signal by the monetary system. So you observe that and you start competing with them. This is what the free market is. It's the ability for people to compete with each other and to try to capture future potential revenue from potential future customers. The patent system imagines that there's something wrong with competition. There's something wrong if it's too easy to compete. And in fact, even some free market proponents who advocate the IP system, they will say that we can't have unbridled competition. Now, anyone that says they're against unbridled competition, to my mind, is in favor of bridling competition, which means they want to restrict it. Yeah, but they have this- Just to put on my devil's advocate hat here, they just want the benevolent government to oversee competition and make sure that people aren't acting unfair, right? They want some arbiter, some justice in the market. Yes, and of course the government takes a cut every time it's put in the position of being this arbiter, it takes a cut. It's its own cut and it uses its control to control the market and steer it in the direction that it wants. One problem with the patent system is that the patent system can only give these limited monopoly privileges for certain types of innovations and other things it doesn't give awards for, like abstract ideas or mathematical algorithms. Einstein's E equals MC squared would not have been eligible for patent protection because it's a law of physics. And yet it's arguably as beneficial to the human races as the rounded corners on an iPad. The system that the government puts in place always gives rewards to some things and doesn't to other things. And this distorts the very structure of innovation. It causes companies to invest millions of dollars of their R&D funds, the research and development funds into certain areas that could be protected by patents and not into others. So it causes us to try to invest more money into creating new practical gizmos and less into fundamental research and development. And then the government comes along and says, well, then we don't have enough private dollars going into fundamental research and development. So we have to have the national endowment for the humanities or the federal government has to fund all these companies. So it's just a huge quagmire. The FDA process, so probably the strongest so-called argument for patents is the pharmaceutical case because people say you have to spend millions of dollars to develop and test a brand new drug, which may fail. And by the time you have gotten through the testing process, you're gonna have all these competitors ready to go and you won't be able to recoup your development costs. So you need a patent to protect you from competition for some period of time. So the government imposed FDA system is used as an excuse for the government to impose the patent system. How are inventors supposed to even know any of this? I mean, say I've got some great product that I wanna put out to market. How do I navigate all these silly rules? Well, they have just a general sense, right? They have an idea that there's a way that they could protect themselves, but they know the legal system is very expensive and they're right about that and they basically can't. So what happens is they become employees of corporations and they assign their rights upon employment to the corporations just as authors do. Why not go independent? Why not just make their innovation and say, I don't wanna get a patent. I'm not going to register with the government. What would happen? Well, so a couple of reasons. So if they were just to go independent and not get a patent, then when they seek funding from a venture capitalist, the VC is going to say, well, do you have your patent rights locked up? And they'll say no. And if you say no, they'll say, well, then how are you going to stop big corporation A or B from suing you? And they'll say, it's inevitable that if you don't have a patent, big corporations are going to scoop them up and then sue you. Even if you created the original invention. So there is a danger that if you don't patent your invention that someone else could patent it as well and then you would be unable to even use something you came up with yourself. That is one danger of not patenting or making public your ideas. Yes. This is the Freedom Fiends. We'll be back with more. Worms. You and the hamster in your brain are listening to Freedom Fiends with Michael Dean and his weird friends. Shiny Badges on your jacket. Shiny Badges on your jacket. This is Davy Barker from shinybadges.com and I just want to personally apologize for airing a jingle week after week, month after month that turned out to be such an infectious brain worm. So to make it up to you, I'm offering a free gift. The next time you make a purchase at shinybadges.com, write worms in the transaction comments and I'll send you something weird. Mew, meow. Brings. Oh no. Brings. It's Davy. You're back from the zombie apocalypse. Brings. Worms. Welcome back, Davy. I heard it