The Intellectual Property and Liberty Reader: A Skeletal Ebook

In my article “Argumentation Ethics and Liberty: A Concise Guide,” I noted that for some time I’ve thought of putting together some material into an “argumentation-ethics reader” book. However, logistic, copyright, and other issues would delay the preparation and actual publication of a book for a long time (at best)—and since most of the pieces I would include are online, I instead put together a “skeletal” outline, with links where available, with the chapters that would be included in such a book — I called it “Discourse Ethics and Liberty: A Skeletal Ebook.” Likewise, for some time I’ve kicked around the idea of assembling articles critical of IP, mostly from a libertarian or free market perspective. Maybe some day I’ll get around to getting permissions and resources to put an actual book together, but for now I’ve provided the chapters I would included, along with links to the original source material.  

The Intellectual Property and Liberty Reader: A Skeletal Ebook

Part One: Overviews

1. “The Case Against IP: A Concise Guide,” by Stephan Kinsella
2. “The Fight against Intellectual Property,” by Jacob H. Huebert

Part Two: Historical Works

1. Arnold Plant, “The Economic Theory Concerning Patents for Inventions,” Economica, New Series, 1, no. 1 (Feb., 1934).
2. Fritz Machlup, U.S. Senate Subcommittee On Patents, Trademarks & Copyrights, An Economic Review of the Patent System, 85th Cong., 2nd Session, 1958, Study No. 15 (text excerpt) [”Report to the US congress from 1958, which also extensively narrates the history of the patent movement and of earlier economic research on this subject. Machlup, a renowned American economist of Austrian origin, is the first author of a large treatise on knowledge economics and other treatises which belong to the teaching repertoire of economics departments in universities. His report cites a wealth of historical and economic evidence to refute most of the reasoning used by lawyers to legitimate the patent system.”]
3. Fritz Machlup & Edith Penrose, “The Patent Controversy in the Nineteenth Century,” Journal of Economic History 10 (1950), p. 1
4. John Perry Barlow, “The Economy of Ideas: A framework for patents and copyrights in the Digital Age,” Wired (1994)

Part Three: Economists

1. Murray N. Rothbard, Knowledge, True and False
2. ———, Man, Economy, and State and Power and Market, Scholars Edition, pp. liv, 745-54, 1133-38, 1181-86

1. Hayek: see Tucker, “Misesian vs. Marxian vs. IP Views of Innovation“; Tucker, “Hayek on Patents and Copyrights“;
2. Salerno, Hayek Contra Copyright Laws

Part Three: Propertarian Approaches

1. Against Intellectual Property, by Kinsella
2. “How to Slow Economic Progress”
3. “Rethinking IP”
4. “Intellectual Freedom and Learning Versus Patent and Copyright”
5. “Ideas are Free: The Case Against Intellectual Property: or, How Libertarians Went Wrong“
6. “Goods, Scarce and Nonscarce” (with Tucker)
7. “The Death Throes of Pro-IP Libertarianism”
8. “Reducing the Cost of IP Law”
9. “Intellectual Property and Libertarianism”
10. “Radical Patent Reform Is Not on the Way”
11. Owning Ideas Means Owning People, by Roderick Long
12. The Libertarian Case Against Intellectual Property Rights, by Long
13. Thoughtcrime, by Long
14. Bear Becomes Mushroom; Trout Implicated, by Long
15. Comments on Bedirhanoğlu and Schaefer, by Long
16. Kinsella, The Patent, Copyright, Trademark, and Trade Secret Horror Files

