Shit got real in the world of the free societies yesterday, in a big tiff over IP. It involved L. Neil Smith and Ian Freeman of Free Talk Live.
Its all to do with Smith's A New Covenant and the apparent violation of his 'property rights' by a group called the 'Shire Society'
Kinsella weighed in on it the subject on FTL last night, I wonder if he will blog about it.
here is the Shire side of the story
Just find it hilarious that someone who is in favor of a free society can have this sort of view on IP. This has got to be hard to defend for even the more pro IP folks out there. Usually they will try and make the argument from contract, in which this case there clearly wasn't one
What are you talking about? Is that a blog post or something?
Democracy means the opportunity to be everyone's slave.—Karl Kraus.
no.
Hopefully there will be a blog post about it soon, because its too much of a pain in the ass to describe.
Short version.
Smith wrote A New Covenant like 25 years ago. Its a declaration of Sovereignty that people sign and then mail to him with $2 enclosed for 'archiving'
Fast forward to today. In New Hampshire there is a movement called the Free State Project, it is attracting more and more AnCaps/agorist than the minarchist type libertarians these days. A lot of them live in the Keene area, or do activism there. There is a radio show called Free Talk Live that is based in Keene. These agorist/ancap folks decided to form their own society, the Shire Society, that was actually based on consent. And (sort of as a joke) wanted to sign a big paper document in fancy writing to make it 'official'. When coming up with the words for this document, the shire society folks started from Smith's A New Covenant and went on making changes form their to fit their views.
Somehow word gets to Smith, and he throws a hissy fit in an email exchange threatening to call his lawyers and talking about damage that was being done to his property. Calling the shire folks socialists, etc.
FTL people responded on their radio show last night. And they had Kinsella on, and he seemed very, very up to date on all the latest goings on in the situation.
Oh, well I don't really have anything nice to say about that. Kinsella might blog about it. I think he hasn't updated in a while.
Yeah, I'm psychic.
http://blog.mises.org/13277/the-l-neil-smith-freetalklive-copyright-dispute/
E. R. Olovetto: Yeah, I'm psychic.
Joe: E. R. Olovetto: Yeah, I'm psychic. but I said it first
you're mentalist!
(english is not my native language, sorry for grammar.)
I listened to the entire podcast last night. Kinsella was great. In some ways, I really feel bad for these IP people and their crazy untenable ideas. Most are influenced by Rand, who made an error on the issue of IP and it really spun out of control. Her followers have continued in her tradition. The problem is believing that thoughts are property and must be rationed and protected and priced like property. Under these conditions, you really must get out of the idea business because you end up being bitter at those who are most influenced by you, furious at any change in your ideas, demanding credit and payment and no payment is really too much to ask if the ideas come from a great genuis, etc. It's all quite tragic, all stemming from a fundamental error on the nature of ideas. So far as I'm concerned, the debate about IP has been decisively won by Kinsella and he has made a major and lasting contribution to libertarian ideas.
Publisher, Laissez-Faire Books
the debate was won since the internet was invented.