Over at the von Mises Institute's blog,
Steve
Kinsella has linked to and commented on
my op/ed
from last fall in the Washington Times on threats to
intellectual property. Thanks,
Steve.
An issue with Steve is whether intellectual property should be argued on utilitarian grounds, or on natural law grounds. That's not the point of my op/ed, but Steve uses part of my op/ed to illustrate his thoughts that utilitarian arguments in favor of IP ultimately lead to statism.
My personal conviction is that you have a natural law to own what you create, but I realize that goes far beyond the text of the Constitution, so it isn't much good from a public policy standpoint.
Dr. Richard Epstein, for whom I have the utmost respect, always argues for IP from a utilitarian standpoint. And I'm smart enough to not argue the point with him.
UPDATE: I've just learned from personal email correspondence with Steve Kinsella that, not only does he not believe in utilitarian arguments in defense of intellectual property, but he doesn't even believe in intellectual property! Oh, well. Thanks for quoting me, Steve, anyway.
An issue with Steve is whether intellectual property should be argued on utilitarian grounds, or on natural law grounds. That's not the point of my op/ed, but Steve uses part of my op/ed to illustrate his thoughts that utilitarian arguments in favor of IP ultimately lead to statism.
My personal conviction is that you have a natural law to own what you create, but I realize that goes far beyond the text of the Constitution, so it isn't much good from a public policy standpoint.
Dr. Richard Epstein, for whom I have the utmost respect, always argues for IP from a utilitarian standpoint. And I'm smart enough to not argue the point with him.
UPDATE: I've just learned from personal email correspondence with Steve Kinsella that, not only does he not believe in utilitarian arguments in defense of intellectual property, but he doesn't even believe in intellectual property! Oh, well. Thanks for quoting me, Steve, anyway.