A Cypherpunk’s Library

Against Intellectual Property

N. Stephan Kinsella

2001 · 53 pages

N. Stephan Kinsella's argument that intellectual property is incompatible with genuine property rights. Patents and copyrights, he holds, are state-granted monopolies over ideal objects — patterns of information that, unlike scarce physical things, everyone can use at once — so enforcing them means letting one person seize control of another's tangible property and body. Building from scarcity and homesteading, he works toward a principled rejection of patent, copyright, trademark, and trade secret alike. Published in the Journal of Libertarian Studies by the Ludwig von Mises Institute.