Kinsella On Liberty

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 326. [Update: Transcript appended below] Back on May 24, 2020, I appeared on the Scottish Liberty Podcast, with hosts Antony Sammeroff and Tom Laird. We discussed IP and related matters, including Sammeroff’s recent debate on the topic of IP with pro-IP Randian law professor Adam Mossoff. I was a bit drunk and it shows, and went off on a rant and was not as coherent as usual. The episode was entitled "Under the Influence... of Stephan Kinsella... Against Intellectual Property". We recorded a second episode on May 30, 2020, entitled "A Sober Conversation with Stephan Kinsella...," which was released as KOL289. I just realized I never posted the initial episode, so here it is, warts and all (unfortunately for fans of my drunken rants, I have quit drinking alcohol since I realized it's a destructive poison with no benefits at all, so this won't happen again). Previous episode: KOL289 | Scottish Liberty Podcast: Discussing the Mossoff-Sammeroff IP Debate, Take 2: A Sober Conversation… See various links, embeds, notes below. Youtube of the current discussion: Previous Youtube from KOL289. Antony’s previous debate with Mossoff: In his remarks, Mossoff mentioned this paper by Stephen Haber as supporting the empirical case for patents (funny, I thought the Objectivists had principles): Stephen Haber, “Patents and the Wealth of Nations,” 23 Geo. Mason L.Rev. 811 (2016). I have read through it as much as I can stand and provide my critical commentary here:  “The Overwhelming Empirical Case Against Patent and Copyright”–see in particular note 3 and accompanying text. ❧ Transcript Scottish Liberty Podcast: Discussing the Mossoff-Sammeroff IP Debate, Take 1: Under the Influence of Stephan Kinsella: Against Intellectual Property (May 21, 2020) [Transcript of "Scottish Liberty Podcast: Discussing the Mossoff-Sammeroff IP Debate, Take 1: Under the Influence..." (May 21, 2020)] 00:00:03 TOM LAIRD: Welcome to episode 155 of the Scottish Liberty podcast with me, Tom Laird and, of course, the man who can, Antony Sammeroff. 00:00:13 ANTONY SAMMEROFF: That’s me. 00:00:13 TOM LAIRD: And possibly the man who can, Stephen Kinsella, big hitter from the Mises Institute and patent lawyer extraordinaire, and there he goes. 00:00:25 ANTONY SAMMEROFF: Author of Against Intellectual Property, a very influential book in the libertarian movement I have to say. 00:00:33 STEPHAN KINSELLA: The most intellectual book, and get my name right.  Let’s say Stephan.  Let’s say it.  Okay, can you guys say with me Stephanie?  Say it with me, Stephanie. 00:00:43 TOM LAIRD: Stephanie. 00:00:44 STEPHAN KINSELLA: Okay.  Take off the E.  Stephan. 00:00:47 ANTONY SAMMEROFF: Stephan.  Did you call him Stephen Kinsella?  Did you call him – did you actually call him Stephen Kinsella in the intro? 00:00:55 TOM LAIRD: Who? 00:00:55 STEPHAN KINSELLA: Yeah, he did.  It’s fine.  I’m used to it.  I’m used to it. 00:00:59 TOM LAIRD: It you want it pronounced differently, spell it differently. 00:01:03 00:01:05 STEPHAN KINSELLA: You can’t blame someone’s mother – so this is the thing.  You can’t blame their mother, man.  You’ve got to – there’s boundaries. 00:01:13 ANTONY SAMMEROFF: Well, I know.  I blame my mom for tons of shit. 00:01:17 STEPHAN KINSELLA: Like what? 00:01:18 ANTONY SAMMEROFF: I don’t know if I should say it publicly. 00:01:25 STEPHAN KINSELLA: Well, then don’t tease us.  Come on. 00:01:27 ANTONY SAMMEROFF: My ex-girlfriend blamed my mom’s mom for tons of shit as well. 00:01:33 STEPHAN KINSELLA: Like what?  Give me one example, just one. 00:01:36 00:01:39 ANTONY SAMMEROFF: I don’t – right at the beginning of the show?  There might be new listeners tuning from Twitter.  I tell you what.  They’ll have to actually start one of those websites where they vote.  If 100 people sign the petition, Antony will disclose embarrassing details of the way that his mom scarred him in childhood. 00:01:58 STEPHAN KINSELLA: You are so sweet.  You Scottish people are so sweet. 00:02:03 TOM LAIRD: Well, look.  It can’t get any more embarrassing than your pimp’s cushion that you’ve got behind you there. 00:02:09 ANTONY SAMMEROFF: Do you like that?  