KOL375 | Mentally Unscripted Ep55 – Why IP Laws Destroy Innovation and How Creatives Can Profit Without Them

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 375. This is my appearance on Ep.55 of Mentally Unscripted. Recorded Feb. 8, 2022; released Feb. 10, 2022. Transcript below. https://youtu.be/8SrUo79eiLk Related links: Examples of Ways Content Creators Can Profit Without Intellectual Property The Creator-Endorsed Mark as an Alternative to Copyright Do Business Without Intellectual Property (PDF) KOL 037 | Locke’s Big Mistake: How the Labor Theory of Property Ruined Political Theory Locke, Smith, Marx; the Labor Theory of Property and the Labor Theory of Value; and Rothbard, Gordon, and Intellectual Property Legal Scholars: Thumbs Down on Patent and Copyright The Overwhelming Empirical Case Against Patent and Copyright Libertarian Answer Man: Self-ownership for slaves and Crusoe; and Yiannopoulos on Accurate Analysis and the term “Property” Intellectual Property Rights as Negative Servitudes Where does IP Rank Among the Worst State Laws? Patent vs. Copyright: Which is Worse? On the 3D printing threat to patent law Copyrighting all the melodies to avoid accidental infringement | Damien Riehl (my comments debunking it on Facebook) Lost in Space: The Copyright Dilemma Monkey selfie copyright dispute David Koepsell, Who Owns You? The Corporate Gold Rush to Patent Your Genes (review; blog) Conversation with an author about copyright and publishing in a free society (re JK Rowling and Harry Potter movies) Prohibitions of anti-circumvention technology: Anti-circumvention (wikipedia) What is DMCA anti-circumvention? EFF Asks Appeals Court to Rule DMCA Anti-Circumvention Provisions Violate First Amendment From their shownotes: This week, Stefan and Scott welcome Stephan Kinsella to Mentally Unscripted. Stephan is a brilliant, articulate libertarian legal scholar who explains why the mainstream notion that intellectual property spurs innovation is wrong. He dives in by telling us why IP laws are simply government-issued monopolies that actually impede innovation. He explains why removing IP laws would make us more prosperous. And closes by discussing other innovative ways creators can profit without protectionist laws. As always, we're building a community around Mentally Unscripted. So, share this episode with your friends and interact with us at MentallyUnscripted.com. And remember, the conclusion you reach is less important than the process you follow to get there. Guest Information Stephan’s Website Kinsella on Liberty Podcast: Libertarian Theory and Applications Center for the Study of Innovative Freedom Top Takeaways Intellectual Property (IP) is a body of law whose stated purpose is to protect a specific type of private property, such as inventions and creative works but is really a grant of monopoly power by the state. Instead of spurring innovation and creativity, the monopolistic nature of IP laws stifles new creative output. IP laws could be repealed today, and entrepreneurs would fill the void with new, innovative ways to earn money from their creations. Comments or Questions on this episode? Join the conversation at the Mentally Unscripted Substack. TRANSCRIPT "Transcript: Why IP Laws Destroy Innovation and How Creatives Can Profit Without Them" Stephan Kinsella, Mentally Unscripted (Feb. 10, 2022) 00:00:15 SCOTT GRAYSON: Hi there, everybody.  My name is Scott Grayson, and you’re listening to Mentally Unscripted, the podcast where my cohost, Stefan, and I inspire you to think more clearly and have better conversations about the world.  When you ride along with us, we’ll take you on a journey that will show you there’s always more than one way to look at an issue.  You’ll learn to think critically about what you see and hear and how to challenge the narratives that those in power want you to believe.  You won’t always agree with us, but that’s the point: to learn that we can have deep conversations and learn from each other no matter how different we are. 00:00:48 This week, I find myself outnumbered by Stephans as we welcome Stephan Kinsella to Mentally Unscripted.  Stephan in a brilliant, articulate, libertarian legal scholar who explains why the mainstream notion that intellectual property spurs innovation is wrong.  He dives in by telling us why IP laws are simply government-issued monopolies that actually impede innovation.  He then explains why removing IP laws would make us more prosperous, and he closes out the podcast by discussing other innovative ways creators can profit without protectionist laws.  As always, we’re building a community around Mentally Unscripted, so share this episode with your friends and interact with us at MentallyUnscripted.com.  And remember, the conclusion you reach is less important than the process you followed to get there. 