 Hey, this is Stefan Kinsella. This will be Kinsella on Liberty episode 415 415 What I'm gonna do today is this I'm gonna like do a video commentary on a video Recently produced by Larkin Rose on the question of intellectual property. So let me just lay the background of where I start I'm using by the way this new zoom Create clip feature because I've never figured out the technical way to do video commentary So I'm trying this it may be crude, but hopefully it'll be Sufficient So about a year ago Larkin Rose who is some some Libertarian writer or fallen tourist or anarchist I've met him at pork vests. I've never read his stuff. So I just think he's some libertarian activist type Writer and he to his credit Opposes intellectual property although I'm not sure his reasons make a lot of sense, but he seems to oppose intellectual property But he had some video like saying that yes if you pirate You know copyrighted content Then you know, there shouldn't be copyright laws. So you're not doing anything illegal But you're still a a jerk or a poop head as you called it So he's criticizing people for for for copying free public information And I disagreed with that for various reasons because it's confused and so I went on Patrick Smith's Podcast which I'll link to in the in the show notes with Larkin to discuss it and You know, he ended up kept he kept saying that if you're a pirate you're a jerk And I I said well I said something like well, you know You could make an argument that if you are a libertarian activist and your goal is to get the message out there And you write a book on Liberty and you put it behind a paywall and you don't make it freely available like in a PDF copy Then you're being a jerk because if your mission is to spread the ideas of liberty Why would you restrict it to just, you know rich Western white people who can afford who can afford it? You know, what about all the millions of people in Africa or Asia or the Middle East or South America? Don't we care about them? So I'm just saying from all I'm saying is, you know You could make an argument that that your your priorities are misplaced Especially we're just selling a tiny little no-name self-published book Which you're never believe I've published lots of books some have made lots of money for legal legal publications Some make very little money So I know I know that it's you know, these these these no-name libertarians who write these little Self-published tracks, they don't make any money off of it. They might make a little maybe a couple thousand bucks but So it's not like it's not like there's it's not like their main goal is to make money And if they do they're diluting this if they think that they're diluting themselves And even if they really are making money or think they want to make money off of it You know, if you put a free PDF of your book online It doesn't mean you can't keep making money selling the book like you're doing before lots of people will still buy it In fact, they could increase sales. So I Never said you don't have the right to put a paywall up. I never said you have a strong moral obligation I simply said that you know, if you're going to argue someone is a jerk for copying public information without any argument whatsoever Then you could easily argue that someone's a jerk for Not being a good libertarian by putting fake elusive profits over spreading the message. That's all So that could just be an opinion so Larkin went crazy when I said this he was shocked to start calling me a commie Which is not anyway Fast forward a year later, I think he's been working on some movie called Jones Plantation which Mine it looks just the trailer It might not be quite as bad as alongside night and the Atlas shrug movies. Who knows Anyway, he had a video about that and apparently here's here's what I think happened in his video. He's defending himself from basically paywalling the movie like charging people to see it and not making it free online and criticizing people that pirate it and upload it and things like that He's he's doing that in this video and I he doesn't name names except one party mentions me near the end But he's very elusive. He doesn't give specifics He's he's a little bit Miscreptive about the the the YouTube takedown process that he mentions To try to make it sound not as bad as it is So here's what I think happened. I think that The movie is done. They're going to have a premiere in a couple of weeks in Dallas and Some copies of leaked and some people are already leaking it on torrenting sites or something like that So you can get a copy of the movie apparently right now if you happen to want to watch it So so apparently Some people involved with the movie and Larkin was a writer. I think and maybe a bit actor in it So he has some involvement in it. There's probably some people with money behind it Must have cost something to make I don't know So apparently Well, he said he says and we'll get to this and that what I'm gonna play his video By the way, the video is about 35 minutes long. I don't know if we'll get to the whole thing It's a little tedious to watch because he repeats himself. He's a little confused And I'm not trying to pick on poor Larkin here He's actually to his credit He says he's against IP and he admirably sees that it can't Extend to third parties who are not in privity of contract or something like that. So he sees that to his credit But I want to use this video and to go through his comments to show to try to To to clarify some things because IP is a very difficult topic for people to understand And so people get confused about it all the time they get confused about the DMCA They get confused about section 230, which is not copyright related. They get confused about contract and the morals versus rights issue Self-ownership labor theory of value all these things But what I think happened was someone Associated with the movie maybe Larkin. Maybe the maybe someone else they sent YouTube takedown notices That's DMCA digital Millennium Copyright Act Copyright takedown notices to YouTube and they took them down and then apparently he got criticized by a bunch of libertarian activists who To their credit understand that IP is evil and they're thinking what the hell is a bunch of anarchists doing? using copyright to stop free speech basically right or freedom of whatever so And so now he's being