Look, I’ve got a nice set.  For those of you who are on… 00:02:14 STEPHAN KINSELLA: It’s like a – is it a Bengal tiger or what the hell is that? 00:02:18 ANTONY SAMMEROFF: For those of you listening through your podcast app, I am actually setting up against a leopard skin – leopard pillow. 00:02:27 STEPHAN KINSELLA: Do you have a Jabra too?  You have a Jabra too.  We’re both Jabra – Jabra buddies. 00:02:32 ANTONY SAMMEROFF: Jabra.  That’s really funny.  When I was in college, there was a group of weird jock guys that started calling me Tony Jabroni for some reason just because it rhymed.  It doesn’t even mean anything.  They just liked it.  And now I’m a real jabroni, Jabro.  I put the bro in Jabra. 00:02:53 STEPHAN KINSELLA: So when you say you went to college, what did you go to college in? 00:02:56 ANTONY SAMMEROFF: Oh God.  I didn’t know that I was going to be the interview guest. 00:02:59 TOM LAIRD: Exactly.  We’re doing the questions here, Mr. Kinsella. 00:03:02 STEPHAN KINSELLA: Well, I mean he – you brought it up.  It’s a point of interest. 00:03:07 TOM LAIRD: Okay.  Antony, you’re going to have to tell us now. 00:03:09 ANTONY SAMMEROFF: These are the golden moments that people listen to Scottish Liberty podcast for.  It’s not about the politics.  It’s about the banter. 00:03:17 TOM LAIRD: It’s not about that cushion.  But anyway, go for it. 00:03:19 00:03:21 ANTONY SAMMEROFF: Well, I studied popular music, and then I went and studied music and philosophy, and then I did a post grad in counseling studies. 00:03:30 STEPHAN KINSELLA: So things you could have done without a college degree. 00:03:34 ANTONY SAMMEROFF: Well, I mean – yeah, pretty much. 00:03:37 STEPHAN KINSELLA: No.  I’m fucking with you but… 00:03:38 TOM LAIRD: He could have. 00:03:38 STEPHAN KINSELLA: Defend yourself.  Defend yourself, my brother. 00:03:41 ANTONY SAMMEROFF: I wouldn’t have had the – I actually… 00:03:43 TOM LAIRD: The fun and the drinking. 00:03:46 ANTONY SAMMEROFF: Yeah.  One of my reasons for going was I thought people like me should have a degree.  That’s how pretentious I was at 22. 00:03:54 TOM LAIRD: Okay.  First question. 00:03:58 STEPHAN KINSELLA: What did you do your degree in? 00:04:01 TOM LAIRD: No, no, no.  It’s different. 00:04:02 ANTONY SAMMEROFF: Wait, wait.  Wait, wait, wait. 00:04:06 STEPHAN KINSELLA: He’s changing subject. 00:04:06 ANTONY SAMMEROFF: What did you do your degree in? 00:04:08 TOM LAIRD: So much for Antony losing his voice. 00:04:13 STEPHAN KINSELLA: His voice is – so it’s just me and you because his voice is out. 00:04:17 TOM LAIRD: Exactly.  So first question and it’s an important question. 00:04:19 ANTONY SAMMEROFF: I feel bullied. 00:04:20 TOM LAIRD: Considering we were talking about Rush before this started.  So the question is why didn’t America get prog rock? 00:04:28 STEPHAN KINSELLA: Well, I would challenge the assumption.  I mean why would you say that it didn’t get prog rock?  I mean I think that we did. 00:04:41 TOM LAIRD: Some Americans did, but it didn’t really take off in the way that it took off in Europe or elsewhere.  There wasn’t really – it was more kind of niche thing in America I would – that was my take on it.  It wasn’t very radio friendly. 00:04:57 STEPHAN KINSELLA: Are you a prog rock guy? 00:04:59 TOM LAIRD: Yeah, I’m a big proggie kind of guy. 00:05:03 STEPHAN KINSELLA: So Rush is like the pinnacle, right?  And Yngwie Malmsteen and Triumph and that kind of stuff, right? 00:05:09 TOM LAIRD: Well, Yngwie Malmsteen doesn’t – you’re not getting Yngwie Malmsteen in prog there.  I’m not having Yngwie Malmsteen. 00:05:16 STEPHAN KINSELLA: I know.  I know.  I know.  I know.  I have a 16-year-old son, and he can school me on everything, but he can’t get his driver’s license without my help.  So it’s like a symbiotic thing but… 00:05:30 ANTONY SAMMEROFF: It’s a symbiotic thing except for he’s like the parasite that’s sucking out your will to live with his criticism of every little thing that… 00:05:37 STEPHAN KINSELLA: Yeah, but that’s the point of having kids, to have a parasite. 00:05:41 00:05:44 TOM LAIRD: I guess.  I guess. 00:05:47 ANTONY SAMMEROFF: So… 00:05:48 STEPHAN KINSELLA: Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, let’s go back up.  