00:01:35 All right, everybody, this is Episode 55 of Mentally Unscripted, and this is a very special episode because I never thought in my entire life that I would be outnumbered by Stephans, and yet I am here.  I’ve got two Stephans on the call with us.  First is Stefan cohost.  Stefan cohost, how are you doing? 00:01:54 STEFAN: I’m doing well, can’t complain.  I feel a little bit of competition here with the name, but I’ll survive. 00:01:59 SCOTT GRAYSON: Awesome, and the other Stephan on the call or on the podcast here with us is Stephan Kinsella.  Mr. Kinsella is someone I am very thrilled to have on.  He is a libertarian legal scholar, a prolific writer, prolific podcaster, prolific podcast guest.  He’s all over the place.  I heard you, Mr. Kinsella—I don’t know—three or four years ago on the Tom Woods Show, heard you talking about how you’re an anti-IP attorney, and I just thought that was great.  I loved it, and also the director of the Center for the Study of Innovative Freedom, so happy to have you here.  Anything else to the—you want to add to the bio there? 00:02:40 STEPHAN KINSELLA: No, that covers it. 00:02:42 SCOTT GRAYSON: Awesome.  I wanted to have you on because I’ve been—like I said, I’ve been reading your stuff for a while, and I’m really interested in this idea of IP law.  Now, I’m an attorney, but I don’t know a lot about IP.  I know just enough to probably give people bad advice, and that’s it.  But I really like the idea—I’m really into the idea of how we can function in a society where we limit the amount of involvement of the state.  And I think IP law and the way that you’ve been writing about it and talking about it I think is an excellent way of showing people just how we can limit the reach of the state while still maintaining an orderly society and still allowing people to profit off of their hard work without us degenerating into some Mad Max-style, dystopian movie-type thing.  So let’s just kick it off for—I think, most of our listeners probably are not legal experts, so what is IP law just generally? 00:03:39 STEPHAN KINSELLA: It’s a specialty area of law, which includes patent law and copyright law and also trademark law and a few other things, which are not as well-known like trade secret and some other areas but primarily patent and copyright.  So patent is the type of law that gives inventors some kind of rights in their inventions, which are like practical processes or machines.  And copyright is a law that gives authors the rights in original creative works like novels or paintings or movies or songs, so that’s what IP law is. 00:04:16 And it originates in two statutes in the US, in the federal statutes, which were first enacted right after the Constitution was ratified in 1789, I think, around 1790 or ’91, the first two laws.  And they traced their origins back to some practices and statutes in Europe such as the Statute of Monopolies in Britan in 1623 and the Statute of Anne, and the Statute of Monopolies was kind of the origin of modern copyright law—I’m sorry—modern patent law. 00:04:47 And you can see even in the title, the British Parliament understood that patents were monopoly grants, which is one reason that we libertarians should oppose them, and the people that call them property rights are being a little bit dishonest and disingenuous.  And copyright comes from the Statute of Anne of 1710, and the purpose of that—well, that flowed from the attempt of the government and the church to stop people from printing works that they didn’t want them printing after the printing press came out. 00:05:18 So the origins of copyright are in censorship by the state and the church, and the origins of patents are in the grant of monopoly privileges by the state.  So they’re both rooted in total un-libertarian and unjust state practices and policies, so it’s kind of ironic that so-called advocates of the free market and private property rights support them under this label of intellectual property.  Originally, these laws weren’t called property rights at all.  They were never understood to be property rights.  Even people that were somewhat in support of them understood that they were derogations from the free market and private property rights and natural property rights. 00:05:56 But they thought they were necessary for a certain purpose like to incentivize innovation or something like that, but they were under no illusions that they were anything but a temporary grant of monopoly privilege by the state.  And when the free market economists in the 1800s started criticizing these laws saying, what the hell are we doing granting these monopoly privileges?  We should just get rid of them because they are contrary to the free market and private property rights and contracts and all this. 00:06:20 The defenders—by then, there had been entrenched industries that had grown up that were dependent upon these laws like the publishing industry, book publishers,