defensive about that Now I Understand being defensive. I'm a patent attorney. I've made my living over the years by applying for patents Which is a system. I think should not exist and I either say, you know, fuck it. I'm not gonna try to defend it Or here's my defense, you know, and I've done this in other videos But I try to be honest about it, you know Not try to change the nature of what it is now in my case What I've done has been always defensive Or neutral so Yeah, it's true my career wouldn't exist if I had my way and which is what I want but I can only do what I can do So if you're in a system where you're forced to use trademark law or the DMCA as part of your business model, okay But don't pretend that it's just Enforcing a contract. It's not that's what Larkin sort of implies later Okay, so I'm gonna get into his video. I'll stop it on occasion and hopefully this this my technological approach will work Well, so here we go I'm gonna press play and move my little window over here Dallas, Texas August 26th. That's two weeks from the day I'm posting this There will be a screening of the Jones plantation. Yeah, I will be there Amanda will be there Andrew the director will be there Guy who plays mr. Jones will be there. I think we're gonna have some other Surprise guests of other people who are in the movie. I think I'm not even sure who but I think a couple more are gonna be there So if you don't yet have tickets that want to see it on the big screen Check the description below For the length of how to get tickets August 26th Dallas, Texas. I Wanted to make a video that is kind of relevant to what's going on right now somebody copied the Jones plantation movie as we knew they would and Stuck it on Odyssey and someone else stuck it on YouTube and There were complaints and they took it down because to post it on those things you have to violate the conditions that you agreed to before posting there because both of those platforms and lots of platforms say if you If you're posting content somebody else made without their permission, that's the violation of their own policies And so that's that's that but it okay, so here's here's where he's already trying to spend it What and I need to explain some things here, so Here's the way it works There is copyright law in almost every country because of the burn convention including the United States and it Sensors free speech and it's totally unlibertarian and evil. Okay, and because the way the law works So when someone infringes copyright by publishing something That is someone else's copyrighted work without their permission They're potentially liable for criminal and civil damages. You can go to prison for this And not only is the Actual infringer the direct infringer potentially liable, but other people are potentially liable For your liability that's called secondary or vicarious liability or responsibility And so when the internet started there was a danger. There was a there was a fear that If you had this, you know with the emerging internet with the with the emergence of blogging and commenting that if you had an if you're an internet service provider called an ISP or a platform like let's say blogger or Later you YouTube or places like that and you let you let your users post Content like a comment or an article or a video or mute or an audio file or an image That if that was a copyright infringement then the person who uploaded it could be liable, but you could be Liable for what they did under secondary or vicarious liability for for for enabling it right or for helping it And the fear was that that would kill the internet because how could you have a Blog and allow people to comment if someone could post a copyright infringing Image or something in the comments and you didn't do you didn't you didn't ask them to do that But you have no control over it because you don't have the resources to monitor every post So Congress and there was a concern about that for defamation as well if you post something that's not mandatory and So Congress enacted in 1996. I believe The communications decency act Sorry, my dog is barking the CDA under which has the section 230 exemption for liability For defamatory contents of your users and then in two years later in 1998 Okay Shut the dogs up So the CDA was the defamation exemption in 1998 and these are all under Bill Clinton. I believe um A similar exemption was given to platforms and ISPs and providers For copyright infringement and they said you're not secondarily liable for the copyright infringing acts of your users if you follow these steps, which is you have to Immediately take down the content if you get a notice from someone pretending or purporting or Claiming to be the copyright holder And if you don't do that then you lose your exemption and you might be liable now YouTube So this has led to this takedown system Where YouTube takes down? I don't know. It's like a million a day It's crazy because you have all these robots from all these media companies Scouring videos that they detect a little thing They just send a notice and then YouTube takes it down because they don't they don't have the resources to investigate every one And if they make a mistake they lose their they lose their exemption and they could be liable for hundreds of millions of dollars because the Statutory damages are hundred and fifty thousand dollars per active infringement. I mean it's crazy. So And so that's why these companies have these policies. They have these policies just to avoid Being decimated by copyright law These are not free market policies. These are not just a term of service in a free market with no copyright It's unimaginable that these companies would have similar policies If YouTube had a policy that tried to mimic what copyright makes them do right now Then you would just have an Odyssey pop up or something or Odyssey number three pop up and they would say well We're not going to do that. You anyone can post anything. We don't care. And so if I try to post a video on YouTube That the the creator doesn't like and he complains to YouTube and YouTube takes it down because that's their Free market terms of service then I'm just going to go to Odyssey So so the YouTube's the ones that have restricted policies just wouldn't survive in a free market So these are not free market policies is my point So Larkin is trying to