KOL346 | Copyright and Satoshi’s Legacy: The Tatiana Show, with Tatiana Moroz

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 346. I was a guest on the Tatiana Show, with host Tatiana Moroz. (Released July 1, 2021, recorded June 30, 2021). Transcript below. Youtube: https://youtu.be/GX2QolLvPSE Original youtube: https://youtu.be/HSIIzKGk_aw From her shownotes: COPYRIGHT & SATOSHI’S LEGACY WITH STEPHAN KINSELLA OF THE OPEN CRYPTO ALLIANCE On June 29, 2021, a UK court found that Australian computer scientist Craig Wright is the proper copyright owner of the Bitcoin Whitepaper, awarding initial damages in excess of $48,000 to Wright and demanding that Bitcoin.org remove the Whitepaper from its site. Guest Stephan Kinsella of the Open Crypto Alliance joins Tatiana today to talk about the decision and why it reveals all the most troubling problems with the government-run patent, trademark & copyright system. He discusses the background of the case and the personal financial interest that he believes is driving Wright’s copyright trolling campaign. And he also gives his own thoughts on Bitcoin, blockchain technology, smart contracts and more. If you like the program, subscribe today via Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen! About the Guest: (Norman) Stephan Kinsella is an attorney and libertarian writer in Houston. He was previously General Counsel for Applied Optoelectronics, Inc., a partner with Duane Morris, and adjunct law professor at South Texas College of Law. A registered patent attorney and former adjunct professor at South Texas College of Law, he received an LL.M. (international business law) from King’s College London-University of London, a JD from the Paul M. Hebert Law Center at LSU, and BSEE and MSEE degrees from LSU. He has spoken, lectured and published widely on both legal topics, including intellectual property law and international law, and also on various areas of libertarian legal theory. Libertarian-related publications include Property, Freedom, and Society: Essays in Honor of Hans-Hermann Hoppe (co-editor, with Jörg Guido Hülsmann, Mises Institute, 2009); Against Intellectual Property (Mises Institute, 2008); and Law in a Libertarian World: Legal Foundations of a Free Society (Papinian Press, 2021). Forthcoming works include Copy This Book: The Case for Abolishing Intellectual Property (Papinian Press, 2022). Kinsella’s legal publications include International Investment, Political Risk, and Dispute Resolution: A Practitioner’s Guide (Oxford, 2020); Online Contract Formation (Oceana, 2004); Trademark Practice and Forms (Oxford & West/Thomson Reuters 2001–2013); World Online Business Law (Oxford, 2003–2011); Digest of Commercial Laws of the World (Oxford, 1998-2013); Protecting Foreign Investment Under International Law: Legal Aspects of Political Risk (Oceana Publications, 1997); and Louisiana Civil Law Dictionary (Quid Pro Books, 2011). Kinsella is a co-founder and member of the Advisory Council for the Open Crypto Alliance (2020–), a member of the Editorial Board of Reason Papers (2009–), a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of the Molinari Review (2014–), a member of the Advisory Board of the Lexington Books (Rowman & Littlefield) series Capitalist Thought: Studies in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (2013–), Founder and Director of the Center for the Study of Innovative Freedom (2010–present), and legal advisor to LBRY (2015–). Previously, he was Founder and Executive Editor of Libertarian Papers (2009–2018), a Senior Fellow for the Ludwig von Mises Institute (2009–2013), a member of the Advisory Council of the Government Waste and Over-regulation Council of the Our America Initiative (2014–2017), Book Review Editor of the Journal of Libertarian Studies (Mises Institute, 2000–2004), a member of the Editorial Board of The Journal of Peace, Prosperity & Freedom (Liberty Australia, 2012–2016), a member of the Advisory Panel of the Center for a Stateless Society (C4SS) (2009–2012), and served as Chair of the Computer Law Subcommittee of the Federalist Society’s Intellectual Property Practice Group. More Info: Tatiana Moroz – https://tatianamoroz.com Crypto Media Hub – https://cryptomediahub.com Open Crypto Alliance – https://opencryptoalliance.org Stephen Kinsella – https://stephankinsella.com TRANSCRIPT Copyright and Satoshi’s Legacy with Stephan Kinsella of the Open Crypto Alliance Stephan Kinsella and Tatiana Moroz The Tatiana Show, June 30, 2021 00:00:01 [intro music] 00:00:17 TATIANA MOROZ: Hello everybody, and welcome to this last-minute special edition of the Tatiana Show.  I’m here with Stephan Kinsella.  He is a patent attorney and a libertarian writer, and we just ran into each other at PorcFest, so I wanted to catch up about that and then get to this breaking news about Satoshi being Craig Wright, which I don’t even know what to say about all that.  So you probably know something about that.  