was a rough time with those zombies. You fought them off. What happened? I had to crush some skulls and stuff, but luckily libertarians are immune to the virus. So, you know, a couple bites and scratches, but I'm A-okay. Good to hear that. Boy, it's good to have you back. I was just chatting with Stefan about his sorcery being a patent attorney. It's like he casts magic spells. You have to know the right words to say in court and you have to know all these silly rules that govern property over ideas. Sounds kind of crazy to me. And it sounds like he doesn't even believe in these patent things, but he's doing it anyway. To protect the people. What kind of people have you protected, Stefan? Oh, my Lord. I have a lot of private clients that... Oh, okay. Well, you don't have to... I can't divulge, of course, but... Sure. I get people advice on DMCA takedowns and patent trolling issues all the time. So, what's a DMCA takedown? Well, that would be something you guys brought up recently in a show. The DMCA is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. I think it was in it. Sounds high-tech. Yeah, it was an extension of the copyright law. And one of the... Back from 1790? Well, the copyright law was like 1790. So, they added something to a law from 1790 just stacked it right on top. That, this'll fit. I think Bill Clinton did this. I think it was 1998. I think it was when I was a fairly new lawyer. And the one good thing about the DMCA was that it added this thing called... It was a safe harbor, okay? Now, I don't think it would be added now. Just like if you poll Americans, would you support the First Amendment or whatever? If you just read them the text, they'll say, no, that's crazy. It wouldn't make it right now. It inadvertently added a provision that allowed the internet to flourish, which was this DMCA takedown system, which says that if you are an ISP or some kind of internet service provider, and you have content posted by your users on your site, like comments or blog posts or whatever, if it is infringing someone's copyright or if it's a defamation claim, remember I mentioned that earlier. Under previous law, it wasn't clear whether the ISP would be liable under secondary liability provisions of the law for what their users did. These laws made it clear that you would not be liable for your users' actions if you complied with the DMCA takedown procedure. So... Which is what? What's the procedure filled out of form? Go complain to government? You're not liable for what your users do if you comply with a takedown notice by someone who complains about what they did. Oh man, this makes, it seems... So you're essentially saying that the DMCA policy at YouTube is not really set by YouTube, it's set by this law? Of course. Okay, so all of these sayings that like a DCA complaint is an appeal to a private company, which is YouTube is false, this is an appeal to law. It's 100% appeal to law, completely false that it's a private system. It's simply what these companies have been forced and coerced into doing, because if they don't comply, they could potentially be bankrupted because of the outrageous copyright fines that they could be subjected to under secondary liability for the actions of anonymous web users. But if this system had not been put in place inadvertently in the 1990s, we wouldn't have had YouTube. We wouldn't have had Facebook. Why not? Because there's too much liability for all the content that's posted by the users of these sites. Yeah, but couldn't they just not have a rule and then let everyone be fine? So if we didn't have the DMCA's safe harbor provision, then you think that internet service providers would be held liable for things like slander when their users type comments on a website that are slanderous? And copyright infringement too. So if a user posts a YouTube video which has a clip of a song in the background, like say you take a movie of your daughter dancing at a party and there's a Michael Jackson song in the background and you post that onto YouTube, then under conventional copyright rules, YouTube could be liable for copyright infringement as a secondary sort of infringer along with the user. So what they would obviously do is they just wouldn't allow any of that. So YouTube would not have existed. Facebook wouldn't have existed. This is news to me. I had no idea that a law could actually do some good. We've talked about patents crushing innovation in the market. Next, I want to ask about patents affecting artists. We're listening to Freedom Fiends with Michael Dean and his weird friends. Tasing you with liberty since 2011. Learn more at FreedomFiends.com. When you shop online, please do it through the Freedom Fiends Amazon link over on the right side of FreedomFiends.com. It won't cost you any extra and the fiends will get a little taste from Amazon and Amazon will save you the danger of drive-by stabbings at your local mall. Amazon sells pretty much everything you can buy on this earth except for guns and weed. But they do sell the DVD, Guns and Weed, The