1. Boudewijn Bouckaert, “What Is Property?”

Part Four: Empirical Approaches

1. Boldrin & Levine, Against Intellectual Monopoly
2. Boldrin, M. and D. K. Levine [2004]: “IER Lawrence Klein Lecture: The Case Against Intellectual Monopoly,” International Economic Review, 45: 327-350
3. “What’s Intellectual Property Good for?,” Revue Economique, forthcoming 2011 (with Levine)
4. Tucker, “Ideas, Free and Unfree: A Book Commentary” (commentaries on Boldrin and Levine’s Against Intellectual Monopoly)
5. “Does Intellectual Monopoly Help Innovation” (with Levine)
6. “Intellectual Property and the Incentive Fallacy,” by Eric E. Johnson
7. “Patents and Copyrights: Do the Benefits Exceed the Costs?”, by Julio Cole
8. “Would the Absence of Copyright Laws Significantly Affect the Quality and Quantity of Literary Output?“, by Cole
9. Review of Patent Failure by James Bessen and Michael J. Meurer
10. The Promise of a Post-Copyright World
11. What Is Free Software?
12. QuestionCopyright.org — Introduction and FAQ
13. “There’s No Such Thing as a Free Patent,” by Stephan Kinsella
14. Francois Leveque & Yann Meniere, The Economics of Patents and Copyrights

1. David Koepsell

2. “Revising Intellectual Property: Liberating Intellectual Capital,”  Innovation, Sustainability, and Development: A New Manifesto, by David Koepsell
3. “A Patent Too Far,” Washington Times (Op-ed with Kenneth Alfano), by David Koepsell
4. How Genes are Like Plutonium (Neither Should Be Patentable), by David Koepsell
5. “Back to Basics: How Technology and the Open Source Movement Can Save Science,” by David Koepsell

1. Intellectual Property: Silly or Sinister?, The Freeman (January/February 2011), vol. 61, no. 1
2. “The Case For Patents Harming Innovation,” by Mike Masnick
3. Copyright and Patent in Benjamin Tucker’s periodical Liberty, by Wendy McElroy
4. Contra Copyright, Again, by McElroy
5. Musical Condoms: Make Mine Whistle “Dixie”, by McElroy
6. Patently Absurd, by McElroy

1. All Creative Work Is Derivative, by Nina Paley
2. Copying Is Not Theft, by Paley
3. Four Freedoms of Free Culture, by Paley
4. Understanding Free Content, by Paley
5. “Intellectual Property” is Slavery, by Paley
6. Free as in Phreedom, by Paley

7. Jeffrey Tucker

8. “A Book that Changes Everything,” by Tucker
9. “A Theory of Open,” by Tucker
10. “up with iTunes U,” by Tucker
11. Mises.org in the Context of Publishing History,” by Tucker

12. Other Publications and Resources

13. Tom W. Bell, Intellectual Privilege: Copyright, Common Law, and the Common Good (draft)
14. ———, The Great Debate on Intellectual Property, in Cato Policy Report (January/February 2002)
15. Kevin Carson, Intellectual Property — A Libertarian Critique
16. Pierre Desrochers, On the Abuse of Patents as Economic Indicators, Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics (Winter 1998)
17. ———, “Excludability, Creativity and the Case Against the Patent System,” Economic Affairs, vol. 20, no. 3 (September 2000), pp. 14-16
18. Doug French, “The Intellectual Revolution Is in Process“
19. Charles Johnson (RadGeek), “Patents Kill” (I) and “Patents Kill“ (II); ———, ”Libertarians for Protectionism” (1, 2, 3)
20. Samuel Edward Konkin III, “Copywrongs,” The Voluntaryist (July 1986)
21. Daniel Krawisz, The Fallacy of Intellectual Property, Mises Daily (Aug. 25, 2009)
22. Ludwig von Mises, Human Action 3rd rev. ed. Chicago: Henry Regnery (1966), chap. 23, section 6, pp. 661–62; see also pp. 128, 364
23. Re Mises, see also Kinsella, “Mises on Intellectual Property“
24. Gary North, Don’t Invest in Copyright-Protected Companies (Nov. 5, 2003)
25. Tom Palmer, “Intellectual Property: A Non-Posnerian Law and Economics Approach”
26. ———, “Are Patents and Copyrights Morally Justified? The Philosophy of Property Rights and Ideal Objects”
27. George Reisman, Capitalism, pp. 388-89 & 417-20; also 40, 96, 187, 216, 233.
28. Sheldon Richman on Intellectual Property versus Liberty
29. Sheldon Richman, Intellectual “Property” Versus Real Property: What Are Copyrights and What Do They Mean for Liberty?, The Freeman (12 June 2009)
30. ———, “Slave Labor and Intellectual Property: On a misplaced analogy,” The Freeman Online (June 3, 2011)