Blinded by Science

Business, History, IP Law, Technology
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Geoffrey recently warned of the perils of centralized innovation. In contradistinction to that very warning, I came across this footnote (chapter 14, footnote 3) in Friedrich A. Hayek’s famous ‘The Road to Serfdom‘:

The case of the alleged suppression of useful patents is more complicated and cannot be adequately discussed in a note; but the conditions in which it would be profitable to put into cold storage a patent which in the social interest ought to be used are so exceptional that it is more than doubtful whether this has happened in any important instance. [emphasis in original]

In Hayek’s favor, there was no internet or WikiLeaks back then (but then again, perhaps that was AT&T’s fault!)

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The Death Throes of Pro-IP Libertarianism

IP Law, Libertarian Theory
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death throes of an archaeopteryxMy article, “The Death Throes of Pro-IP Libertarianism,” was published on Mises Daily today. Also published today on Mises Daily is a reprint of Wendy McElroy’s great, classic “Copyright and Patent in Benjamin Tucker’s Periodical Liberty.”

Updates:

Amusing: on the “Christian Pipe Smokers” site (hunh?), one guy links to my article and says “This is so beautifully written I had to share it.” Another replies: “Okay to be nice I started reading it. I got half way and wanted to blow my brains out. That was stupidly and poorly written. After getting half way I was lost having no idea what he was talking about. … If yer reading crap like this all the time it is no wonder your politics are screwed up.”

Also, mentioned in Where should anarchists stand on IP? (FreeDissent); my comment was:

Thanks for the plug, but correct, I don’t regard myself as a right-libertarian. I despise the right, and also the left. We libertarians are neither right nor left.

I’m nonreligious, pro-gay-marriage, pro-open-borders, pro-tolerance/cosmopolitan values, pro-drug legalization, anti-state, anti-war, and anti-IP. And I even like chardonnay. I am not sure how that makes me “right.” I doubt they would have me.

Also discussed on Freesteader.

And in an excellent post, The Decline of the Randian Influence on American Libertarianism?

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Intellectual Property: A Simple Example

IP Law
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Patents are voicing an idea and then telling everyone else they can’t use that idea without licensing it. For example, I might find a better way to fish and then prevent anyone who saw me use that new technique from employing it themselves. The fact that I had a new idea doesn’t give me the right to prevent others from arranging their property in the configuration they desire.

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