What do you mean you guess?  That was like a very vague, noncommittal. 00:05:58 TOM LAIRD: I’m sorry.  I have to keep you to the subject here.  Why doesn’t America… 00:06:03 STEPHAN KINSELLA: You don’t want to go to you. 00:06:06 TOM LAIRD: Why didn’t America get prog in the way that other countries got it? 00:06:10 STEPHAN KINSELLA: I mean why didn’t – I don’t know – Bulgaria get it?  I don’t know.  Why is America special? 00:06:16 TOM LAIRD: You can believe they got it. 00:06:18 STEPHAN KINSELLA: Really? 00:06:19 TOM LAIRD: Yeah. 00:06:20 STEPHAN KINSELLA: Tell me more. 00:06:21 TOM LAIRD: Okay.  So favorite Rush album. 00:06:28 00:06:31 STEPHAN KINSELLA: Probably Permanent Waves. 00:06:33 TOM LAIRD: Permanent Waves.  Okay, we’ll go for it. 00:06:35 ANTONY SAMMEROFF: Is it the one that goes [guitar sounds]?  I love that Rush tune, love that Rush tune. 00:06:44 STEPHAN KINSELLA: Give me 60 more seconds and I’ll tell you. 00:06:49 TOM LAIRD: Gee.  You’re a Rush fan, for cryin’ out loud.

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 325. This is my appearance on the Nate the Voluntaryist Livestream #202, released March 15, 2021 (Nate’s Bitchute channel). Shownotes: "Stephan Kinsella is back for more about Hoppe and who will succeed him in the world of Austrian economics, plus a Q&A." Previous appearance: KOL311 | Nate the Voluntaryist Livestream #194: IP, the CDA, DMCA, Argumentation Ethics, and More

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 324. I was on Aleks Svetski's show Wake Up, Ep. 37. Youtube: From his shownotes: Stephan Kinsella is a Patent Attorney in Texas, Austrian AnCap philosopher, writer & hands down one of the smarter & most well-read people I've ever spoken to. In this ep, we discuss: - SK's Journey on Why or how he become a libertarian - Where Austrian Econ fit in? - A little about Bitcoin coming on the radar, and "fixing this". We discuss consistency of thought, principles and ideas. A little on Patent Law & Private property, although we'll probably do an Ep 2 in this. We explore: - Rand's critique on Anarchy - Rand's support of IP The difference between ownership & possession - Is Ownership is that which you can protect? - How do you prove initial possession? - How do you enforce ownership? Are the rules & norms of a community or city a sort of constitution? How do these rules scale across populations? How do you synchronise those larger scale ideas with societies that have different values, ie; the Confucian east? War is expensive only with sound money (Bitcoin fixes this) We dig into a bit about private property rights from both the Lockean view & a more tangible viewpoint inspired by Hoppe. "The entire point of property rights is to solve conflict." And I ask the question: Why are Libertarians not as widely thrilled about Bitcoin as one might expect them to be? There was a series of books that Stephan also mentioned. I've listed them here for you: Walter Block: I chose liberty - Assortment of stories about how people became libertarians. Randy Barnett - The structure of Liberty Hoppe - A theory of Socialism & Capitalism - Economics & ethics of Private property Mises: - Ultimate foundation of economic science Rothbard: - The logic of action 1 & 2 - Economic controversies

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 323. Jed Grant and I appeared on the World Crypto Network channel with host Thomas Hunt to discuss the looming patent threat to bitcoin. Jed is Founder of the Open Crypto Alliance, for which I serve on the Advisory Board. Shownotes: Patents help protect the intellectual property of inventors and creators, but on occasion those same creators choose to make their works available to everyone, free of charge. Unfortunately, some predatory entities, known as patent trolls, prey on the users of these technologies through the civil courts. Their latest target? Cryptocurrency and blockchain technology, which is why blockchain industry leaders and legal experts – including today’s guests, Stephan Kinsella & Jed Grant – have come together to form the Open Crypto Alliance, a group dedicated to preserving cryptocurrency & bitcoin technology’s open-source origins.

