Given that IP is invalid and that copyright is an invasion of property rights, should libertarians release the information goods they produce into the public domain? If so, why do the Mises Institute and LRC use copyright? The only reason I can think of is for defensive purposes: to protect against someone claiming the ideas as their own and using the copyright to prosecute the original author.
What is a libertarian author to do?
There are no other forms of intellectual property legally recognized by the state, and so they have to limit themselves to copyright.
Listen to Jeffrey Tucker’s speech at the recent Gold conference (in the Media section of Mises.org). He covers copyright towards the end. It’s not a perfect answer, but it might expose you to the thinking behind decisions made (or not made).
I think people should have intellectual property rights, just as we have private property rights. However, suppose, hypothetically I write a book, but own the intellectual property on that book and ban people from citing it - should my “intellectual” property allow me to ban people from discussing my ideas or citing me - i.e. barring their freedom of speech and expression? The general answer is no.
I think the problem is therefore Platonic: all ideas are a copy of a copy (pastiche and the like) - I find it difficult how one can claim something is there property, when you can rephrase or update an idea using words. Although there may be a royalty paid for citing ones work - amongest other things.
Nevertheless, I find Milton Friedman’s on plagarism and the like somewhat amusing: http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=POswB0Kjbe8
Just listened to Tucker’s speech. He basically just talks about how Mises is more careful now to keep the copyright for themselves so that they can put free books online, whereas if other publishers control the copyright they can’t. What I don’t understand is why they bother keeping a copyright at all, why not just put it into public domain?
What I want to know is this: given that copyright is illegitimate, what should libertarians authors and publishers do? Is public domain the way to go? Or are there other risks involved (eg. someone else claims that the writing is their own and copyrighted and goes after the real author for copyright infringement)?
Copyright is automatic. You don’t have to file for it. It is assumed upon creation.
On the main page of mises .org (at the bottom) you will find a button for Creative Commons. Creative Commons is a good solution for writers who want to make sure other people feel comfortable using their work. The organization has different kinds of licences, the most flexible of which is the “BY” license. It says that all another person needs to do is give you credit for the quoted material. That is it - just give you credit. I think the LVMI adopted this method recently. I am not sure when Mr. Tucker gave that speech. You can read about the BY licence here.
I know, the state assumes that you want their illegitimate services. So isn’t it illegitimate to accept this? Shouldn’t an author specify public domain so as not to be complicit in the crime of enforcing copyright?
CC is surely better than copyright, but my point is that the whole idea of licensing ideas is illegitimate. So my concern here is between a) copyright and other forms of idea licensing; and b) public domain or no licensing.
A libertarian author should pay attention to the development of memetics, a proto-science dealing with the transmission of information which could easily be utilized to come up with alternative & new ways of dealing with “copyright”.
I.E., if I use some sort of “licensing”, it’s typically to show that I’ve generated the content on a page, but nothing more, as I ultimately have no desire of control beyond notification (i.e. showing generation where generation is due, as credit would imply being an originator of said content or ideas).
It should be readily apparent that truly original ideas are probably the exception, & most art / content is generated with the aid of previous art and/or content in some form (i.e. from explicit copying to passinginfluence).
The point is that any sort of licensing is invalid. I have no right to force people to give me credit for my content.
The real issue is licensed versus unlicensed.