Road to Freedom. So get that for your gun-hating stoner brother or neocon gun nut dad. They'll thank you for it. That's FreedomFiends.com. Freedom, Foxtrot, Echo, Echo, November, Sierra.com. Meow, meow, meow. Pins, trolls. Well, we've talked about how patents crush innovation in the free market. So how do patents and copyrights affect artists, Stefan? So imagine you're a documentary producer, okay? You're trying to do a documentary. There are amazing number of complications. There are documentaries that have been hijacked and produced, sorry, stalled for years because of these clearance issues. You- I produced a documentary with a bunch of copyrighted music in it. Well, the music is one problem. And it's on YouTube. Yeah, so let's just say you're just going down the streets of New York or some city, just filming things. Cities are now claiming a copyright type right in the skylines. So for example, in Paris, in Paris, the Eiffel Tower, they, the city of, I don't know if it's the city of Paris, there's some governmental agency over there. They claim a copyright in the photographs of the tower at night, but not during the day because there's like the lights are lit up and you can see the image. So do they only own the image of the Eiffel Tower skyline at night? They don't own the one during the day. That's fascinating. So how can anyone tell the difference if you're just using the profile, for example? Well, there's an increasing number of techniques that these right holders use to detect copyright infringement. And another one would be the Port Authority in New York. You know, the one that was in control of the 9-11 sort of issue. They're controlling, they're asserting a right in the New York skyline images right now. So it's just crazy. So if you're a documentary producer, you can't even, you have to limit yourself in what you can produce. You have to get publicity rights from the people that are shown. There's defamation rights to worry about. There's paper issues. I mean, what do these things all mean? Are they all jail time? Are they fines or are they, you know, you have to take your product away from YouTube or what? Like what's the worst that could happen to me? I used a bunch of copyrighted music in my documentary and I felt like that was fine. I also produced another version without the copyrighted music. So people have a choice. Hey, if you're anti-IP, well go ahead, you can have your pick. So what's the worst that could happen to me? I used like 20 different songs. Am I gonna have 20 different lawsuits? Well, you can have a lot more than that actually if people cared, you know. But I don't charge for the documentary. It's just free. So is that okay? No, that doesn't make it okay. This is the problem with copyright law just because it's non-commercial or not profit doesn't mean that you're in the clear. The real problem is that you're not gonna get funding from anyone or you're not gonna get a distribution because they're gonna know that this is a dodgy project. Unless you can show that you've cleared all the hurdles and you've got everything cleared, they're not going to fund it because it's a risky venture. So it makes everything- So that's one obstacle, but that can't be the only obstacle. I mean, what if you jump over that one? What if you find some angel investment? Then you can make your movie, right? And you could. But an investor wants to make a profit or they want their money back. And if they think that your project is going to be sued into the ground because of copyright lawsuits or trademark lawsuits, they're not gonna trust it. That's not as attractive. They're gonna get advice from lawyers saying, steer clear of this unless these guys are big players who do what they're doing. So is this what happens? I mean, is this just theoretical? Is this in your head or does this really happen? This happens all the time. I mean, this is like endemic in modern society. We don't see it because we see what we see, right? We don't see the projects that we don't see. We don't see the projects that were abandoned because of copyright or because of threats. That's like one of those principles of opportunity cost. Like the unseen, the things that people would do with their money if it weren't being spent on whatever their force to spend their money on. Taxes, for example. I think so, yes. I think that intellectual property, not to get too theoretical, but I think it basically results from a misunderstanding of the nature of property rights. And it comes from John Locke in the 1600s who came up with this idea that the reason we have property rights in things is because we labor, we mix our labor with them. Is that true? See, that sounds just like the sweat of the brow doctrine you were talking about earlier. Yes, it all mixes together. And in fact, communism, right, resulted from the labor theory of value. So Locke was the labor theory of property, which I think in a way led to or contributed to the labor theory of value. Is his theory correct or is he bunk? I think it's a mistake. I