Libertarian perspectives on intellectual property
Encyclopedia
Libertarians
have differing opinions on the validity of intellectual property
laws. Many libertarians don't have a strong opinion on the topic, while others consider it a minor matter in the light of what they believe are greater government violations of rights, such as physical property rights.
believe that the federal government should protect patent
s and copyright
s, whose imposition by Congress is allowed under Article I of the United States Constitution. The Cato Institute
for instance, claims "Congress should...take the constitutional principle of 'promoting the progress of science and useful arts' seriously, but don't extend copyrights far beyond reasonable terms." Ayn Rand
, founder of Objectivism
, also supported copyrights and patents, noting in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal
:
She also argued that the term should be limited:
argues for allowing contractually arising infinite copyright terms and against the need for any government role in protecting intellectual property. He states that government's involvement in defining arbitrary limits on the duration, scope, etc. of intellectual property in order to "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" is inherently problematic, since "By what standard do you judge that research expenditures are 'too much,' 'too little,' or just about enough?" He argues that intellectual property laws can actually hinder innovation, since competitors can be indefinitely discouraged from further research expenditures in the general area covered by the patent because the courts may hold their improvements as infringements on the previous patent, and the patent holder is discouraged from engaging in further research in this field because the privilege discourages his improvement of his invention for the entire period of the patent, with the assurance that no competitor can trespass on his domain. Morris and Linda Tannehill propose that ideas in the form of inventions could be registered in a privately owned "data bank"; the inventor could then buy insurance against the theft and unauthorized commercial use of the invention, and the insurance company would guarantee to not only compensate the inventor for any losses suffered due to such infringement but to stop such unauthorized use. David D. Friedman
appears to support IP, on "law and economics grounds." Opponents to intellectual property rights include Wendy McElroy
, Tom G. Palmer
, Lepage
, Boudewijn Bouckaert
, and N. Stephan Kinsella. The latter argues that patents may be inefficient in that they divert resources from research and development to patent filing and lawsuits and from theoretical research to practical research. Kinsella argues that property rights can only apply to scarce resources; thus, if a new lawnmower could be magically conjured up out of nothing in the blink of an eye, it would not be theft to steal one. Since ideas are not naturally scarce i.e., copying a book does not prevent anyone else from copying the same book they are not a legitimate subject of property rights. Furthermore, the only way that intellectual property rights can be implemented is by limiting others' physical property rights. For instance, a patent on a method for drilling a well limits others' property rights over their land, as they cannot use that method without seeking permission from the patent owner. Thus, each patent places restrictions on land not owned by the patent holder.
Roderick T. Long argues that the concept of intellectual property is not libertarian. He holds that prohibiting people from using, reproducing, and trading copyrighted material is an infringement of freedom of speech
and freedom of the press
, and that since information exists in people's minds and other people's property, one cannot own information without owning other people. As proof that authors and publishers will continue to produce without copyrights, he cites the fact that hundreds of thousands of articles are uploaded onto the Internet by their authors every day, available to anyone in the world for free and that nearly all works written before 1900 are in the public domain, yet pre-1900 works are still published, and still sell. Benjamin Tucker
writes, "...the patent monopoly...consists in protecting inventors...against competition for a period long enough to extort from the people a reward enormously in excess of the labor measure of their services, in other words, in giving certain people a right of property for a term of years in laws and facts of Nature, and the power to exact tribute from others for the use of this natural wealth, which should be open to all."
The Molinari Institute notes that Thomas Jefferson
was against copyright and cites many other libertarians who opposed it.
, Independent Institute
, Cato Institute
, and Ludwig von Mises Institute
copyright their publications. However, the latter nonetheless issues their work under Creative Commons Share Alike 3.o standard, making entire books freely available on the Internet for access, reprint, and redistribution, making their "non-free" status somewhat irrelevant from the point of view of someone who merely wants to read them. Moreover, the site hosts many articles about the allegedly absurd lengths that copyright enforcement is taken to, which they claim have hindered the ability of consumers to buy the products they want. For instance, a Mises blog entry notes that a bakery is refusing to put Disney characters on its customized birthday cakes, lest it be liable for infringement; another blog criticizes the Marvel Comics
lawsuit over the City of Heroes
game that allows players to create characters that resemble those from its comic books. Mises writers also lamented the demise of the International Music Score Library Project
in the wake of a cease and desist
letter. The Independent Institute's collection of research does not seem to provide much coverage of intellectual property debates; its book Winners, Losers and Microsoft approaches the issue of copyright owner monopoly power only indirectly, opining that barriers to entry for a new product can be overcome by offering a discount during an introductory period; the ability to design software to be compatible with competitors' products; potential coordination of customers in switching to a new standard; etc. Cato scholars suggest that government remove barriers to private sector efforts to enforce intellectual property rights, noting for instance that "overzealous antitrust enforcement might hamper collective private efforts to license songs."