portray it that way. So but the reason he's doing that is because later on he acknowledges that IP is bullshit copyright is wrong Now but if you have a contract with someone not to reveal information, that's legitimate, which I agree with But he concedes that that doesn't bind third party So once the information gets out to the internet and gets becomes public like on a torrent site or whatever Let's say someone briefs their contract and they they leaked it which they shouldn't have done But once they do it the information is public now you have this massive third parties who have no obligation To they have no contract with the producer If they did they would be violating a contract, but they don't so that's why that's why piracy is not a Legal offense or a crime under libertarian theory and Larkin understands this But what he's trying to do is he's trying to say well when you upload a video to YouTube You're in breach of contract because you're breaching the agreement with YouTube their terms of service Now see this but this is just not the case. This is not what's going on. What's happening is that Larkin and his friends are using the power of copyright threats to Tell YouTube and Odyssey you cannot use your platform for this reason So another is a saying hey Odyssey unless you take this video down You could be you could be subject to a copyright infringement lawsuit because Because if you don't take this video down we might sue The user who put the video up and we might sue you for secondary liability because you're the host And you don't have the exemption under the DMCA anymore because you refuse to take it down So you see what's going on here. This is not just innocent This is not just Bad users who are violating an agreement with the content creator They might be breaching the terms of service with the host YouTube or Odyssey But those terms of service are there just as the defense against copyright which shouldn't exist. Anyway, let's go on It brings up the concept of intellectual property, which to me brings up a wider concept They don't believe in intellectual property, but people do this weird thing of They they come up with these ideas and these concepts and they forget what they're based on they forget what they came from So basically almost everything I talk about when they talk about political political philosophy it all stems from the idea of Self-ownership even that is kind of a weird thing and some people complain about well if I own myself Then I could sell myself and will you kind of can't He's talking here about the the voluntary slavery thing, which is which is Orthogonal to this so he's right to dismiss that but you'll see here. He gets he's a little bit confused like a lot of Like a lot of libertarians are He He seems to glimpse that self-ownership Means Ultimately just means a property right in your body. He never says it that way But he sort of seems to get that you'll see in a second, but He also then Hints that yeah, it means you also own what you create with your labor. Okay, this is the labor theory of Property of Locke, which is why most people believe in intellectual property because they make that mistaken view that they make They mistakenly believe that you own yourself Instead of your body, right? This is kind of holistic thing yourself and Therefore you own your your labor That that's the key mistake. I've talked about this. I'll have it this in the show notes But this is Locke's big mistake and it's confused everyone This why I'm a little surprised that Larkin is against IP Because he seems to believe that you own your labor and you own the fruits of your labor this metaphorical nonsense Which is why most people believe in IP? Only thing I can think is he's such a staunch anarchist and he hates the idea of state force that he senses that Even if you own your labor, you just can't justify State force used against someone for not stealing a physical thing I think it's something like that but to his credit he he seems to be against IP for whatever his reasons are But his concept of self-ownership is not quite precise enough Self-ownership really means every person is the owner of his body. That's all it means It does not mean that you own your labor It does not mean you own the fruits of your labor Now the reason for this latter point that this latter point is important and it is true Is because the only source of ownership? Well, first of all the only things that can be owned or scarce resources and by this we mean what I call conflictable material resources scarce means of action the types of things that are exclusively they can only be exclusively used and that the use of which implies that You know Someone's using it someone else cannot use it right so that means there's a potential for conflict over it So we need as human actors in the world to use scarce means which I call conflictable resources to achieve our ends and property rights are there to reduce or eliminate this conflict by allocating the The ownership or the control of a given resource to a particular owner, right? And then you could in principle avoid conflict. So all property rights are ownership rights in Tangible scarce material conflictable resources and They can only come from two sources number one is When there's a human actor who's already a self-owner, which means he's a body owner So you have this human body person person body walking around who owns his body and He's in a world with some things that are not yet appropriated or owned by anyone else Which means that no one else has a claim to the thing which means that if he starts using it as one of his pursuits Then he can claim ownership of it because no one else can claim That he violated their rights because they would have to be the owner of it already for them to Complain about him using the thing Okay, so once you have a property rights system ownership initially comes from original appropriation or what some people call homesteading So that's one source of ownership Homesteading an unowned scarce resource one number two is if you get it from a previous owner by contract that's it and A subsidiary would be if you get it from the owner because he owes you owes you Damages for committing a tort against you, but you can think of that as a subset of contract But anyway in both those cases you have in the first case you have someone Becoming the first