 Hi, I'm Katie Green. Hi, I'm Dan Green and welcome back to the Greening Out podcast and today we're joined by Stephane Concella Stephane is a registered pre-tent attorney, a libertarian theorist and lecturer and director for the Center of the Study of Innovative Freedom Stephane, thanks so much for coming on the show Awesome, Stephane, Dan and I are obviously familiar with you and what you do But for people listening who might not be as familiar Could you tell us a little bit about your background and how you came to be a libertarian? Yeah, I'd be happy to and you may be able to tell from my surname that it's Irish So it's pronounced Kinsala and in Ireland over here. Yeah, we do say Kinsala over here It's not one I've heard, you know, my obviously family name being Irish, but no, it's not one I've heard before Wow. Yeah, it's pretty common over there. I've been to Ireland and I see Kinsala hardware and things like that I think it's a it's the same route as Kinsley or Kinsley-Ock or something like that. Oh, I see. Yeah, my family are away from the north Yeah, yeah, but anyway, so I'm a patent attorney in Houston, Texas. I'm from Louisiana originally in the U.S. Hadn't been interested in libertarian and free market ideas since 15 or 16 years old and I got steadily more interested in it as I went to to law school and became a practicing attorney and And see when you became an IP like attorney, what were your views on IP at that time? An IP attorney Yeah, so I started practicing law like oil and gas law at first actually originally in 1992 or so and then quickly moved into patent law because it was a booming field in the early 1990s in the U.S. I was an electrical engineer background and People with certain technical specialties were heavily recruited. So I moved into that field and I was also becoming uncomfortable with the pro-patent pro copyright arguments by some libertarians like Ein Rand and others and So I started looking into it more especially because I was going to practice it as part of my career and I pretty soon became persuaded after well, I did a lot of research. I did a lot of reading hundreds of law review articles and Because I was trying to find a way to justify it because I was going to practice this So I was desperately circling around just finding anything I could it was a good argument for IP and I Finally gave up when I realized that it's it's basically a huge colossal mistake and completely Contrary to property rights and free market and competition. So About the time that I got registered to practice as a patent attorney. I was pretty much persuaded that it was an illegitimate type of field Yeah, sorry, Kate was poking me because I said IP attorney and I was like what man? I was like, oh, no He meant patent attorney but anyway, and So Stefan well, let's talk about property rights. Why in your view as IP? a violation of property rights so I I've been thinking about this for a good 17 20 plus years now and I Have had lots of debates with other libertarians and regular people and You start seeing trends of how you have how discussions go and what people are thinking of and how you can persuade people or really What are gaps in your own thinking and I think that People combine things when they when they're pro free market when they're pro individual They're just generally pro-liberty. They're pro-freedom. Yeah and They see for example That if you have a free market system that it tends to produce good results, you know prosperity Cooperation technology. Yeah, and so all these things just become blended in their minds. And so some people focus on Well, they see that property rights give the right incentive structure And so they start thinking well, that's the purpose of political Reasoning is to come up with the right incentives to induce people to do the right things because that is pretty much what happens in a free market I think that's basically a mistaken Avenue it It misleads us there is some truth to it But I ultimately think that the purpose of property rights is to respond to the fundamental fact of what Hans-Hermann Hoppe Calls scarcity in the world or a rivalousness the fact that there are certain Things in the world that we need to use to get along in life But that only one of us can use at a time which gives rise to the possibility of conflict and to the extent We want to be civilized and live in society with each other and be cooperative We need to find a set of rules that can tell us look who gets to use this scarce resource So the entire purpose of property rights is a response to the fundamental fact of scarcity And the system of property rights that libertarians favor is basically a long lock in contractual free market lines and Once you understand the purpose of property rights like that Like you realize that we wouldn't need property rights if we were all super invulnerable Or we were ghosts who couldn't conflict with each other or there was infinite infinite abundance If if any of those things happen to you wouldn't even need property rights There wouldn't be a possibility of conflict Yeah, but in the real world that there is and that's the purpose of property rights is to come up with a set of rules That allows us to get along with each other and to have cooperation and the division of labor and prosperity Once you understand that it it seems to me pretty clear That intellectual property is completely contrary to that because Institutional property is the state coming in and changing the structure of ownership that already exists naturally and It assigns an ownership right to someone who's not a producer who's not a An appropriator of the resource who's not a contractual owner of the resource and it gives them the right to control how the resource is used Which is a recipe for conflict and a recipe for you Know a special Influence over the over the government so to my mind intellectual property, especially patent and copyright is basically a type of theft because it gives What I call a negative servitude which you would call in Scotland because you have a civil law system similar to Louisiana Yeah, all right. Yeah, which we call an easement in the common law It gives a negative servitude to someone who does not who did not contractually acquire that servitude So it gives your neighbor basically the right to use the courts To prevent you from using your own resources the