Eleonore Blanc, Amsterdam-based crypto educator and meetup organiser; Stefan Kinsella, patent attorney and libertarian legal theorist; Jed Grant, founder of the Open Crypto Alliance fighting abusive blockchain patents. They discuss the patent threat to Bitcoin, open-source forks and governance, prior-art crowdsourcing to stop patent trolls, wallet UX and adoption, and tensions around KYC/AML and crypto freedom.

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 321. This is my appearance The Tatiana Show, episode 296, with host Tatiana Moroz, in which Jed Grant and I discussed the looming patent threat to bitcoin. Jed is Founder of the Open Crypto Alliance, for which I serve on the Advisory Board. Tatiana’s shownotes below. The Youtube video is here:

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 320. From my recent appearance on Stephan Livera’s bitcoin-focused podcast, SLP249 BITCOIN PATENTS & OPEN CRYPTO ALLIANCE WITH STEPHAN KINSELLA AND JED GRANT (recorded Feb. 2, 2021; released Feb. 5, 2021). [Update: See transcript here, and appended below] From the show notes: Stephan Kinsella and Jed Grant join me to chat about Open Crypto Alliance. We talk: Why IP laws are anti-liberty and anti-progress How progress has been delayed by improper concepts of property rights How Patent laws could hinder the Bitcoin industry The asymmetry of attack vs defense here How to stop overly broad patents How to support OCA Guest links:  Site: https://www.opencryptoalliance.org/ Stephan twitter: @NSKinsella Jed twitter: @JediGrant Prior episodes: SLP15 – Intellectual Property, Bitcoin, and Internet Censorship, with Stephan Kinsella SLP211 Steve Lee – Bitcoin Grants, Design & Crypto Patents (COPA) *** Transcript Podcast Transcript: dcasStephan Livera: Stephan and Jed, welcome to the show. Jed Grant: Thank you. Thanks for having us. Stephan Kinsella: Thanks Stephan. Stephan Livera: Today. We’re going to talk a little bit about intellectual property and what it means in terms of Bitcoin and property rights as well. I think many listeners of the show are libertarians themselves, but not all of them. And so I think it might be good. Well, firstly let’s talk, let’s hear a little bit about each of you just a little bit on your background. Jed, if you want to start? Jed Grant: Sure. Yeah, I’m a technologist I’ve been in tech. Well, since the eighties, when I got my hands on an Apple II and started writing code I’ve always been interested in cryptography. Somewhat of a cypherpunk, ended up at NATO running their deployment of TCP IP in the nineties and been an entrepreneur for the last 20, 22 years, more or less and focused on, on security and crypto and technology in that space. So Bitcoin is something that I’ve been following since basically when the white paper came out as a novelty and really liked the tech and want to see it change the world. So that’s sort of my focus. For my professional side. I run a company called KYC 3 and I set out to change the way we do KYC because it’s fundamentally broken. So somewhat similar to what Stephan’s going to say. I’m not a lawyer, but I’m a KYC guy, but I’m anti KYC. So there you have it. Stephan Livera: And Stephan, just for listeners who maybe they haven’t heard you before. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself? Stephan Kinsella: Sure yeah, I’m a patent attorney in Houston and Texas, I’m from Louisiana originally and I’m a libertarian and I’ve been interested in libertarian theory and intellectual property stuff for a long time now. And got interested in Bitcoin when it came out and started buying it when I lost a bet to Vijay Boyapati, because I thought in 2012 that the government would kill it. So I lost that bet had to buy some Bitcoins to pay them off. So I bought some for me at the same time. So those Bitcoins are now worth 90,000 or now, $120,000 that I gave him. Stephan Livera: Yeah, that’s great. Vijay our mutual friend, he’s a regular guest on my show. And for listeners who aren’t familiar, Stephan is a really leading thinker in the libertarian world especially in the areas of intellectual property. And also just generally in terms of private property theory and explaining some of the thought of some of the leading lights of the Austrian libertarian world, such as Hans Hoppe and others. I think maybe we can start there as well, because I think for