understand why he did it, given what he was responding to, Filmer and the defense of monarchism. He was trying to say that if you transform an unowned resource that God gave to the world, then you have a better title to it than someone else. But his argument was you own yourself because God gave you yourself, whatever that means. I guess that means your body, he's not really clear. So these earlier writers are more metaphorical than we sometimes are now. And you own your labor now to my mind as a Misesian, as an Austrian, as a rational thinker. Labor is just an action. And when you say you own your actions, to me that makes no sense whatsoever. And action is what you do with something that you already own. So you can see that- What about owning like responsibility for your actions? Yeah, it's the product of your actions. I don't think you- You own the results of your actions and that includes liability. Yeah, ownership means the right to control, okay? As a lawyer, that's what it means. The right to control. Responsibility is a different thing. Responsibility is what someone else is entitled to claim from you. So to say that you own responsibility or you own an action is just a confusing way of putting it that's just bound to lead to- So how would you put it if not with the word own? What sort of relationship does a person have with responsibility? So I think that when you commit, when you cause harm in a certain way to someone else's property, basically when you invade their property, you give rise to a relationship in which they are a victim and they're entitled to claim something from you in restitution or something like that. That seems fair. Yeah, so basically- I go stomp on my neighbor's flowers. I have to repair those flowers or do something to correct that because I've wronged them. That's restitution. And you can say I own that. That just means I am admitting in common parlance, right? I'm admitting that I'm the cause of it and I have to make it good somehow. Yeah. But ownership technically just means the right to control a resource. So to mix these things, I think it can only lead to confusion. Just like using the labor theory of value and the labor theory of properties led to intellectual property and communism and millions of deaths. I mean, these are big, big, big errors in my view in the last two, 300 years. I'm an anarchist, but I'm gonna put on my Minarchist hat for a moment. There I am. I'm gonna pretend to be a person who believes in the minimal state necessary, the minimum level of government, just protection of life, liberty and property. The Night Watchman state, right? Right. So, Stefan, isn't this a problem that can be solved with voting? Well, Okay, you asked me, right? So, the Randians, the Objectivists will say that, in fact, they will explicitly say that we're not really in favor, they're not really in favor of limited government or minimal government. They're in favor of rational-sized government. So, if in a time of war, let's say, we need 50%, 60%, 70% of the GNP to defend ourselves from a foreign threat, that's the rational size of government. So, in a way- It seems like too much. Well, it seems like too much, but they at least admit that they're not in favor of minimal government. And I don't know as a, look, I'm a radical anarchist, Rothbardian, Proprietarian. I don't know what limited government means. First of all, every government is limited. No government is unlimited. They're all limited by nature. Okay, so when you say you're in favor of limited government, you're stating a truism. Everyone in the world, even Hitler is in favor of limited government. So, the question is what limits are you in favor of? Right? So then the Americans will say, well, the Constitution. Well, okay, fine. Well, the Constitution is pretty goddamn broad. Okay. So, sorry, I can't cuss, can I? Yeah, watch your language. All right, sorry, that's okay. So, limited government is a myth, a chimera. It cannot exist. The minimalist state idea of the Night Watchman ideal, I think is a mythological ideal. What I find ironic is that I find menarchists or ultra menarchists like Robert Nozick, people like that, they will berate or mock or ridicule or criticize anarchists for advocating something that's unrealizable, even though they're advocating the limited state or the minimal state. I mean, that's even advocating something that is contradictory in a sense, because the minimal state is supposed to, its primary role is to protect private property and yet its primary modus operandi is to violate private property or so. But if the people saw that this was so immoral and this is wrong and this is ruining innovation, then can't they just vote to change the law? I'm still wearing my menarchist hat. Well, I mean, I never got a chance to vote on the patent law. I mean, that was enacted in 1790. And no, you can't, all these politicians are in the bed of Hollywood and the pharmaceutical industry. There's no way they're going to oppose it. I mean, the most radical patent reform or copyright reform laws