way you see fit Which is a type of property, right? Yeah, and that's the fundamental problem with intellectual property Is that it's an assignment of property rights by the state that takes property rights away from the owner And gives it to third parties who did not contractually acquire those property rights Well, yeah, because I believe it's a point you make in the book actually against intellectual property you make the point that if say for example, I write a novel and I own the copyright to that pattern of words But then you take, you know your paper and your ink and you copy that out that exact pattern of words then Somehow you're breaking the law you're violating copyright even though that's your property you're doing it on Yeah, and I think in a way I Used to think that model was specific to intellectual property and so I would classify So the state classifies intellectual property and the advocates of intellectual property have come up with this term intellectual property It didn't used to be that term. It just used to be There was patent law. There was copyright law. There was trade secret law And and the proponents of these types of laws and the government Started lumping them together under the concept intellectual property law to to call them property rights to appeal to people's natural You know ideals in favor of yeah And so I was thinking that really what they have in common is that they are all examples of negative servitudes But the more I think about it I think this is true of almost every state regulation now Rothbard and I think in the ethics of liberty or for a new liberty has a Way of dividing the way government interferes with society once called a binary Intervention where the state takes property from someone for itself Okay, that's basically theft. Yeah, and the other is triangular intervention where the state tells A that they can't do a deal with B in a certain way. Yeah, so the minimum wage law for example so in a sense, I think intellectual property is just one subset of a type of Probably triangular intervention by the state it's an interesting way to look at it. Yeah, I hadn't really thought about it that way Yeah And actually I believe it goes way back doesn't it does not go back to England does a lot of these things like central Banking in that they're not plaguing us do Right, so you could look at banking you could look at I mean any number of statutes even even like a law that bans flag burning or The drug laws the drug laws or in a sense a type of negative servitude because the state is Asserting ownership over your body. Yes saying that you can't use your body in the following way. Yeah, even though it's not That that that action you're wanting to perform. It's not an act of aggression against someone else It's just consuming drugs or whatever So pretty much every illegitimate government action can be characterized as some type of negative servitude or something like that So I guess the IP ones or the subset that deals with the so-called Intellectual creations of the mind like reputation rights in terms of defamation law Yeah, or trademark or copyright or patent It's funny because I remember and it was Rothbard wasn't it when he was talking about Believe in it's in foreign your liberty when he's talking about, you know Like libel laws and stuff like that and he's saying well You can't own your reputation because that's just something that exists in other people's heads So you can't control that so, you know, you don't own your reputation Right, and I think there he had the right instinct and the right analysis. Yeah, I don't think you I don't think he recognized that Read reputation rights or a type of intellectual property. In fact, that's not widely recognized today Yeah, but if you understand the basis and the nature of these laws that you can see a lot of similarities between Reputation rights and copyright and patent And Rothbard if he had carried his analysis out further and been consistent Then the same arguments he applied against reputation rights could have been used to argue against patent trademark trade secret in copyright law and he pretty much opposed patent laws but he Tried to come up with some kind of contractual argument in favor of copyright I think this is where Rothbard He was such a wide reader he was so smart but when you read so much it was only so much to read And you and you're you're operating without a net to a degree when you're such a pioneer like he was sometimes you may be overstepped your bounds or you or you you go too far in your assumptions and He confused three things I believe he He uses the word copyright to argue in favor of what he calls contractual copyright or common law copyright The problem is copyright as it's normally understood applies to Original expressions of ideas Not to inventions patents cover inventions and yet his example of a mousetrap Which could be covered by his copyright is an invention. So it's that's that's a confusion right there Right. Yeah, he uses the term common law copyright But common law copyright was a distinct doctrine in the law, which I think he probably wasn't aware of He probably came up with a term again on his own to refer to something else But common law copyright is really more like trade secret It's simply meant if you have an unpublished manuscript in your desk drawer and someone takes that manuscript And is about to publish it at the printer. You can stop them from doing that That is almost nothing to do with modern copyright. Yeah, it's more similar to what we call trade secret law now And third he he was really talking about what he would call contractual copyright And his mistake there. I think is the idea that you could use contract To come up with a type of property right that would simulate or look like patent or copyright It wasn't really clear what he was going for there I think if he had been consistent, he would have realized that that was a dead end and that really is incompatible With the the bulk of the rest of his views on property rights and scarcity and reputation rights Yeah, yeah, I can absolutely see what you mean It's quite an interesting subject actually when you get into it and it has become like quite a source of debate obviously because we know high and Rand was like kind of fiercely in favor of property rights, you know Some people would maybe even say to her. She