some people they might not be as familiar with this way of thinking and they might be thinking, well, hang on. I thought these people put in work to create intellectual property. So why shouldn’t that also be respected as a quote unquote private property, right? Why is that not correct? Stephan Kinsella: Right. And I guess I thought that too at first, like most people do I mean I come at it from a private property point of view, I favour free markets and private property and individual Liberty capitalism and all that. And I still am and innovation and technology. And you hear about this thing called intellectual property, which includes mainly patent and copyright, which covers inventions and artistic works. And you just assume that, well, this is another type of property rights. It was part of capitalism, but the more I studied the issue and when I started practicing, practicing it in the early nineties as a lawyer. I started looking into it more closely understanding the legal system and then understanding libertarian and economic arguments about it more deeply, came to the conclusion that the systems are completely antithetical to private property and free markets and competition, and it should be abolished. Stephan Kinsella: I mean, completely, I think the patent system and the copyright system are completely unjustified and do tons of harm in the world, especially the patent system. Basically it gives people a monopoly from the government, which allows them to prevent people from competing with them. And that’s anti-competitive and against the free market, it violates their property rights. In particular, the patent system allows you to get a license from the government to sell your product that you claim to have come up with on your own for about 17 years, without anyone competing with you on that. So delays innovation because other people don’t bother to innovate with, they can’t sell a product that’s like yours. So it slows down innovation and it lets you rest on your laurels and connect monopoly profits because you’re the only guy you could sell this thing. Stephan Kinsella: So the standard arguments for it that you need it to incentivize innovation are all flawed. There’s no empirical research for it. And in fact, that way of thinking about it is confused because the purpose of law is not to have the government come in and twiddle the leavers in the market and optimize things that are broken. Like that’s the market failure idea of the Chicago school, which I don’t believe in. And I don’t think the government is really their goal is to do that and they’re not equipped to do it. And the patent law system won’t do that anyway. All it does is help monopolies grow larger and help cartels and oligopolies form. Stephan Livera: Right? And so some might believe that, Oh, this business model, it requires intellectual property for it to be viable. And without that, these businesses would just not work and maybe they would say music or art or maybe writers. And, but fundamentally it comes back to, as you were saying, it’s about private property rights and the need for private property rights to be granted or issued only in things that are scarce. Like rivalrous. And I guess as you’re saying, if you, or if the government grants somebody an intellectual property, right then in some way, shape or form, they are giving some people the right to control what other people do with their own private property, whether that be their own piece of paper, that they are writing down a poem or a whatever, or their own computer. Right. And so that you are giving some people the right to control other people’s computers, but we are just in some sense the guns of the government to enforce that. And that is anti private property rights. Stephan Kinsella: Yeah. And there are definitely some business models that won’t work without IP, such as the business model of being a patent attorney. Just like it’s like without a tax system, there wouldn’t be tax attorneys and those types of CPA’s and without a drug war, there wouldn’t be defense attorneys making money, defending people who are facing prison time for doing something that’s a victimless crime. And there are probably some business models in the regular business world that would have a tough time making it without IP law. But by the same token, nothing is for free. So if you