Susan Hogarth
, leader of LPRadicals
and candidate for North Carolina House of Representatives
, does not include a copyright notice on the caucus website or on her campaign website, and has stated in posts to the lpradicals Yahoo group that she does not believe in intellectual property. Libertarian wikis tend to release their content under some sort of free or semi-free license; LPedia licenses its content under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 license. Libertarianwiki releases its content into the public domain.
Libertarianism
Libertarianism, in the strictest sense, is the political philosophy that holds individual liberty as the basic moral principle of society. In the broadest sense, it is any political philosophy which approximates this view...
have differing opinions on the validity of intellectual property
Intellectual property
Intellectual property is a term referring to a number of distinct types of creations of the mind for which a set of exclusive rights are recognized—and the corresponding fields of law...
laws. Many libertarians don't have a strong opinion on the topic, while others consider it a minor matter in the light of what they believe are greater government violations of rights, such as physical property rights.
Minarchist views
Some minarchists who believe in the government's authority to exercise its enumerated powersEnumerated powers
The enumerated powers are a list of items found in Article I, section 8 of the US Constitution that set forth the authoritative capacity of the United States Congress. In summary, Congress may exercise the powers that the Constitution grants it, subject to explicit restrictions in the Bill of...
believe that the federal government should protect patent
Patent
A patent is a form of intellectual property. It consists of a set of exclusive rights granted by a sovereign state to an inventor or their assignee for a limited period of time in exchange for the public disclosure of an invention....
s and copyright
Copyright
Copyright is a legal concept, enacted by most governments, giving the creator of an original work exclusive rights to it, usually for a limited time...
s, whose imposition by Congress is allowed under Article I of the United States Constitution. The Cato Institute
Cato Institute
The Cato Institute is a libertarian think tank headquartered in Washington, D.C. It was founded in 1977 by Edward H. Crane, who remains president and CEO, and Charles Koch, chairman of the board and chief executive officer of the conglomerate Koch Industries, Inc., the largest privately held...
for instance, claims "Congress should...take the constitutional principle of 'promoting the progress of science and useful arts' seriously, but don't extend copyrights far beyond reasonable terms." Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand was a Russian-American novelist, philosopher, playwright, and screenwriter. She is known for her two best-selling novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged and for developing a philosophical system she called Objectivism....
, founder of Objectivism
Objectivism (Ayn Rand)
Objectivism is a philosophy created by the Russian-American philosopher and novelist Ayn Rand . Objectivism holds that reality exists independent of consciousness, that human beings have direct contact with reality through sense perception, that one can attain objective knowledge from perception...
, also supported copyrights and patents, noting in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal
Capitalism: the Unknown Ideal
Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal is a collection of essays, mostly by Ayn Rand, with additional essays by her associates Nathaniel Branden, Alan Greenspan and Robert Hessen. The book focuses on the moral nature of laissez-faire capitalism and private property...
:
She also argued that the term should be limited:
Anarcho-capitalist views
Since anarcho-capitalists oppose the existence of even a minimal state, this ideological framework requires that any functions served by intellectual property law promulgation and enforcement be provided through private sector institutions. Murray RothbardMurray Rothbard
Murray Newton Rothbard was an American author and economist of the Austrian School who helped define capitalist libertarianism and popularized a form of free-market anarchism he termed "anarcho-capitalism." Rothbard wrote over twenty books and is considered a centrally important figure in the...