owner by getting something that no one else had a claim to unowned resources second Yes, by the way, you have to use your intellect in your labor to do that But that's not because you you don't own it because you own your labor You don't own your labor labor is an action. You can't own actions actions are what you do with your body And and so You own it because you were the first one to establish an objective link between yourself and the thing And you can therefore have a claim that show you're the first user and you have a better claim than any latecomer That's the essence of property rights is that current owners have a better claim than someone who takes it from them Takes it from them later In second you can get it from a previous owner by their consent only if they can essentially agree to it Which could be a contract where I give you my car or I sell you my car or If I if I injure you Negligently, let's say and now I owe you some damages. So now some of my property becomes owned by you so I can Give you rectification or restitution. Okay, but basically the point is the only sources of ownership is Original appropriation of an unknown thing or contract. That's it It's not creation and it's not labor. It's not production Production is how we make wealth production just means transforming an existing thing that you already own so if I have some iron ore and I turn it into a Plow now I have increased my wealth because it's more useful to me or to my customers if I want to sell it But the only way I own the plow is if I own the iron ore that went into it if I'm on a factory working for Working for some plow company Then the the owners my employers are the ones that own the iron ore and they're the ones that own the output Which is what I created with my effort, but I'm paid in a salary, right? I'm a wage slave right according to the the left libertards You know I'm an employee but but the point is Creation is not a source of it's not a source of property rights because it's not necessary Again, if I find some iron ore in a field, I didn't create it, but I'm the owner because I'm the first and Again, if I make a plow Using someone else's iron ore under contract as an employee I'm not the owner of the plow so creation is not sufficient So creation has nothing to do with ownership creation is a source of wealth So we have to distinguish wealth from property rights All right. Anyway, let's go on and but by self-ownership I just mean ownership means the exclusive right to decide what is done with something and Self-ownership by that. I mean I get to decide what's done with this with my time and effort and my body and Notice see he's he's getting he's close to it. He's he's he's actually really good here on he's right that the right Property right means the he says exclusive right and technically it really means the right to exclude It just means the right to prevent Property rights don't give you the right to do something with a thing because if I own a gun I don't have the absolute right to do whatever I want with it. I can't point it into your yard and shoot at your house Right, just because I own it so it doesn't give me the right to use it It gives me the right to stop you from using it and this gives me the effective ability to use it in most cases right But he but notice he throws in time and effort and all this like no now we're getting metaphorical No, because he doesn't say the word body. He says this points to himself This vague thing about this kind of agglomeration of concepts myself, which is this loose thing is time is effort Maybe my mental creativity my labor my love my thoughts my hopes my dreams. I don't know I mean, that's why we need to be precise when we're talking about property and law I mean law or law or property rights that are legally enforceable notice the word forces in there forces a physical concept Right, you can only apply force the legal system of whatever community you're in whether it's private or government run Can only be applied to a tangible physical object because that's how physics works forces applied to physical things Right So that's why in the end all property rights are about physical things and who gets it So that's what self-ownership really has to mean because One criticism of the idea of self-ownership by very confused new age hippie California types is who how can you own something? How can you be a self-owner if you are yourself? It's like a contradiction man. Look whenever someone starts talking that kind of bullshit I hold on to my fucking wallet because they're coming for it, you know ultimately The alternative to self-ownership is slavery, but what we mean by self-ownership is we have this we have this This humanistic concept of the person the personality the actor in human action terms And that Identifiable person is the one that has the property right in that body that's connected to that person So you don't have to get into mysticism and All that kind of stuff you just have to have to have a console So you don't have to be religious for example to believe that there's a distinction between the self and the body Any more than that you're a mystic if you think there's a difference between the brain and the mind I mean my brain has a weight and a size and an age My mind has no weight A dead body has a brain, but it has no mind, you know, I can change my mind, but I can't change my brain You know, I mean concepts are different some are abstract and some are concrete and This is applied to different things and it doesn't mean there's not a relationship between them Okay, but the point is we want to talk about property rights and Justice and law which is what these things are about. We're always talking about physical force So then we're always talking about who is the owner of any contestable physical resource Including your body. So when we say you're a self owner, it means you have the right to decide Who can use your body? Right who can touch your body who can invade your body. I can consent to a surgeon cutting my body open But if a mugger cuts my body open He's a trespasser, right? Because I didn't consent to that So that's what self ownership means. It means there's a person identifiable associated with a human corporeal body Which corpus means body? Who can decide who gets to use it? So Larkin is basically right, but he's wrong in going into all this