 We all see news reports on an almost daily basis of outrages caused by intellectual property law. There are people dying because they cannot obtain or afford patented drugs such as Fabrazine, a drug that treats Fabri disease and enzyme deficiency. Single mother Jamey Thomas had a $2 million verdict awarded against her for sharing 24 songs. The company NTP used the threat of patents to extort over $600 million out of RIM, the manufacturer of the BlackBerry smartphone. My name is Stefan Kinsella, I am a registered patent attorney and a senior fellow with the Mises Institute. I have a new Mises Academy course starting Tuesday, March 22nd called Rethinking Intellectual Property History, Theory and Economics. This is a repeat of a course given last year. The primary readings for the course will include my monograph, Against Intellectual Property and also the book Against Intellectual Monopoly by economist Boldrin and Levine. Both of these are available online as are all the other readings for the course. The six weeks in this course will give us time to cover in depth what IP is, its origins in state censorship and grants of monopoly privilege, arguments for and against intellectual property, whether it is compatible with libertarianism and how it fits in with principles of Austrian economics and how libertarians could make the mistake in the first place of ever thinking IP is part of a legitimate system of property rights. In this course we will examine the key mistake made early on in political philosophy and then perpetuated and adopted by some libertarians which has allowed them to become deceived by this idea. We will examine how this idea has permeated economic and political thinking and we will see that it is crucial to have a clear understanding of what IP is and how it operates, what its origins are and what is wrong with pro IP arguments. Along the way we will see that it is essential to have a clear understanding of the basic nature of Austrian economics, human action, libertarian property rights and homesteading to understand this issue and to integrate this issue into other aspects of libertarian and political thinking. When I started practicing patent law 18 years ago I knew something was wrong with the whole idea of IP. It took me a while to figure out how to view it from an Austrian and libertarian perspective and the truth is that coming to grips with IP is not easy. Thinking it through helps to firm up the case for property rights and contract and the implications of what we learn will extend far beyond justice area. It reaches into social theory and competition theory as well. This course will be a lot of fun, I can attest to that from teaching it last time and from the comments of the students and this will help to illuminate many other areas and aspects of libertarian and economic thinking. As I mentioned the course starts Tuesday, March 22nd at 9 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. It lasts for six weeks and I hope you join us. For more information go to academy.meses.org and if you have any questions feel free to email me at in as in Norman S. Kinsella at gmail.com.