wasn't objectivist. I mean, what do you kind of expect to an extreme degree? No, I'm so I'm Rand was I mean Rothbard was on the right track Just didn't quite finish it and he just wasn't an IP expert He had tantalizing insights and he had some good criticisms of patent law, but I'm Rand was another case I Mean I started out as a randian Yeah, yeah, yeah in high school and I still admire a lot of her thought. Oh, yeah, of course. Yes Yeah, absolutely. I just think her two big mistakes were the government and IP actually I can yeah, I can agree. I definitely think her political mean her don't really get on politically Well, I think if you put it in context of what she was fighting against in the times She overemphasized the selfishest thing because she saw altruism was a bigger problem And maybe it was a bigger problem in the in the intellectual realm at the time. Nowadays. I don't think it's the same problem I don't really think we're drowning in an orgy of self-sacrifice And you know her criticisms of of of anarchy were just kind of non-serious And intellectual property was her big mistake She has some comments that you know, she was against initiation of force She recognized that it's physical force against people's physical bodies and their physical Sessions that is really the fundamental problem of society and that's why she endorsed the non-aggression principle but she didn't take that reasoning to its end because She has this almost mystical notion that the purpose of life for man is to create values and she Imbues the term values with this kind of metaphysical Reality like the real things you're creating like a substance that you create and therefore you own it and That gives rise to the whole idea of IP and actually I think that mistake started with Locke so I think that ultimately the fundamental mistake we made was traced back to Locke and I'm Rand and others were infected by that way of looking at it an overly metaphorical imprecise way of Indigening the fundamental social problem. It's it's just not precise enough and it leads to these to these mistakes in my opinion Yeah, that would tend to agree with you actually and we actually had Lord and Rumpler on and she runs Objectivist Skiddle.com and it's funny because and she's an objectivist obviously but She actually talks a lot in our YouTube videos about how she feels that objectivism is actually compatible with anarchism You know sort of in spite of what I and Rand says it's quite an interesting perspective I think I think I'm an objectivist because if you look at the four fundamental principles of objectivism that I ran herself laid out. It was a Reality and reason It's an individualism and capitalism. Yeah, and in a general stated generally I mean any reasonable person. I think who's not a misanthrope Yeah, pretty much has to agree with all those. It's just the capitalism implies anarchy. I think she didn't take it that far Yeah She didn't take it far enough then really Because yeah, because I kind of think and I'm sure you would agree that like Sort of even if you talk about libertarianism, I mean anarcho-capitalism is the logical conclusion because we know that limited government is It's a fairytale, you know because government by its nature has to grow Yes, and and that's what you know Even the public choice theorists and people like Hans-Hermann Hoppe and Bertrand de Juvenel and Gustave de Bollinari, they all recognize this The objectivists sometimes take the side of the mainstream and they criticize anarchists for being naive or Utopians and I'm wondering what planet do they live on because yeah, it's a so-called limited government and If you point out that it's never existed in the history of mankind And that there's all kinds of economic reasons to believe that it's not stable and unlikely to stay limited even if it was ever to become limited in the first place They'll kind of wave their hands and say well the early United States was close to paradise And I'm thinking like except for the blacks Indians and except for the women and Yeah, it's just Too rosy a view of one episode in history. Yeah I think We'll see yeah because I know some people said that to me when I talk about an archo-capitalism They've said oh, it's utopian But I don't think it is a talk if you actually read seriously about an archo-capitalism No one's talking about a utopia whatsoever. They're saying there will be problems We're not even sure how some things will be you know accomplished But you know, it's gonna be a much better system than having this gang called a government, you know Well, yeah, I actually think that I'm always perplexed by that criticism too you'll you'll hear routinely that oh you libertarians The problem with your views is you're counting upon humans to be angels or something like that, right? They they think that our theories assume that people would be perfect angels and I'm thinking that that's really never what we're assuming We're assuming that people are flawed and we will commit crimes and if you give the power of organized violence To these leaders of the government, then they're even more dangerous. So to me, it's really realistic To to to be afraid of giving the power of the state to real human beings. I Absolutely agree and I I really struggle with this on a day-to-day basis struggles actually the wrong word I think about this on a day-to-day basis and I just feel that I Don't think people are angels, but I think common decency is Is is not is a natural thing and we are obviously flawed we will commit crimes But it's so funny that I I don't I think people are weird because they don't get it Oh, yeah, because you say to people and they say, oh, well, if we remove laws Then people are like was as they say and they'll be like, oh well through government would remove law and people will be killing each Other in the streets and raping each other and all these kind of things And we say well as your idea of morality based on, you know By these people, you know, these people of all people, you know, and it's crazy. Yeah, what do they say? Are you projecting, you know? Yeah, I know I think sometimes we have to recognize that I mean The human race is really really Well, the human race is old, but human society is young. I mean, we've only only been civilized to a certain extent for What seven thousand years or something and and that's on top of