metaphorical stuff about time and labor I'm gonna back out for a second. And everything else what's something and self ownership by that I mean I get to decide what's done with this With my time and effort and my body and and everything else and nobody else has the right to you know violate my consent and So what I produce with my time and energy is mine and I can trade it with others and so on and so forth Pretty basic concept. That's that the foundation of individualism is that the individual Has the right to control himself or owns himself for a shorthand So when people come up with something like rights for example Like I have a right to do this and then other people say, you know, there's those are things rights They're just made up things. Well, yeah, kind of but no The only way in which the concept of a right means anything is a statement of a negative I've explained this before to say I have the right to say what I want Only means it's morally wrong for somebody else to forcibly stop me from being able to say what I want the right Okay, he's actually good here. Well, not completely, but he's he's he's right about Rights being essentially negative. So when I have a right it or in law, we would say that it's correlative to a duty, right? So it just it just when I claim a right It means it's specifying what other people have no right to do now. I think he's wrong is saying morally wrong that's a little bit imprecise because Political philosophy and libertarian theory is not a moral philosophy. It's not about being morally wrong I'm gonna let that pass because that's not too much of an error, but it's not quite precisely, right For example, people say the non-aggression principle means that it's we libertarians believe it's morally wrong to commit aggression I don't think that's actually right. It's a little bit in the weeds But I think the the view of say Douglas Rasmussen and Douglas Denial is more correct in their liberty nature and other books Thinks the perfectionist turn Where they say that the right way to view what rights are is there they're not norms in other words norms are Moral rules and moral norms are things that guide human action on a daily basis. That's what morality is for rights or Meta norms that is they guide us into Deciding which laws are justified. That's what they're for So when we say aggression the non-aggression principle really doesn't say that aggression is immoral what it says is that that No law that commits aggression is justified, right or the other way around any law that aims to counter aggression is justified That's what it means So for this is this is too far field, so I'm gonna let that go for now, but But um Yeah, let's keep going right to be armed all that means is it's morally wrong for somebody to forcibly disarm you for no good reason Yeah, it's a thing morally wrong. I would say that that Anyone who uses force to take my gun away is violating my rights or Any law that stops you from doing it is an unjust law. That's that's how I would say instead of calling it morally wrong But that's a little detail Um But these concepts come along and then when for example people talk about rights They talk about them as if there's like this pile of rights you have that and if you keep in mind Where the concept came from and the logic that led to it. It makes a lot more sense Otherwise you start clinging to ideas that when you forget where it came from the ideas take on a life of their own But then when they don't make sense people cling to them anyway An example I could use is like the concept of gravity is Like well gravity says things go down Well, no actually gravity says that everything with mass protons and new I Already listened to this one time. So I think so I think his gravity example is not horrible But it's just not it's not applicable. I mean, he's not bad. He's not completely wrong about gravity But he's just I think he's wrong or where he's heading with this he's he's trying to find an out for himself to To defend himself from from criticism from anti IP libertarians who see that it is wrong To use copyright to censor speech. That's it And he's he's going to do that by saying that people like me and apparently these nameless people he won't name Who say that you're being immoral or being a bad person or just being criticized For paywalling stuff He's he's he's saying that that they're claiming that that you're doing something There were the they're violating our rights. We're not claiming that and because he doesn't name anyone by name He can he can then straw man things because he you can't pin him down as to what examples he's got in mind so he can make these These false accusations against straw man who are not even saying what he's claiming that they say right Again like me in our earlier talk and then in later in this talk when he gets to me He claims that I'm a commie because I claim that you Or have an up some kind of some kind of legal obligation to To not have paywalls. That's not my view at all. I never said that it's not implied by anything that I said, right? Let's go on your trons and every other thing basically every combination of two things with mass has a pull between them that is inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them and and you can have the whole equation of GM 1 m2 over r squared or d squared depending on which one you're doing That's the actual concept of gravity that's measurable and repeatable But if somebody just says oh, the things go down that's gravity and then you show them a helium balloon and it goes up Oh my god There isn't gravity because the helium balloon just went up No, actually it goes up because of gravity But you have to understand things like density and the the the mass of air versus the mass of helium the whole reason It goes up is because helium has a lower mass That room temperature then air So the air is actually falling down and pushing it up the same way a bubble goes up in a pool So anyway, the point is if you oversimplify a concept and you think the rule of gravity is that things go down And then you find something that doesn't fit that If you don't know where that the concept of the idea came from then you just got But if you watch where it came from it makes perfect sense So how does this tie into the concept of intellectual property? Well intellectual property isn't exactly a thing But a lot