CHOOSE
Paperback
eBook

click on thumbnail to zoom

Libertarian Critique of Intellectual Property

Average Rating:
A major contribution to libertarian legal theory and an indispensable guide to a vital topic.
List Price: $8.00
Price: $4.95
Quantity:
 
  • TO SUPPORT MISES!

Description 

What is the status of intellectual property? Are patents and copyrights legitimate in a free society?

Butler Shaffer is a distinguished libertarian legal theorist who has for many years taught at Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles. In this monograph, he addresses an important question that has aroused much interest among libertarians: What is the status of intellectual property? Are patents and copyrights legitimate?

Shaffer responds with an appeal to fundamental libertarian principles. Only arrangements that people freely negotiate with one another are acceptable: laws imposed by a coercive state are not. Judged by this standard, intellectual property fails. People may make contracts that limit the sale or transmission of ideas or books, but these bind only those who make them. Intellectual property laws, by contrast, apply to everyone, whether people accept them or not. These laws could not have arisen through voluntary agreements.

Defenders of intellectual property maintain that inventors and writers need protection for their work. Without patents and copyrights, inventions and creative work would be impeded. Shaffer responds that most of the great creators and inventors of the past worked without patent s and copyrights. Leonardo da Vinci and Shakespeare, for example, did rather well without this sort of state privilege.

A Libertarian Critique of Intellectual Property is a major contribution to libertarian legal theory and an indispensable guide to a vital topic.

Reviews

Be the first to submit a review on this product!
Review and Rate this Item


Introduction by David Gordon

A Libertarian Critique of Intellectual Property

Index

ISBN 9781610165891
eISBN 9781610166263
Publisher Mises Institute
Publication Date 12/11/2013
Page Length 60
Dimensions 4x7

Against Intellectual Monopoly
Rarely does a book come along that prompts a wholesale revision in the way we perceive laws and legislation, social progress, and the very foundations...
Price: $27.00
Against Intellectual Property
This essay will change the way you think about patents and copyrights. Few essays written in the last decades have caused so much fundamental rethinki...
Price: $7.95
Against Intellectual Property - Digital Book
This essay will change the way you think about patents and copyrights. Few essays written in the last decades have caused so much fundamental rethinki...
Price: $3.75
Against Intellectual Property - MP3 CD
This essay will change the way you think about patents and copyrights. Few essays written in the last decades have caused so much fundamental rethinki...
Price: $3.00
Libertarian Critique of Intellectual Property - Digital Book
Digital eBook edition of Butler Shaffer's major contribution to libertarian legal theory and an indispensable guide to a vital topic.
Price: $3.95
Legal Foundations of a Free Society
All essential studies in the philosophy of law and the field of legal theory will have to take full account of the theories and criticisms expounded b...
Price: $30.00