hundreds of thousands or more of evolution So we're a very young species. Yeah Intelligence apparently is a very furious force and is accelerating rapidly It's amazing what we've accomplished, but the fact is that we have a society in a culture at all Shows that most people for whatever reason are basically I don't say decent, but they they tend towards cooperative and they don't really want to hurt each other They want to work get along with each other We couldn't have what we've achieved so far if we hadn't had a basic tendency of mankind Now I believe in free will so I don't believe in determinism in the sense that we're not basically good or evil I don't think that kind of question makes sense. That's just my philosophical view I think that that that question is a deterministic question that belies the the fact of free will I Don't think we're basically good or evil because that means there's a tendency one way or the other and people aren't really Control of their actions, but I think that they are I just think that the way human society works the way the universe works the way entropy works that There's a good reason For humans to cooperate with each other by and large people have empathy. They want to cooperate. They're gonna be some outliers Yeah, even if we eliminated the state as an institutionalized source of aggression. I think you can expect there to be some scattered Private crime on occasion and people will deal with that as a technical problem As part of life just like we deal with disease and hurricanes and wild animals. It just has to be dealt with But it doesn't mean that we're utopian, but it doesn't mean that we're naive But it does mean that the state wouldn't be there is the big source of of aggression Yeah, it's interesting when you when you were talking about that I was just remembering one of my favorite things to do and I'm talking with for example I don't know if I'm fat I think she has said this to me talking to my mother and she asked me a question like oh in your sort of Libertarian utopia what would happen if a if someone I don't know a man on drugs came into your house and wanted all your things That's my favorite thing to say to her would be what would I do now? Like let's let's let's just go back here and think what would I do at this moment in time? I would phone obviously the police or something or I'd fight back. I don't know you would fight back down You have like why wouldn't a private say defense organization like be much better than So there's like a private number I could phone and say okay, and they would to have a really really quick response team no matter where I lived or what area I lived in you know or the owner of the road might hire security guards. I don't know but these are really good things It's good questions to ask people To get them thinking about it, you know, they're doing what the Chicago or the the mainstream economists do they're comparing The real world to some idealized model of perfect competition. Yeah, then the real world doesn't Meet meet up with their model and so then they say well, then we have to have the government intervene Yeah, in this case they should be comparing Real world a versus real world be instead of comparing real world be against utopia some kind of utopian ideal Because yeah, so you're right. So what would you do now and would it be? Would it be worse in a free society? Yeah, exactly for the more you could imagine. There's good reasons to believe there would be For fewer of these problems in a free society for various reasons and you were drug abusers fewer people that Needed to steal to have drugs because they would be so cheap. Oh, yeah What is that? Yeah, I just you know, just give them out to the people that need them just to keep them at bay I mean, I don't see the problem Me neither Yeah, and that's quite an interesting question and well since we're going down this vein How then obviously we can't make predictions. That's one thing I know that you know, we hate as like anarchists like when people say well How exactly would this work and they expect you to be an expert in every sort of level of how a society will work and you're like Well, I don't know because it's quite far off But how would you in your opinion and not prediction and see a kind of legal system working in a sort of stateless and orcal capitalist society? well, I mean, I think The writers who've written thoughtfully on this to date have given us good indications, you know, you got Bruno Leone you have John Hasnes Randy Barnett Gerard Gerard Casey of late Other writers have given us good ideas of what has happened in the past and even what happens now, right? I mean, we have a polycentric legal order in the world right now to some degree We have neighbors getting along with each other in certain ways now. So that gives us some indication There's there's a huge domain of private law now private law between neighbors between countries between Entities in different countries trading internationally the law merchant the Lex mercatoria These things give us an idea of what we could expect It reminds me of When you have a communist system a totalitarian system and people are arguing against it And the objection would be unless you can tell me how many brands of toothpaste there would be Free society Then I'm not doing it We have to maintain the state monopoly on the on the manufacturer and sale of toothpaste and I suppose a free market advocate could try to guess And say, okay, maybe there'll be 15 brands Maybe it's five brands and then then of course there'll be a non-ending series of questions like well If there's five brands of toothpaste, how will the fourth one make a profit or what about a sixth guy who wants to enter the market? How's he gonna so they they never in their quest their questions are never ending they'll never be satisfied and I think that that's a that that's an indication to us that we have to be careful Yeah, not to confuse questions with arguments questions are fine if they're sincere Yeah, if they're loaded questions or if they're rhetorical questions, they're usually a disguised argument And yeah, I think if you want to make an argument make an honest explicit open argument and back up your propositions and your assumptions But they don't do that they form those questions the same thing in the case of IP They'll say well, how is an artist