of people think in terms of is it property or not and nothing Okay, it's not that it's not a thing. I know this is this is Extemporaneous comments by him Intellectual property law is it is a thing it exists What we mean is intellectual property laws are not just that means they're not compatible with libertarian Law or libertarian rights. That's what that's what we mean. We say it's not a thing thing else and they people think in terms of is it property or not and nothing else and they forget where all of the concepts came from and This is another little mistake. It's not in the criticism of it. Oh, this is not his fault Everyone makes a mistake the criticism of intellectual property is not that it's not property I mean the word property To be precise should be reserved for the for the for the reference to the relationship between an own a human actor owner and an ownable thing a resource So I have a property right in a thing. The thing is not property Property is the relationship between me and the thing but we get sloppy and we call things property like we'll say Like we'll say that like that gun is that gun is my property The reason that that that that that that casual colloquial usage arose I believe is because the reason we employ these scarce means is to extend our reach into the world to To use the causal laws that we're aware of to achieve our ends and over time the things that we use Like our clothing our food our homes our tools our weapons They become a property of ourselves Like a feature of ourselves a characteristic of ourselves because they extend our our ability to reach into the world to do things That's all so we start calling like yeah Like that gun is a property of cancella because it describes what cancella can do right like cancella has many properties He's five foot seven. He's he's he's American. He's born in this year. Whatever. That's what that's my properties My has a certain weight a Certain educational background Whatever right a certain set of and one of my properties is I can I can shoot I can shoot that rabbit Because I have a gun right so we start calling the gun my property And then and there's nothing wrong with that if you're if you're aware of the reason for this casual shift in language But technically speaking if you better to say Stepping cancella has a property right or an ownership right in that gun or Stepping cancella owns that gun Instead of calling the gun my property because then people start saying well the problem with intellectual property is ideas aren't property. It's like well It's not that they're not property and plus the word property is in there because that's what the pro Socialists, you know the pro IP types have done they've turned these Terms like patent trademark and copyright and trade secret which are all distinct bodies of law and Patent and copyright used to be called intellectual privileges or intellectual monopolies or monopolies They they started using the term intellectual property to describe all of them But that was just a propaganda move to to overcome opposition and hostility to patent and copyright in 1800s by the free market economists who recognized that this was crazy that we the government's granting these monopoly privilege grants For for writings and for novels and for inventions right so they started opposing it and The the industries that had become entrenched in this and the people that had been confused by the Lockean labor theory of property and Utilitarianism and Technocracy all started defending the existing patent and copyright system by saying that they're really Natural property rights, but they're a special type called intellectual property And now you have people that senses something wrong and they want to defend it They want to oppose IP rights and they say well, it's not real property But that's not really the argument But that's what you don't understand if you don't have a deep understanding of IP which no one does because it's so arcane No one understands any trust law administrative law Indian affairs law Even con law to be honest It's so arcane and crazy and not it's not law none of its real law. It's all bullshit. All right. Let's go so for example if I Write a song and it's out there and somebody copies it and then they have a copy of the song I didn't lose anything. I still have my song So it's not the same as if I own a car and somebody takes my car. They have my car. I don't have my car. They stole it Ding ding ding ding point one for Larkin really good. You're correct here So ideas and information don't function the same way as property. So yeah intellectual property isn't that's correct I have some posts and it's in my my upcoming book where I talk about this If you think about human action in practical logical terms like Mises would do or Hapa All human action is the is the effort by a human actor that is a Sapient being you know having some control over a corpus a body and some interaction with the world and some awareness of what's going on and some awareness of the future that's coming and some dissatisfaction with the future that he thinks is coming and some knowledge of causal laws and his available resources and So what he does is he he identifies an end that is a future thing He wants to change like he thinks that oh he detects that he's hungry because he senses that from his stomach and He he extrapolates with his rational ability and his knowledge his empirical knowledge that if I don't do something about this in In a few hours or a couple days. I'm going to be dead or I'm going to be really hungry And so he wants to change that so he sees a future world coming with him being hungry or dead And he doesn't like that it gives him uneasiness as milk means is called it felt uneasiness So he thinks well, I'm aware that if I feed myself I can alleviate this and I'm aware that one way to do that is to make a Fishing net and go down to that river and catch a fish and eat the fish So he employs Means to do it, but you notice that the two components of that action that are critical but distinct is Number one the availability of Some scarce means that is means that can help him achieve his goal like there's fish And there's a there's material to make a net And his knowledge he has to be have knowledge of the cause of his hunger and the solution to it and how to How to achieve that like he knows he can grab a