Intellectual property

Intellectual property (IP) is a monopoly over the use of a creation of the mind (i.e., an idea). IP typically manifests itself in the form of patents, copyrights, trademarks and trade secrets. There is debate amongst anarchists over whether intellectual property rights are legitimate rights or illegitimate privileges.

Samuel Edward Konkin III was opposed to the concept of IP rights and wrote the article "Copywrongs" to explain and support this position. Author J. Neil Schulman later wrote in support of IP rights in "Informational Property: Logorights". While Konkin opposed state copyright and patent laws as constructs of the state, and creators of illegitimate monopoly, as did Benjamin Tucker before him, Schulman argued, like Lysander Spooner, that the material identity displayed by an original creation could be owned as an exclusive natural property right.

Agorists who oppose IP typically consider “piracy” of copyrighted material to be a form of counter-economic activity.

• Books
• File-sharing
• Open source software

• "Libertarian perspectives on intellectual property" - Wikipedia

• "Copyrights and Patents" - Ayn Rand Lexicon
• "Informational Property: Logorights" by J. Neil Schulman
• The Law of Intellectual Property: or an essay on the right of authors and inventors to a perpetual property in their ideas. by Lysander Spooner

• Against Intellectual Monopoly by Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine
• "Intellectual Property — A Libertarian Critique" by Kevin A. Carson
• "How 'Intellectual Property' Impedes Competition" by Kevin A. Carson
• Against Intellectual Property by N. Stephan Kinsella
• "Copywrongs" by Samuel Edward Konkin III
• "The Libertarian Case Against Intellectual Property Rights" by Roderick T. Long

• YouTube: How creativity is being strangled by the law by Larry Lessig
• "Reevaluating Copyright: The Public Must Prevail" by Richard Stallman