argues for allowing contractually arising infinite copyright terms and against the need for any government role in protecting intellectual property. He states that government's involvement in defining arbitrary limits on the duration, scope, etc. of intellectual property in order to "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" is inherently problematic, since "By what standard do you judge that research expenditures are 'too much,' 'too little,' or just about enough?" He argues that intellectual property laws can actually hinder innovation, since competitors can be indefinitely discouraged from further research expenditures in the general area covered by the patent because the courts may hold their improvements as infringements on the previous patent, and the patent holder is discouraged from engaging in further research in this field because the privilege discourages his improvement of his invention for the entire period of the patent, with the assurance that no competitor can trespass on his domain. Morris and Linda Tannehill propose that ideas in the form of inventions could be registered in a privately owned "data bank"; the inventor could then buy insurance against the theft and unauthorized commercial use of the invention, and the insurance company would guarantee to not only compensate the inventor for any losses suffered due to such infringement but to stop such unauthorized use. David D. Friedman
David D. Friedman
David Director Friedman is an American economist, author, and Right-libertarian theorist. He is known as a leader in anarcho-capitalist political theory, which is the subject of his most popular book, The Machinery of Freedom...
appears to support IP, on "law and economics grounds." Opponents to intellectual property rights include Wendy McElroy
Wendy McElroy
Wendy McElroy is a Canadian individualist anarchist and individualist feminist. She was a co-founder along with Carl Watner and George H. Smith of The Voluntaryist in 1982.-Sex-positive:...
, Tom G. Palmer
Tom G. Palmer
Tom Gordon Palmer is a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute, director of the Institute's educational division, , Vice President for International Programs at the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, and General Director of the -Professional life:Palmer earned his B.A. in liberal arts from St. John's...
, Lepage
Lepage
Lepage or LePage or Le Page is asurname, and may refer to:* Antoine-Simon Le Page du Pratz , author of a memoir about early 18th century Louisiana* Bradford William LePage Canadian politician...
, Boudewijn Bouckaert
Boudewijn Bouckaert
Boudewijn Bouckaert is a Belgian law professor, a member of the Flemish Movement, and a libertarian conservative thinker and politician. He chairs the academic board of the LIB-ERA! think tank and serves as Member of the Flemish Parliament for the liberal party List Dedecker...
, and N. Stephan Kinsella. The latter argues that patents may be inefficient in that they divert resources from research and development to patent filing and lawsuits and from theoretical research to practical research. Kinsella argues that property rights can only apply to scarce resources; thus, if a new lawnmower could be magically conjured up out of nothing in the blink of an eye, it would not be theft to steal one. Since ideas are not naturally scarce i.e., copying a book does not prevent anyone else from copying the same book they are not a legitimate subject of property rights. Furthermore, the only way that intellectual property rights can be implemented is by limiting others' physical property rights. For instance, a patent on a method for drilling a well limits others' property rights over their land, as they cannot use that method without seeking permission from the patent owner. Thus, each patent places restrictions on land not owned by the patent holder.
Roderick T. Long argues that the concept of intellectual property is not libertarian. He holds that prohibiting people from using, reproducing, and trading copyrighted material is an infringement of freedom of speech
Freedom of speech
Freedom of speech is the freedom to speak freely without censorship. The term freedom of expression is sometimes used synonymously, but includes any act of seeking, receiving and imparting information or ideas, regardless of the medium used...
and freedom of the press
Freedom of the press
Freedom of the press or freedom of the media is the freedom of communication and expression through vehicles including various electronic media and published materials...
, and that since information exists in people's minds and other people's property, one cannot own information without owning other people. As proof that authors and publishers will continue to produce without copyrights, he cites the fact that hundreds of thousands of articles are uploaded onto the Internet by their authors every day, available to anyone in the world for free and that nearly all works written before 1900 are in the public domain, yet pre-1900 works are still published, and still sell. Benjamin Tucker
Benjamin Tucker
Benjamin Ricketson Tucker was a proponent of American individualist anarchism in the 19th century, and editor and publisher of the individualist anarchist periodical Liberty.-Summary:Tucker says that he became an anarchist at the age of 18...
writes, "...the patent monopoly...consists in protecting inventors...against competition for a period long enough to extort from the people a reward enormously in excess of the labor measure of their services, in other words, in giving certain people a right of property for a term of years in laws and facts of Nature, and the power to exact tribute from others for the use of this natural wealth, which should be open to all."
The Molinari Institute notes that Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson was the principal author of the United States Declaration of Independence and the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom , the third President of the United States and founder of the University of Virginia...
was against copyright and cites many other libertarians who opposed it.