stick and grab some Some some fiber of some leaves and make fibers or whatever make a net He can he can go he could use his body to walk to the river and catch a fish and eat it so you have to have both knowledge and Scarce means which he can walk in here calls property. I would call it scarce resources Because this this could apply to Crusoe on a desert island where there's no property rights It's just scarce resources. So we're always talking about scarce or conflictable means of action or resources So but they're not enough you have to have knowledge Right. So knowledge guides action Action employs means so those two things are both essential and critical for any successful action. He's not wrong here I'm just clarifying thing and you can you can do all sorts of examples like if I if I Learn about some clever way to like if I tell someone a trick for how to drive on in ice and snow And they're not used to it and they go, oh, okay. Thanks. Let's say yeah But you have to pay me a dollar every time you do it It's like what no like I have the idea in my own head now you explained it to me now I understand it you don't get to charge me for something I know just because it came from you that's ridiculous and he's right here He's a hundred percent right here, but this applies to piracy as well. What if if you make a movie like Larkin and his buddies did and If you don't keep it under wraps enough that it's going to leak which he admits It's going to leak and it's going to leak because he wants to show it He doesn't want to keep it secret for five friends to look at he wants to show it to make money or to get publicity or whatever Which I totally understand, but the risk of that is it's going to leak because it's impossible to keep information Chained down it's just impossible And by the way these contracts he's talking about I don't think he's going to make people going into the movie have a contract I Don't think that when he anyone uploading the movie He didn't have a contract with any of those and if you tried to make them sign a contract They would say fuck you right. I'll wait for it to be pirated and I'll get it that way I'm not going to sign a goddamn contract. Anyway So he's right that it would be ridiculous for me to say well you have information about how to Drive better on ice or whatever and now you have to pay me I know a dollar look, but the problem is like why would it be a dollar? Why not a million dollars? Why not a penny? I mean the numbers are arbitrary. I think we get used to the typical fees charged in the copyright system For you know for Amazon to rent you a movie for a day, which is like three or five bucks So is that supposed to be a fair market value for? Using an idea why would it be a dollar, but this is the point in other comments I think it's in this video or maybe the others, you know, they have this idea that Well, oh, I was actually wrong earlier. It wasn't about his book is about the anarchist. It was about the anarchist the HBO show The anarchist are the earlier Poophead thing was about Libertarians copying the anarchist HBO video pirating that so he was like why not just throw a couple of dollars to HBO Which I guess means they're $20 a month Subscription fee and I'm like, well, why would it be $20? Why why do I need to throw a couple of dollars to a copyright horror? Corporation which the lefty you lefty don't even like anyway. Why not just send a couple of bucks To the anarchist producers by PayPal and then pirate HBO say fuck you to HBO I mean But that but then that means that so what what they're saying is if you're a libertarian in support of other libertarians Trying to do things to get the message out and part of their project requires them Part of their project is them doing a project that they need to make a profit on to be sustainable Then you have an obligation to support them. Well, that's nothing more than asking for charity That's like saying well, I have this new think tank and I'm starting it And the only way I'm gonna succeed is if people donate money to me, okay? So everyone has an obligation to support me. It's like really? How much? Why you there's a million charities in the world Okay, it's not bad if I can support you, but if I don't support you, I've done nothing wrong I'm not a jerk if I don't support you or If I free ride, there's nothing wrong with free riding Everything we do in society other people benefit from without paying for it. No big deal. All right, let's go on I wouldn't have the right to use force against them every time they drive in the snow and use the trick without paying me That's stupid. So that that's an example of that's not my property. That idea isn't I'm not the only one who has the right to use that idea Yes, he's correct. And once your movie gets out on the torrents, you're not the one who has the right to tell anyone What to do with it? I Mean as Benjamin Tucker said as Wendy McElroy points out if you want to keep your idea to yourself keep it to yourself Information is something that can spread. It can be copied. That's its nature People can learn from it. They can build on it. They can discard it. They can consume it that you know, they can change it and That's the nature of information and knowledge and there's nothing wrong with that by the way if you decide to let your information become public then You can't really complain when people use it Because it's not yours because information cannot be owned as in your lingo. It's not property But what I would say is you know, the the only things that are the subject of property rights or scarce resources Conflictable resources and they can be owned only by original appropriation or by contract That leaves no room for ownership of ideas because ideas don't exist in the world They're just patterns of information embedded on a substrate or a carrier like your brain or a Magnetic tape or an LP or a physical paper book with ink patterns on it or a CD CD ROM with pits and lens that reflect light in different ways right or computer memory chips with transistors that That that store ones and zeros All these things are physical things that are substrates that are real physical scarce objects in the world that someone owns And they own the thing but they don't own the way it's arranged Right, they don't own the properties of things or the characteristics of things if I own a red Porsche I