supposed to make money and the look the implicit the implicit assumption there is that We have to come up with a system where artists can make enough money whatever enough money means or whatever Yeah, sure. So I'm always wary of loaded questions So we can try to answer them and of course my guess is that you would have Private legal systems would flourish it wouldn't really be a big problem lawyers So I think say lawyers like my profession in a way would be more valuable in a way less valuable because they're more valuable now because a Huge bulk of them are dedicated towards interpreting the state statutory scheme Yeah, I mean, I think I've just read not to bring it to Scotland, but if Scotland somehow becomes independent Employed for the next 40 years. Oh, yeah 13,000 treaties between the UK and other nations 13,000 and so every one of those has to be sorted out. So the lawyers will have a field day. Oh Well, now I know why I have a Relative who's a lawyer and he's a really really he's campaigning for this big time and now I know why oh It's gonna be a full employment campaign for Okay, so I think in the modern world lawyers are more prevalent than they would be because of the need for navigating regulations and statutes and treaties and Constitutions and courts decisions, but I also believe that in a free society The richer the economy becomes and the greater the scope of the division of labor then the more transactions happen on a bigger bigger scale and the More than the more Affordable it can be to hire an attorney to make the transaction a little bit more sophisticated So I actually think the demand for attorneys would go up in a society But on balance, I don't know what would happen because I think a lot of them right now are basically in effect employed by the state like Like me in effect. I'm sure I'm being paid because of the patent system, which if it didn't exist The whole patent profession would just atrophy Don't have your customers know about your views on IP just have interest Some of them do they you know when I first started I was a new lawyer and I was worried I was actually kind of trying to state my views a little bit in a muted form like academic Yeah, it's just kind of an academic view I was worried but over time I realized that Unfortunately, we libertarians are so small that no one cares It's like it's like say they care what your sexual Orientation or your religion is people just want to have a competent professional Yeah, in fact, what I've noticed is well first of all, I get lots of inquiries from people that are pissed off about the Injustices of the system and when they're sure and so they want to hire someone who they think is on their side So sure that helps me in that side and even people that are pro IP They think if this guy is written and spoken a lot about this topic. He must know what he's talking about. Well, that's it Yeah, sure, of course, so I haven't found that they they know but they don't I Would say they don't care but they I think they tend to agree with me. They just don't sure too much sure Everyone knows it's a game. Everyone knows it's a joke. The patents are a big. Yeah of time and effort Yeah, they do what they have to do to comply with the laws Yeah, I can understand that you know people have to make a living and oh, yeah, exactly, you know, I mean people Criticize sort of Stefan mom and you a while ago for what was it? He threatened someone on YouTube or something like that with yeah I don't want to go into that too much. I don't really know all the ends it out to that Yeah so That the hypocrisy issue is a different issue. I think that's a distraction from oh, yeah I agree. I mean, let's suppose. I'm a hypocrite that doesn't mean patent Yeah, sure. I can't buy my actions of hypocrisy Make something become legitimate in political theory. It's just I don't have that power. That's a magical power. I don't possess But personally I I Look people don't understand IP law because it's a very very arcane Specialized doctrine. Yeah, it's hyper Compartmentalized and specialized I personally Engage in activities that I regard as pretty much defensive in nature Maybe you could come up with an argument that doing the other side would be Morally unobjectionable. I just prefer to Represent people in a defensive capacity. So morally I feel okay with it But most people don't even understand that I get criticisms from these no-no things that say oh you go to court And you have a patent borrower exam and you you you sue people and they don't even know what I do They just yeah, these insults Without knowing even what they're talking about because it's specialized and I understand that and they're in the dark Yeah, if they would just ask me I would tell them if you want to have a 30 minute conversation Let me explain the boring field of Pat Patience and lose your foaming at the mouth libertarian righteousness for just a few minutes Otherwise you just have to either take my word or don't I don't know but um, yeah, I personally only only Help people with the law defensively and I would I would I would hope I would have the fortitude To turn down a client which I have done Yeah, to to use the law aggressively. I think it's completely Destructive and immoral so I I try not to do that, but I have the luxury Personally in my life not to because I have developed a certain specialty in clientele and that I can return I can refuse that type of work. Yeah, someone who can't I just My specialty in life is not to sit there and judge other individual actions. Yeah If someone's a hypocrite or they use the law in a bad way To me, it's not surprising We wouldn't oppose laws if people didn't use them Yeah, in other words the copyright law wouldn't be a problem if everyone would voluntarily agree to ignore it But once you have such a law People are going to use it. The problem is the law and If you could point to five thousand instances a day and there's honestly, there's probably a million a day I think there's like a million YouTube takedown notices. Oh, really a day. Yeah, but it's automated robots That's crazy. That's awful like literally a million a day. That's unbelievable. And so I Guess you could point to one out of a million and make a big case out of it because the guy was a libertarian Yeah, I just don't see the principle of the point. It's not surprising Yeah Not on criticizing