make something easier, you’re taking it away from something else. And so other business models are the seen and the unseen, by Bastiat. We see that some companies claim to make profits from their copyrights and their patents, but that’s at the expense of innovations and creativity. Stephan Kinsella: That’s suppressed hands of other people by, by virtue of these laws. So from the empirical point of view, people that just have this thing, like you need it. Well, we’re just used to it. We’re used to these laws. So it’s hard to imagine what it’s like, what it will be like to have a fully free market, just like in most countries outside the U.S. Who are used to socialised medicine, they’re used to thinking of medicine as something the government provides and they can’t imagine what it would be like to live in a free market healthcare. But that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t move in that direction for anyone interested in looking into this further, there’s a ton of resources on my site C4sif.org. And you can find there, let’s say a link to Boldrin and Levine’s book against intellectual monopoly, which just goes in detail over the empirical arguments, given in favor of patent and copyright and shows how each one of them are just flawed and wrong. Stephan Livera: That’s excellent and for listeners as I would echo that. So definitely go and read. Stephen can sell his against intellectual property. And also that Michele and Boldrin book where basically there are many examples of how society has been slowed down. The progress of society has been slowed down. Arguably the industrial revolution was delayed by I believe, 18 years. And that’s the example from the first chapter in that book. So there’s a really great example, actually.

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 319. This is Part II of my appearance on Keith Knight’s Youtube show “Don’t Tread on Anyone” (Feb. 3, 2021), discussing my “Libertarian Litmus Test” post on Facebook.  In this second hour or so of our discussion, we covered "Logic, Exploitation, Homesteading, & Freedom", and other issues (see below). See also KOL318 | The Libertarianism Litmus Test, Part 1 – With Keith Knight, “Don’t Tread on Anyone”. Time-markers: 0:00 - Logic v. Empiricism / Deontologicalism v. Utilitarianism 10:29 - Exploitation debate 11:34 - Who are the libertarian allies? 13:45 - Homesteading aka Original Appropriation 18:33 - Should I have to work to live? 21:52 - Personal v. Private property 32:05 - Socialist shortages 36:32 - Labor Theory of Value 50:05 - Order Givers v. Order Followers 1:00:53 - What is freedom?

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 318. This is my appearance on Keith Knight’s Youtube show “Don’t Tread on Anyone” (Feb. 3, 2021), discussing my "Libertarian Litmus Test" post on Facebook: Time to update the libertarian litmus test: To be a solid libertarian, you must be good on the following (ranked roughly in order of importance/obviousness): 1. IP 2. central banking/the Fed 3. taxation 4. the drug war 5. war 6. welfare 7. government education 8. the state (anarchist) 9. and now, covid lockdowns (no offense, paranoid and "respectable" libertards) I'll let you slide on one issue ("one deviation"), but one only. But you miss two, and you're relegated to Time Out. Youtube embedded below. See also KOL319 | The Libertarianism Litmus Test, Part 2 – With Keith Knight, “Don’t Tread on Anyone” Time markers: 0:00 - What is libertarianism? 2:19 - Intellectual Property 6:07 - History of IP 13:05 - Central banking 16:11 - Taxation 18:06 - Drug war 20:30 - War 22:39 - Welfare 24:28 - State education 27:54 - The state 31:12 - Lockdowns 34:09 - A Proper understanding of socialism and capitalism 43:35 - Most important contributions of…. Carl Menger Eugen von Bohm-Bawerk:  Shorter Classics - chapter II, "WHETHER LEGAL RIGHTS AND RELATIONSHIPS ARE ECONOMIC GOODS" Ludwig von Mises -- UFOES F.A. Hayek -- not a big fan Murray N. Rothbard- Economic Controversies Walter Block Lew Rockwell -- The Free Market Reader

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 317. This is my appearance on Decentralized Revolution (the LP Mises Caucus podcast), episode 46, with host Aaron Harris. We discussed the Libertarian Party, IP, the incoming Biden administration, the GameStop/Robinhood story, and the work of Hans-Hermann Hoppe.