you will ever see is a slowing of the increase in protection. That's it. And if anyone ever says, we should maybe slow down the increase in the growth of patent protection, then all the patent components will say, you're radical, you're trying to disrupt the system. Maybe we should do away with patents altogether. I would love to see a world like that, a free world where people can create what they want. This is freedom fiends, patent pending. When you're listening to freedom fiends, go to freedomfiends.com to help keep it drone proof. Hi, this is Michael Dean from the Freedom Fiends radio show. The internet has lowered the cost barrier for a worldwide radio show to a price approaching zero. Yet there is one arena where you still need thousands of dollars to approach the audio quality of the corporate media. Doing a live spoken show with more than one host in different geographic locations, our program Fiend Phone will solve that problem and it will be given away free. Go to fiendphone.com to see what you can do to help. That's F-E-E-N-P-H-O-N-E.com. Meow, meow, meow, meow. Meow, meow, meow, meow, meow. Meow. Worms. I don't think we purr enough on this show. Can you purr? Ooh, that's lovely. Keep doing it. All right, so this is redemption in the third act. We gotta leave these listeners smiling before they close their eyes and enter dreamland. So tell us, Stephan Cancella, is it hopeless or is there hope? So to my mind, this is tied up with the state question as well, is there hope? And I think there is hope. I hope there's hope with technology and the way the world is developing right now. In the IP field, I think in the copyright field there is hope in a lot of hope in the encryption area. So we can use bit torrenting. Basically copyright is dead. They can inflict penalties on us for violating it, but they can't stop pirating. It's happening all over the place and I think that's a good thing. In the patent area, I think that is harder to defeat with something like torrenting, but 3D printing is posing a challenge to patents and I think it will become an increasing tool we can use to escape the patent system as well. So I think with technology, basically the internet, encrypted technology, torrenting and with 3D printing that we are going to slowly escape the strictures of the old world copyright and patent system. So yeah, I do see hope. That is hopeful. Hey, I wonder if torrenting and encryption and 3D printing are all parts of the solution to ending copyrights in the tyranny of patents. Can we combine like all three? Can you encrypt your torrent files for 3D printed guns and then be completely safe and destroying the world of patents and copyrights? No, I think there's a convergence in the sense that, right, so you could encrypt a file and look, I think the pattern for making a 3D gun is gonna be very small. So it's gonna be easy to send. And you can encrypt your internet traffic. So even the torrents that you're sending out, if you've got a VPN, a virtual private network, you could be sending out torrents so that people can download these gun files and there would be no way that the government could trace back to you, right? Or, you know, whoever's looking or I guess it would be more difficult for them, right? I think so, I hope so. I mean, none of us are expert. But it seems like there are options here that people aren't pigeonholed. They aren't without options. Well, I mean, look, if you have a 3D printers getting better and better and this could be the revolution of the century, right? I mean, I don't know. The internet could be, but I think I'm starting to think 3D printing could be. Yeah. We're at the beginning of this revolution. It's like the next Gutenberg press. Yes, and I just think, I mean, if you have to walk over to a neighbor's house and put a USB thumb drive into their computer and get a file that's 10 megabytes or something or one gigabyte, it's not that big anymore. Or just an email that's encrypted. I just think the government cannot stop this. The interest interest cannot stop this. And this will increase competition. It will increase the pressure on the interest industries. And I think it's a good thing. So I'm actually hopeful, to be honest. I personally don't want to move to New Zealand or Chile or Lichtenstein or something like that or even Canada. I know America has problems, but I think that we are getting richer and richer. Technology is blossoming. And it helps the government, but it helps the people even more, I think. Because the government is slower than we are. So I'm actually optimistic. Me too. The government is much slower than we are. And they're just incentivized by money, not morals. Well, thanks to encryption and 3D printing and torrenting. Hopefully copyright will be dead soon. This has been Derek J. And Stefan Kinsella of StefanKinsella.com, Davy Barker of DavyBarker.com. I hope we've calmed the hamster in your brain tonight. Michael Dean will be back next week after the zombies are defeated. Worms. Worms. Worms. And brains. Brains. Brains. Brains.