Kinsella On Liberty

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 066. LiveFreeFM (IP), with Nathan Fraser (May 26, 2013): Stephan Kinsella joins us this week to discuss his work as a patent lawyer and libertarian, and how it has brought him to the forefront of the anti-IP movement. We discuss the legalities involving intellectual property, the morality of the concept, and whether or not it serves the utilitarian purposes that are used to justify it. Then, towards the end of the show, we discuss emerging technologies that are challenging the validity of intellectual property.

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 065. I was a guest on The Medical Freedom Report Podcast, with host Michael Ostrolenk, a couple years ago, discussing Patents on Medical Technology and Pharmaceuticals (Feb. 24, 2011). Patents & Copyrights: intellectual property rights or monopoly control of ideas? Why are medical devices protected by patent law while medical procedures are exempt? And what about the government’s use of compulsory licenses to force pharmaceutical companies to produce certain drugs like CIPRO. These are two medical-related examples in a long list of arcane exceptions and arbitrary details written in to intellectual property (IP) law. It is commonly believed that IP rights, such as patents, copyrights, and trademarks are necessary to foster innovation and protect the interests of the people and companies that create new products and ideas. Patent attorney Stephan Kinsella of the Mises Institute, holds an opposite view, and in this podcast with Michael Ostrolenk, discusses the growing movement that views IP law as not only anti-competitive and a barrier to innovation, but also as incompatible with true property rights. Michael and Stephan also talk about the evolution of IP from laws like the 1709 Statute of Queen Ann, an attempt by the monarchy to control the output of book printers, the influence of which carried into the copyright and patent provisions in the U.S. Constitution.

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 064. This is my appearance on the Katherine Albrecht radio show, discussing net neutrality (Dec. 22, 2010). For more information, see my post Against Net Neutrality. Here is the link to the show page for this episode.

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 063. I was a guest on the “Live and Let Live” radio show with Gary Johnson discussing IP (Nov. 14, 2010).

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 062. This is my speech “Intellectual Freedom and Learning versus Patent and Copyright,” at the 2010 Students For Liberty Texas Regional Conference, University of Texas, Austin. I discussed this previously in my post  Kinsella Speech at Students for Liberty – Texas Conference (Austin), on “Intellectual Freedom vs Patent and Copyright”. An edited transcrip appears in my article “Intellectual Freedom and Learning Versus Patent and Copyright,” Economic Notes No. 113 (Libertarian Alliance, Jan. 18, 2011); also published as “Intellectual Freedom and Learning Versus Patent and Copyright,” The Libertarian Standard (Jan. 19, 2011). The video is below.

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 061. This is my speech “How Intellectual Property Hampers Capitalism,” from the Mises Institute Supporters’ Summit: “The Economic Recovery:  Washington’s Big Lie” (Oct. 9 2010, Auburn Alabama). A transcript is here; see also the article based on this talk: “How Intellectual Property Hampers the Free Market,” The Freeman (June 2011), republished as “How to Slow Economic Progress,” Mises Daily (June 1, 2011). The Youtube video is below.

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 060. This is a Discussion of intellectual property and libertarianism on Ernest Hancock's Declare Your Independence radio show (Sep. 14, 2010). I was on the show for about two hours (hours 2 and 3 of his show) discussing intellectual property. It was a pretty wide-ranging, radical discussion, but I think I made progress with Ernie (update: I since met Ernie in person at Libertopia 2012 and we had a nice visit together). The MP3 files are on the show’s page for that day; local files: hour 1; hour 2; hour 3.

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 059. From: Libertarian Parenting--A Freedomain Radio Conversation with Stephan Kinsella, FreeDomain Radio #1689 (Thursday, 1 Jul 2010): "Two libertarian parents discuss how to best raise confident and freethinking children, including discipline without aggression, Montessori education, resolving conflicts and teaching skepticism and rationality." See also: my TLS post Stefan Molyneux’s “Libertarian Parenting” Series; and my post Montessori and "Unschooling".  

