An interesting TechCrunch post on intellectual property. Here is the comment I added to the discussion:
Probably the best libertarian arguments against intellectual property have been made or summarized by the lawyer and libertarian theorist Stephan Kinsella. A good place to start is his Sep., 2000 article “In Defense of Napster” http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig/kinsella2.html
Doug Lay states the core of the argument fairly well in an earlier comment: “Is there anything more tiresome than people who persist in comparing copyrights to physical property like cars and real estate? Come on - any 10-year old can see that when you take part of someone’s car you’re depriving them of the use of it, while if you copy part of someone’s song the original owner still has their entire work. Really, this whole “intellectual property” metaphor is pretty misleading and unhelpful.”
Precisely. The reason that intellectual property laws are so arbitrary (14 year copyrights? Why not 1,000 years? Why not 1 year?) is that IP is artificial and incompatible with good old traditional physical property rights. Does the NFL own the part of my brain that remembers the game? Does it own my mouth if I talk about the game?
IP problems (including the endless patent litigation, etc.) are not going to go away, they are just going to get worse because IP cannot be reconciled with our property rights in our bodies and our justly acquired physical property.
[I wish I had added this: For more of Stephan Kinsella on IP go here. His “Against Intellectual Property“(pdf) is particularly recommended.]
