Nu kan de libertarianer som var för fattiga eller snåla för att köpa Greg Perkins underbara artikel ”Don’t Steal This Article!”, läsa den i sin helhet, alldeles gratis, på Diana Hsiehs blogg. Jag rekommenderar alla att läsa den, inte bara fattiga eller snåla libertarianer:

Marxist scholars don’t have much interest in defending individual rights, private property, and free markets — so their antipathy to intellectual property rights in patent and copyright isn’t surprising. In contrast, there are a significant number of libertarian scholars who proclaim individual rights and free markets to be good and desirable, yet who share an antipathy to intellectual property. That is, they systematically defend material property rights while decrying intellectual property as a confused, destructive, and morally bankrupt idea that should be abolished for the protection of our true individual rights.

In making their case, these libertarian scholars[1] cite a blizzard of puzzles and problems surrounding intellectual property. They see incoherency: how is it that, unlike all other rights, intellectual property rights should abruptly vanish after some set number of years? They see arbitrariness: why single out for reward the mental work behind the practical inventions of industry, but deny it for the mental effort behind the theoretical discoveries of science that make those inventions possible? Besides, they maintain, the line between invention and discovery is inherently vague and artificial. And they see a fundamental contradiction: inalienable rights cannot logically conflict with one another, but they find that intellectual property rights violate material property rights in an automatic and unchosen transfer of partial ownership to inventors and authors. Owners of paper and ink can use their property in certain ways only by permission of copyright holders; owners of metal and tools can use their property in certain ways only by permission of patent holders.

To resolve such issues, these libertarian scholars seek a theory of property that will firmly establish material property rights while excluding intellectual property.[2] Stephan Kinsella explains its basis…

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