The discussion starts off well with intellectual points briefly eluded to by Kinsella… provision of context, defining terms, and indicating assumptions being made…great. Solid intro. Things look promising. Then it’s Bob’s turn… and the debate gets derailed before it’s even begun - with an attempt to address the red herring of how the debate came about… sorry, but who cares? Answer: no-one but Wenzel. Thus commences the side-show.
I had hoped it wasn’t going to end up this way. I must say props to Tucker for being way too classy to respond & get dragged in. Props to Kinsella for ‘going there’, and coming out on top despite all attempts at being dragged down in the face of such incivility. I must say, talk about shooting yourself in the foot. It’d actually have been more beneficial for Wenzel to have remained silent (and be thought a coward / buffoon) than to have spoken up and removed all doubt.
I’ve actually enjoyed Wenzel’s blog for quite some time - until lately where the commentary has become more and more rancorous. I also wonder why there appears to be some kind of emotional attachment to the issue? On a bit of a personal note though, I appreciated when Bob started posting all the Rothbard video snippets I had edited down from the full lectures (an idea to make them more accessible). He then began copying them and hosting them on his own channel.
Obviously I could careless (it’s nothing special), and in fact support their proliferation … but what I am interested in though is how he would justify these actions with his IP “stance”? It seems rather contradictory. Again though this is hard to validate given his actual ‘stance’ is so obscure.
As a quip I’d suggest Wenzel has fallen for one of Rothbard’s sociological laws: "Everybody specializes at what they are worst at (e.g. Friedman, and money)."
Except that Wenzel doesn’t even reach that level - there isn’t any indication of specialization at all.
Furthermore it’s a shame that in all his zealotry Bob inadvertently drags down the names of the people he appeals to. Hoppe is clear as day regarding intellectual property:
Daily Bell: Where do you stand on copyright? Do you believe that intellectual property doesn’t exist as Kinsella has proposed?
Dr. Hans-Hermann Hoppe: I agree with my friend Kinsella, that the idea of intellectual property rights is not just wrong and confused but dangerous. And I have already touched upon why this is so. Ideas - recipes, formulas, statements, arguments, algorithms, theorems, melodies, patterns, rhythms, images, etc. - are certainly goods (insofar as they are good, not bad, recipes, etc.), but they are not scarce goods. Once thought and expressed, they are free, inexhaustible goods. I whistle a melody or write down a poem, you hear the melody or read the poem and reproduce or copy it. In doing so you have not taken anything away from me. I can whistle and write as before. In fact, the entire world can copy me and yet nothing is taken from me. (If I didn’t want anyone to copy my ideas I only have to keep them to myself and never express them.)
Now imagine I had been granted a property right in my melody or poem such that I could prohibit you from copying it or demanding a royalty from you if you do. First: Doesn’t that imply, absurdly, that I, in turn, must pay royalties to the person (or his heirs) who invented whistling and writing, and further on to those, who invented sound-making and language, and so on? Second: In preventing you from or making you pay for whistling my melody or reciting my poem, I am actually made a (partial) owner of you: of your physical body, your vocal chords, your paper, your pencil, etc. because you did not use anything but your own property when you copied me. If you can no longer copy me, then, this means that I, the intellectual property owner, have expropriated you and your “real” property. Which shows: intellectual property rights and real property rights are incompatible, and the promotion of intellectual property must be seen as a most dangerous attack on the idea of “real” property (in scarce goods).
As for Rothbard - we can look back with hindsight regarding his position and adequately criticize… but it pays to remember the times. Given the below I have no doubt Rothbard would have been taken by Kinsella’s & Tucker’s cleaning up of the whole issue… just like when he admitted he was wrong after Hoppe advanced his ‘a priori of argumentation’:
"…Over 30 years I have been preaching to the economics profession that this cannot be done: that economists cannot arrive at any policy conclusions (e.g., that government should do X or should not do Y) strictly from value-free economics. […]
And yet, remarkably and extraordinarily, Hans Hoppe has proven me wrong. He has done it: he has deduced an anarcho-Lockean rights ethic from self-evident axioms. Not only that: he has demonstrated that, just like the action axiom itself, it is impossible to deny or disagree with the anarcho-Lockean rights ethic without falling immediately into self-contradiction and self-refutation…"
As usual Rothbard was ahead of the game back then. The article starts off a tad rough but ends well…
"…Finally, there is the almost incredible harassment of VCR owners. If I buy a VCR and a blank tape, I should be able to tape a movie or other program off my own TV set. If the TV or movie people don’t like it, they should jolly well have to lump it. It is grotesque that movie producers might get the Supreme Court to agree to outlaw use of the VCR. Worse yet is that the movie producers are harassing poor SONY, who only manufactures and doesn’t use VCRs. Obviously, SONY has the deep pockets to enjoin and sue, which most home owners do not. Obviously, too, the government would have a great deal of difficulty mobilizing an enormous Gestapo, armed to the teeth, to break in on and confiscate or destroy the VCRs in many million American homes. Defend your VCRs to the death, fellow Americans! In practice, then, the movie people are not going to outlaw VCRs. They will just force SONY and the other manufacturers to pay a tax to the movie people, a tax which will be passed on to every VCR buyer. But the unfortunate principle—and the higher cost—might well be enshrined in the books.
The problem in all these cases is not whether “property rights” should or should not be upheld. The problem in each of these cases is: Who should have the property right? The computer hacker to do what he wants with his own computer and his access to the telephone lines, or the other computer owner? The signal sender or the signal receiver in the latter’s own equipment? The VCR owner or movie producers? In all of these cases I believe that the concept of copyright has been illegitimately extended to become invasive, and that the fact that the common law cannot combat these “crimes” is already an indication that they are not crimes at all.
But I am in an odd position here. Of all the people in the libertarian movement, I probably know the least about computer technology. There are few movement people lower tech than myself. And yet among all the computer mavens in the movement, I have seen no discussion of these thorny issues. But it is important to apply libertarian property rights theory, i.e. judgments in various areas on who is a criminal and who is a victim, to advancing technology. So on these matters I still have a relatively open mind. Before the Iron Door closes, I cheerfully invite libertarian theorists and high-tech mavens to submit papers, on any or all sides of this problem, for possible publication in the Libertarian Forum. Is there computer crime? Are VCR and satellite dish owners criminals? Please send in your discussions, and help advance libertarian theory."
— Murray N. Rothbard, High Tech ‘Crime’: A Call for Papers, The Libertarian Forum, Vol. 17, No. 7-8, July-August, 1983.
Kinsella and Tucker have done just that. Advance libertarian theory. I don’t think it takes any kind of stretch to come to the conclusion that Rothbard would have been persuaded by the new arguments and clarifications of old ones. Especially given sentiment against the Draconian measures suggested / adopted by statist policy makers in trying to clamp down on “intellectual property”. The VCR example is also rather analogous to the music industry and mp3 files re: ripping from radio, online streaming and torrents. “I should be able to tape a movie or other program off my own TV set [computer]. If the TV or movie people [music industry] don’t like it, they should jolly well have to lump it.”
Wenzel’s appeals to authority aren’t even good. I do wonder though how he would respond to the above. Maybe that is the only way he’ll change his tune? In any case: where’s the intellectual honesty at Bob? Hopefully you will bounce back from this with some new found humility and a different take on the issue.