We actually had you on the show before.  You were talking about some of these kind of patent trolls in blockchain.  But before we dive into all this stuff, if you can please give some people your background, a little bit about how you got involved in all this stuff and just some overview about your experience. 00:01:05 STEPHAN KINSELLA: Sure.  Well, I’m a long-time libertarian since 1982, so I’ve been interested in this stuff for a long time.  I’m also a patent attorney with an electrical engineering background, so I deal in high-tech patent law, so I’m interested in technology, and so I got interested in Bitcoin early on and libertarianism and Austrian economics.  They all tie together for me.  So I’m a member also of the Open Crypto Alliance, which is a group that is trying to fight the patent troll threat to the Bitcoin and blockchain ecosystem primarily by nChain and Craig Wright and other companies. 00:01:43 And Craig Wright is also apparently a copyright troll, so that’s what the news item today was about.  And as we talked about last time, and as I’ve talked about many times, although I’m a patent attorney, I’ve long been an opponent of the intellectual property system, patent and copyright law.  And I’ve been warning for a while that this would happen, and it has happened now, and it’s happening now. 00:02:04 TATIANA MOROZ: I’d love to hear a little bit more about that because normally – I even did an episode a long time ago I think with Jeffrey Tucker and John Light.  And we were talking about IP in the music world, and that’s a pretty contentious topic that I think we could do on our own with that episode.  But can you broadly explain why would somebody not want patents or copyright?  Doesn’t that give artists money?  I mean shouldn’t people want to have some kind of incentive for their work?  I know it’s kind of asking you to explain a really, really big thing in a short while, but let’s give it a shot. 00:02:39 STEPHAN KINSELLA: Well, I mean lots of things give artists money or give other people money.  I mean the COVID payments right now are going to lots of people.  And you could say, well, why would you want to stop giving people free money?  I mean isn’t that good to give them money?  The question for libertarians is one of justice.  The intellectual property thing can be explained for normal people by explaining to them some principles of private property in all this and explaining why IP law is incompatible with that. 00:03:07 But for libertarians, I’m going to take that for granted.  If you favor free markets and private property rights, if you oppose state censorship, if you are in favor of competition, then you ought to be opposed to patent and copyright law because these are government intrusions into the free market that reduce competition, restrict competition, and censor free speech.  They’re not what they’re sold as.  They’re not really systems that help the small guy, help the artist.  They are really rooted in the government – in copyright, they’re rooted in the government practice of censorship, that is, state control of what can be printed. 00:03:45 And for patents, they were rooted in state grants of monopoly privilege to protect people from competition, and that’s what they’ve turned into now.  So they basically reduce and impede innovation, make us all poorer, reduce competition.  They harm the consumer, and copyright law threatens internet freedom.  Websites are taken down all the time.  Books can’t be published, and the white paper is now being – going to be taken down from bitcoin.org because of a state court using force in the name of copyright law.  So this is a perfect example of how copyright law is censorship. 00:04:28 TATIANA MOROZ: How does that work?  Because – okay, so I don’t pay attention to Craig Wright.  I’ve got a couple random friends tell me that BSC has some kind of utility and it’s okay in certain ways.  I’m like, yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever.  But I don’t pay attention to this big fight, and I never thought we would come to this point where, all of a sudden, there are some headlines saying that we’re not allowed to use it on bitcoin.org anymore because it belongs to Craig Wright.  And I haven’t taken the time to truly delve in, and I think some people are feeling similarly to me.  So can you explain to me who gave who the authority to decide that he is – and are they saying he’s definitely Satoshi and so nobody is allowed to use his work?  How does this – what’s happening here? 00:05:09 STEPHAN KINSELLA: No.  No, he’s not – as far as I know, he’s not Satoshi.  It wouldn’t matter if he was, but he’s not as far as I can tell.  And this legal outcome doesn’t indicate that whatsoever.  Of course, they’re going to claim that it does because they’re dishonest.  They did this recently.  So the way it works is copyright is granted automatically under almost all nations’ copyright law,