Intellectual property-related policies and practices of prominent libertarians
Many libertarian organizations, such as the Reason FoundationReason Foundation
The Reason Foundation is an American nonprofit think tank founded in 1978 that also publishes Reason magazine. Based in Los Angeles, Reason is self-described as nonpartisan and publishes a statement of values that can best be described as libertarian...
, Independent Institute
Independent Institute
The Independent Institute is a libertarian think tank based in Oakland, California. Founded in 1986 byDavid J. Theroux , the Institute sponsors studies of major political, social, economic, legal, environmental and foreign policy issues. It has more than 140 research fellows. The Institute was...
, Cato Institute
Cato Institute
The Cato Institute is a libertarian think tank headquartered in Washington, D.C. It was founded in 1977 by Edward H. Crane, who remains president and CEO, and Charles Koch, chairman of the board and chief executive officer of the conglomerate Koch Industries, Inc., the largest privately held...
, and Ludwig von Mises Institute
Ludwig von Mises Institute
The Ludwig von Mises Institute , based in Auburn, Alabama, is a libertarian academic organization engaged in research and scholarship in the fields of economics, philosophy and political economy. Its scholarship is inspired by the work of Austrian School economist Ludwig von Mises...
copyright their publications. However, the latter nonetheless issues their work under Creative Commons Share Alike 3.o standard, making entire books freely available on the Internet for access, reprint, and redistribution, making their "non-free" status somewhat irrelevant from the point of view of someone who merely wants to read them. Moreover, the site hosts many articles about the allegedly absurd lengths that copyright enforcement is taken to, which they claim have hindered the ability of consumers to buy the products they want. For instance, a Mises blog entry notes that a bakery is refusing to put Disney characters on its customized birthday cakes, lest it be liable for infringement; another blog criticizes the Marvel Comics
Marvel Comics
Marvel Worldwide, Inc., commonly referred to as Marvel Comics and formerly Marvel Publishing, Inc. and Marvel Comics Group, is an American company that publishes comic books and related media...
lawsuit over the City of Heroes
City of Heroes
City of Heroes is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game based on the superhero comic book genre, developed by Cryptic Studios and published by NCsoft. The game was launched in North America on April 27, 2004 and in Europe on February 4, 2005 with English, German and French language...
game that allows players to create characters that resemble those from its comic books. Mises writers also lamented the demise of the International Music Score Library Project
International Music Score Library Project
The International Music Score Library Project , also known as the Petrucci Music Library after publisher Ottaviano Petrucci, is a project for the creation of a virtual library of public domain music scores, based on the wiki principle...
in the wake of a cease and desist
Cease and desist
A cease and desist is an order or request to halt an activity and not to take it up again later or else face legal action. The recipient of the cease-and-desist may be an individual or an organization....
letter. The Independent Institute's collection of research does not seem to provide much coverage of intellectual property debates; its book Winners, Losers and Microsoft approaches the issue of copyright owner monopoly power only indirectly, opining that barriers to entry for a new product can be overcome by offering a discount during an introductory period; the ability to design software to be compatible with competitors' products; potential coordination of customers in switching to a new standard; etc. Cato scholars suggest that government remove barriers to private sector efforts to enforce intellectual property rights, noting for instance that "overzealous antitrust enforcement might hamper collective private efforts to license songs."
Susan Hogarth
Susan Hogarth
Susan Hogarth, a former candidate for North Carolina House of Representatives, is the founder of LPRadicals, a caucus of the Libertarian Party of the United States that she began in response to calls to eliminate the Party's platform, abolish or weaken the party's membership pledge, and abolish dues...
, leader of LPRadicals
LPRadicals
LPRadicals is a caucus formed in 2006 within the United States Libertarian Party by Susan Hogarth and other party members who opposed removal of much of the material in the party platform during the 2006 national party convention...
and candidate for North Carolina House of Representatives
North Carolina House of Representatives
The North Carolina House of Representatives is one of the two houses of the North Carolina General Assembly. The House is a 120-member body led by a Speaker of the House, who holds powers similar to those of the President pro-tem in the state senate....
, does not include a copyright notice on the caucus website or on her campaign website, and has stated in posts to the lpradicals Yahoo group that she does not believe in intellectual property. Libertarian wikis tend to release their content under some sort of free or semi-free license; LPedia licenses its content under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 license. Libertarianwiki releases its content into the public domain.