Own that particular red Porsche. I don't own red That's a character or feature or a property of my car. I don't own its 3000 pound weight. I Don't own its horsepower. I don't own its age Right, I don't own its mass. I own that particular car So we've got to stop thinking that we own properties of things if I own my body I don't own what it does. I don't own labor labor is an action to say I own an action is nonsensical If I own my body I can go take a jog with it Doesn't mean I own jogging if I own a red car doesn't mean I own red if I owned red it'd be a universal Meaning I own everything red in the world That's crazy Which means I would be stealing the property that someone else has a red bicycle now I own their bicycle But I thought they own their bicycle You know why because the only source of property rights is original appropriation or contract and just because I have a red car Doesn't mean I appropriated that bicycle or are created it from raw materials or bought it from anyone by a contract I just happen to have something similar Same thing is true with and this is why information cannot be owned because information is always the impatterning of a substrate Which is owned So no one can ever own information or it's Larkin might say it's not property I would say it's just not the type of existent thing to which property rights can apply It can't be a subject of property rights Let's go on so I you know that's kind of obvious and that's why people say intellectual property isn't a thing But if you forget where well, we don't say it's not a thing We say it's unjust, but okay came from you start to argue stupid stuff for example If Let's just make up a hypothetical Let's say I and some people I know made a movie You might be able to imagine that We're not obligated to give it to anybody. No, you're not and no one says you are so this is the straw man I don't say you're obligated to especially for a movie for for a book, you know for a little 90 page self-published of badly edited of screed You're not going to make it any more than that anyway, right? So that's why I was saying you could make an argument that If you want people to understand what you think are important ideas of liberty Why wouldn't you open why wouldn't at least a year later? You put it free online and PD. Why wouldn't you make it easy for people in Africa to You know or poor or poor students somewhere to find it. Why I mean, I really don't understand it I wouldn't be a libertarian if I didn't believe in this because believe me. I don't get money for this stuff This is a hobby which I support with my other career And I'm happy to do it. I donate money to other libertarian causes So why would you why would you spend all your time writing a book and try to keep it? Pay walled where only Rich westerners can see it. It makes it just makes no sense to me Doesn't mean you have obligation, but it means like well, you're then your goal is not really to spread liberty is it? Now for a movie like this where it takes a big cost to hire actors and to get production The only way it's feasible is if you somehow either fund it with your own money or you Sell tickets or you get donors Um, so your so your goal there is not completely message-based partly is to to To make money, which there's nothing wrong with making money or having a profit motive But you could only do it as a libertarian in a just way, right? So you shouldn't be using dmca takedowns number one. That's the problem, right? Having a paywall is not the problem So this is the subtle sort of shift here. Know what it's saying. You have an obligation to Release it for free to the world tomorrow Right now I personally think that in a couple of years when the tail has died out on this thing and it's not selling anything Maybe make it free then Of course, you don't need to because the magic of information is that it can be copied and pirated And it's going to be available. Anyway, if anyone really wants to see this movie. I don't know um Let's go on unless somebody actually like made a deal ahead of time Like if people donated with the agreement they get the copy then they get a copy like But if if we just make something We don't have any obligation to give it to anyone like we created it when we have control over it Nobody's entitled to it He's correct. No one's entitled to it. But if you Make it public enough Or you distribute it to enough people that it will be leaked And you know this And then there's a leaked copy on the internet Then someone who can access that has no obligation not to copy it either Larkin It's the same thing is like oh, I'm just playing the piano in my You know My house. I'm just sitting here playing the keyboard or something Well, that's not your property. So we have a right to hear it It's not the same thing You can close your drapes because you have the right to control your drapes That's how you can stop people from from hearing you play Or you don't keep your keep your doors locked But to stop people from copying Your movie on odyssey you have to send a dmca copyright takedown notice. That's a difference One means as legitimate one's not for right to barge in now. You don't have a right to barge in I don't have any obligation to ever play it for anybody or let anybody hear it I have the right to keep everybody out And if I record it, I don't have an obligation to give it to anybody No, you don't but if you release that recording to enough people where it's likely it will be leaked by one of them In violation of a contract maybe or a confidentiality agreement or an obligation Then you have you have you have enabled It to be released to the public and you can't complain about that once it gets out You can complain about the people who violated your trust But you can't complain about third parties using public information Which you already agreed to this you've already said that there's no contract with The third party by the way I'm at My current I'm at almost an hour now, and I'm only eight minutes into his 35 minute video What I'm going to do is I'm going to stop And then I'm going to do a part two maybe a part three I think it'll go faster as we go further along. I'll just let his talk go on and on Because I think I've kind of covered most of his the things he says that I think are confused So I'm going to stop here with part one And part two will start in the next episode