people for not being perfect in their lives, I guess Yeah, you know, I completely agree with you because that is a logical fallacy in itself, you know, like You know, we talk about Hypocrisy or whatever you want to call it But the fact the matter is like if I say that that's what the logical fallacy is if I say to someone Killing is wrong, but then I kill someone. I know it's a kind of extreme example, but that doesn't mean It doesn't make what I said wrong because I've done that, you know It's wrong even if you do it. Yeah, exactly. So yeah, that's a logical fallacy to say just because I do something You know or I use something that's available to me, you know, because what I say is wrong That's why I'm not a philosopher. There's Oh It's massive like because you get the 42 basic ones and then it can be endless springing off from all the other ones but um What I wanted to say as well is one thing I liked about when I was reading against intellectual property was the appendix at the end and You had the questionable examples of patents and copyrights And I thought some of them were hilarious. I don't know if you have a favorite because I know I do Is it the condom one? Unbelievable my favorite one was the what was that hyper tight speed speed antenna Poking a hole in another dimension to transmit our tea waves to faster than like But in a way, that's ridiculous, but that's an example of a patent It's not a danger because it's so it's so obviously flawed that if they tried to assert it It just there's no one you can sue for it. No one's actually doing that. Yeah And that list of course is way out of that being a date by now. That was like 2000 1999 to 2000 and I've collected a lot more since then if I've given up collecting Oh Because some of them are just unbelievable like the Christmas tree watering system because it's what shaped like Santa Claus and it's just this It's insane I think there was a guy sentenced in Britain just like a month ago to like three years in prison for uploading a movie. Oh Was that the one we were talking about? No, that was the guy recording a film. Yeah I Think it's ridiculous things like that. I mean, I've always had my views about You know music and films available online You know Napster, we all know Napster me Dan and I used it as teenagers Well, that's interesting. What did you think when Napster came along? Well my kind of my first? Fairly a widespread article on IP was at Lou Rockwell.com right before my gangsta IP It was it was about Napster. It was like in defense of Napster Yeah, and against the second so I use that as an example to kind of show what I thought was the fundamental flaw of the entire Pro IP approach, which is I call the second homesteading rule. So they're undercutting homesteading by saying that Instead of identifying the owner of a resource by asking who who owned it first Or who got it by contract From a previous owner They simply say someone else has a better claim to it because they created it or whatever Yeah, and so it's a way of undercutting the basic homesteading rule that's under That's the undergirding structure of all of Western legal theory and political systems It's it's hard to express these things without going into legal language or yeah political language But to me it's so intuitively obvious by now And I think you mentioned earlier that Kind of the the origins of these laws, which you could say they were in England in the 16 1500s, but in a way they go back even further. I think the earliest case. I'm aware of is 500 something BC in the Greek city-state of Siviris. There was like this Culinary competition so they would have like a cookoff basically who got who comes up the best recipe And the little king or whatever their leader was called would grant a one-year monopoly to the winner So they would be the only one who could make that dish for a year So that was their reward for yeah, it'd be like if iron chef now UK The guy that wins no one else can make this dish for a year Of course now I mean 95 years or something or 117 years or something So the origins can go back wait a long time and and there was some of this back in the early Times of the law merchant there was these protectionist sort of monopolies being given out but it really reaches heyday right around the time of the statute of monopolies in 1623 and The statute of Anne and 1710 with copyright laws So the origins of these things go back a few centuries and it's clearly rooted in protectionism and Mercantilism and in thought control and censorship. I it's It stuns me that libertarians who you would think would be the first to see this right because we're the ones that are most Consistently against monopoly and protectionism and thought control and censorship. These are like the paradigm paradigmatic cases of this and they led to what we have now and libertarians are just like, oh, no, it's a property, right? I just want to say are you you're kidding me? Yeah, and you know their answer is well if I want to write a poem how how am I gonna get paid? So their answers Yeah Yeah Completely agree and absolutely and and just something I was interested in and just in case the NSA or GCHQ are listening I have never illegally downloaded a film But just let's say I had for toxic What say I downloaded like one or two films and someone had found out about it. What would the penalty be? I mean, do they is this a slap on the wrist or are they more serious about this kind of thing? Well, okay, so the law varies from country to country. Oh, yeah, I just mean from what you know Yeah, and the US yeah, and the US is pretty much the worst. Although the UK, Canada They've been there slowly emulating what we've done and yeah, this is one problem with this network of free-trader group so-called free-trader agreements like the like in the US the NAFTA and The the Dwipo the world intellectual property organization all these so-called in these these upcoming free-trader They they they call them free-trader agreements, but they sneak in these IP provisions where they require Canada Spain Africa you know Europe Russia China Brazil whatever they require them to start increasing up their IP protection to match the US standards So there's a ratcheting effect where by which in an imperialistic fact by which the West and the US Impose this Western scheme on other countries. So they're all getting pretty bad But the