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 058. I appeared on the Gene Basler Show (May 30, 2010), discussing a variety of anarcho-libertarian matters–environmentalism, nuclear power, state propaganda in government schools, class action lawsuits, reparations, how to achieve an anarcho-libertarian society, animal rights, positive rights and obligations, forced heirship, and so on (an edited transcript to appear as a chapter in Gene Basler, Environmental Non-Policy: Interviews on Environment, War and Liberty, forthcoming August 2011). Transcript: Gene: I’m pleased to welcome as my guest Stephan Kinsella. Are you there, Stephan? Stephan Kinsella: I’m here. Glad to be here, Gene. Gene: Thanks for coming on. Let me read Stephan’s profile on Wikipedia: “Kinsella is General Counsel of Applied Opto-Electronics, Incorporated, of Sugar Land, Texas. A practicing intellectual property attorney and former adjunct professor of law at South Texas College of Law, where he taught computer law, Kinsella is actively involved with libertarian legal and political theory, and is adjunct scholar of the Mises Institute, as well as the former Book Review Editor for the Institute’s Journal of Libertarian Studies. He is also a contributor to the news and opinion blog at LewRockwell.com and is the creator of Libertarian Papers, a peer-reviewed online journal published under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. He writes that, after college, he “began to put more emphasis on Austrian economics and paleo-libertarian insights of Rothbard, Hans-Hermann Hoppe and Rockwell”. “Kinsella’s legal publications include books and articles about patent law, contract law, e-commerce law, international law and other topics. Kinsella has also published and lectured on a variety of libertarian topics, often combining libertarian and legal analysis. Kinsella’s views on contract theory, causation and the law, intellectual property, and rights theory (in particular his Estoppel Theory) are his main contributions to libertarian theory. “In contract theory, he extends Murray Rothbard’s and Williamson Evers’ title transfer theory of contract, linking it with inalienability theory while also attempting to clarify that theory. Title transfer theory of contract: Kinsella sets forth a theory of causation that attempts to explain why remote actors can be liable under libertarian theory. He gives non-utilitarian arguments for intellectual property being incompatible with libertarian property rights principles. He advances the discourse ethics argument for the justification of individual rights, using an extension of the concept of Estoppel.” Welcome to the show, Stephan. Stephan Kinsella: Thanks very much, Gene. Gene: Okay. Here at Anarcho-Environmentalism, we, namely I, argue that there are indeed real environmental concerns out there. We argue that air pollution, water pollution, etc., are indeed real environmental concerns, that Global Climate Change ain’t one of ‘em, and that market and voluntary solutions are preferable to government or policy-based solutions. I guess my first question for you is, as an expert in patent law, do you think the existence of patent law is really nothing more than just one more way government runs block for favored and well-connected market participants by protecting environmentally irresponsible means and methods of production? And if so, does this not logically follow that patent law harms the environment? Stephan Kinsella: Well, that’s an interesting connection. For years now, I’ve been trying to trace out all the harms from patent law. Environmentalism is not one I have made yet. I could see that some arguments could be made. I do think that patent law is a type of protectionism, similar to minimum-wage law and antitrust law, sort of counter-intuitively,

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 057. I was on The Peter Mac Show on May 12, 2010, with my fellow Libertarian Standard co-blogger Rob Wicks. We discussed a variety of matters, including whether libertarians should use the word “capitalism,” also anarchy, IP and other topics.

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 056. I was a guest on the May 9, 2010 episode of BlogTalkRadio’s show Anarchy Time, hosted by James Cox. Other guests included C4SS Development Specialist Mariana Evica, Wilt Alston, and Stefan Molyneux (also podcast at Freedomain Radio #1659: “The Immigration Roundtable – BlogTalkRadio with Stephan Kinsella, Wilt Alston and Stefan Molyneux: A roundtable discussion on the challenge of immigration.”)

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 055. This is from The Voluntary Life, Author Interview: Stephan Kinsella on Against Intellectual Property (March 20, 2010; also podcast as Episode 1616 of Freedomain Radio, as Stefan Molyneux joined in too). See also their interesting episode Against Intellectual Property: A Follow Up Discussion.

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 054. This is my speech from the Fifth Annual Meeting of the Property and Freedom Society in Bodrum, Turkey (June 6, 2010). My topic was “Ideas are Free: The Case Against Intellectual Property,” though a better title might be something like “Ideas Are Not Property:  The Libertarian IP Mistake and the Structure of Human Action.” The video is below; a transcript was published as a Mises Daily article: “Ideas are Free: The Case Against Intellectual Property: or, How Libertarians Went Wrong” (N.B.: there are a couple of typos in the transcript). I also participated in a Q&A Discussion Panel featuring “Hoppe, van Dun, DiLorenzo, Kinsella, Daniels, Kealey”- video below, but not included in the audio podcast; I discuss the conference in my post Bodrum Days and Nights: The Fifth Annual Meeting of the Property and Freedom Society: A Partial Report.

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 053. Author’s Forum: Property, Freedom and Society, Austrian Scholars Conference (March 11, 2010). This is from a short speech at the Austrian Scholars Conference 2010 on the Author's Forum about Property, Freedom and Society: Essays in Honor of Hans-Hermann Hoppe (Mar. 11, 2010).

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 052. I was a guest recently on the Renegade Variety Hour , discussing a variety of libertarian issues with hosts Carlos Morales and Taryn Harris (May 8, 2013), including argumentation ethics and estoppel (see Argumentation Ethics and Liberty: A Concise Guide), atheism, and related matters.