the criminal panel the penalties for copyright are not trivial at all in the US It could be seventy five thousand to a hundred fifty thousand dollars Civil penalty per work. So wow if you upload 20 music files that you're getting close to a million dollars And they're criminal penalties. I mean it's like I said this There's one man who uploaded one copy of the the Wolverine movie about four years ago in the US Yeah, and he's in jail. He went to federal prison for a year And this guy in in Britain. I forgot his name Like I said, he just got sentenced to three years for uploading this this movie. He recorded in the theater And there's a British an English Student named Richard Dwyer DWYER Who was a grad student and he he had a website and on his website. He had hyperlinks Linking to other websites, which has these kind of Russian pirated files or whatever He didn't have anything on his server at all and under US law That's potentially a copyright infringement, but it's not under British law, but right the US said well He's violating US law and the internet's international and therefore we're gonna use our extradition treaty criminal extradition treaty with Britain and force this guy to Stop his Graduate studies in England come to America to face federal prison charges criminal charges for having a website with hyperlinks on it. I Just find that ridiculous Disrupted this guy's life and it may have ruined his life. I don't know The these are just one of many examples and not only that we have these these escalating provisions in Europe in France and US now like in the US is called six strikes and you're out and it's Under it's under the provision of the ISPs, but of course they did it in response to pressure from the government so if you have some broadband service at your home and and they give access to The Hollywood or the music studios and they detect that one of the users of this service has downloaded an illegal file Then they'll send you a warning And you have a way to respond and then it will escalate up to what's called six strikes And if you get the six strikes, you could lose your right to use internet for life Oh my god, and this is not even a government proceeding. It's just like a sort of quasi Private proceeding with very little due process and extremely Uh Penalties uh-huh that you could face so they had the the the copyright system is like a big mafia I mean if you rent a movie, you've seen this before probably even in your country the FBI warning comes up and warns. Oh, yeah Yeah, I mean you're just trying to watch a movie with your friends and you get an FBI warning So this is this is not a joke It's it's serious stuff and they are they will they will put their customers in jail To try to keep extracting monopoly payments from them Madness, it's absolutely insane Stefan, I'm kind of I know I'm changing the subject a little bit here And I don't want to be rude, but I I'm really eager to ask you about something on our show We we've expressed our Our love for home education We we have talked a little about it and something you've mentioned before is Montessori education Could you go into that a little bit for us? I'll tell you what I've learned. I have one son. He's 11 years old So I'm not a parent of many children. So my experience is limited, but I've learned what I've learned Yeah, and I looked into it when he was very young because I started when you're a young parent You start thinking about these things of course and I had always heard about Montessori because They're heavily promoted by the randians, but even though I was kind of a randian. I always discounted Montessori because Most randians don't have children. So I figured They're promoting Montessori. It must be something kind of wacky. Yeah, well So there was one down the road for where I lived and I decided to look into it Just because it was one of the ones on my list and the more I learned about it the more I realized it's it's a really I See what ran like that. It's individualist. It's reason-based. It's pro-child-centered. I know a lot of libertarians are moving towards homeschooling and even unschooling now and I understand that and I'm not against that at all I'm still a sort of pro-division of labor kind of guy and pro-specialization of of labor and I know that parents can do a remarkably good job Raising their children without a specialty degree But I think that's a commentary on how bad the government schools are rather than So My the view I've settled on is I think Montessori is a really good system. It's it's pro-peace. It's pro-reason It is private it can be more expensive although I think it is their public or government versions in in other countries Yeah, I like how it doesn't have the traditional testing model They don't even give grades initially because they're focused on the individual. They use a verbal assessment Yeah, instead of a quantitative assessment, which is kind of intuitively more in line with sort of the Misesian or Austrian view of Understanding and analyzing human action. I think I don't think they realize that but I see some connections So I just love it. I love the approach. I like the Personally, I like the the Association Montessori International the AMI. That's the original Montessori curriculum That's based in Amsterdam now, I believe. Oh really? Okay. It was started in Italy, of course with Maria Montessori, but it's based in Amsterdam now There's a whole we can't go into it now probably sure there's a whole interesting history of Why Montessori started gaining popularity? In the US at least in the early 1900s and then Fell out of favor because of some hatchet job done by some guy like a deweyite Central progressive planner kind of guy and his hatchet job did the trick for a couple of decades and then the wars happened And so it sort of got knocked out of favor And so AMI AMI almost disappeared here And then a woman named Nancy Rambush, I believe went to Europe in the 40s or 50s and Discovered this amazing Montessori approach and tried to bring it back here But by that time AMI had disappeared here. So she started the AMS the American Montessori Society. It's almost like The Protestant Reformation, you know, like the Protestants versus the Catholics So she started the American version because she had no choice because AMI had atrophied AMI is now gaining steam again here and it's still a minority but Anyway, I I appreciate both the AMS and the AMI approach and I don't know what the other mainstream approaches are in Europe and other countries, but uh It's heavily reason-based I don't agree with every approach they have as a parent I've seen things I've done differently than they teach but what I like about them is everything they do They have a good reason for so for example, they teach writing before reading and they teach cursive And they teach cursive before print Now you may disagree with one or two of those things But but if you ask them why they will give you a good solid reason And it's from the point of view of the child And so I like that perspective and that focus. Um, and I just haven't seen that among um Teachers that I know in the regular school system. They just do what they've been told They put the kids in a grid they lecture to them They use strict discipline And it's just like a brute force method Yeah, oh, yeah, no, I agree and understand is another feature not that, um Correct me if I'm wrong But I understand that a lot of the time kids are kept and maybe with the same teacher for a number of years As opposed to just one year. Yeah, so the original Montessori system The official curriculum as I understand it at least for AMI only goes to sixth grade after that It's it hasn't been officially approved yet. Although the system is 100 years old So the official Montessori system starts at 18 months or 14 months and goes to Sixth grade Oh, right. The theory is that By empirical observation of Montessori and her followers They believe that human beings develop in in four Six year stages of development and each of those is divided into Three-year planes of development. So they think zero to three is one plane Three to four three to six is another plane, etc So they group them into the classroom by those planes of development because the plane of development of the child appropriate to their stage of learning Determines the type of environment and learning materials. They should have so and the other advantages Well, there's two other advantages. So my my my son is now in sixth grade So he's on his third year now with the same teacher one teacher. All right. Yeah And actually in Italy, they don't call them teachers. They call them guides because the idea is that the kid teaches themselves So it's a lot similar to this homeschooling and unschooling idea except it's more systematic and it's got a longer pedigree I sometimes think that the homeschoolers the unschoolers are trying to reinvent the wheel And they're also doing it for political reasons sometimes like to fight against the government or they're doing it because they just can't afford A private education So they have these I don't want to say excuses, but they have reasons they give that are not quite The best reason to prefer that Look, if that's all you can afford, that's fine homeschooling is probably fine But I think a private good Montessori school if you can find it um So one advantage is that when you're a fourth grader, let's say in what they call upper elementary Then you're the youngest kid in the class And the older kids take care of you. They're your mentors And then by the time you progress to be the sixth grader now, you're the mentor So it teaches you both sides of things and it also encourages harmony because these kids are helping each other Yeah, it's like a little brother or a little sister. You're not going to fight with someone that your your job is to help teach and take care of Um, and you'll have one teacher for three years in a row So the teacher gets to know the child very well and when you have An occasional meeting with the teacher She gives you a verbal report. She tells you your son did this this semester I you know, it's not just like a bunch of statistics that the government told you to collect It's actually a verbal report of their of the teacher's assessment of the kid's development. And so I appreciate All of that Oh, yeah, absolutely. And it's actually quite fascinating. We could probably go in for ages about it We will definitely look we we're going to link up some information about that. Um underneath the show notes. Absolutely. Yeah Yeah, absolutely. By the way, uh, uh, one thing that's slightly libertarian related, although I don't think she realized it Is that the part of the emphasis was that Montessori believed that The only way to transform human nature was by educating the children and have the next generation come up that was pro-peace Now it's a little you that's a little utopian in the sense Especially because Montessori for example is only, you know, 1% or whatever of the but you could see what she was getting at What we libertarians get at is that we have to educate the next generation In peace and in cooperation and the message of liberty somehow Oh, yeah, and I would that would absolutely agree with you and I would totally agree with that I think that's It's a good philosophy to have Um, so Stefan, thanks so much for coming on the show Um, why don't you tell us about about your website and anything else you would like to plug? Uh, well, I blog on occasion on a couple of places, but um, I have my ip stuff at c4saf.org This stands for center for the study of innovative freedom But everything can be found at stephanconcella.com. Um I would say most people nowadays Think of me as an ip guy and I understand that But I just want to say it's it's never been my main my main interest. I just did it because I felt I had to and Most people I heard talking about it got it wrong or didn't understand ip law Of course. So because I was an ip lawyer. I thought I had to Say what I thought on this. Um, but my main interest has always been rights theory You know basic libertarian theory So I've written a lot on that and legal theory and I do have a book coming out In a few months, hopefully It's a collection of my essays with some changes, but um, it's called law in a libertarian world So, um, that's interesting because that was something that we even asked about so definitely need to check that Something that we're definitely interested in Yep, so I appreciate your interest and thank you guys for the, uh, wonderful conversation Yeah, thanks so much. So for more libertarian podcast writings and news visit greeting at podcast.co.uk Thank you for being with us today's defense. Thanks so much. Thank you