Kinsella On Liberty

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 140. As noted here, I was a guest Jan. 20, 2012 on the Liberty Underground Radio Show on the 1787 Radio Network, discussing IP for about 25 minutes. The reason they invited me on was the hosts, in discussing SOPA and PIPA in the Dec. 31, 2011 show (hour 1, starting about 10 minutes in), had a dispute about IP. Although the main host questioning me was on the fence about IP, he was open-minded, fair, and civil, and I think he moved a bit in the anti-IP direction by the end. The show has a podcast (feed) and my segment was on the second hour, starting at about 25:25 (audio).

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 139.  Albert Lu interviewed me for his Power and Market podcast, posted July 29, 2014. Unlike most interviews, we talked about education, career choices, and related matters. This is an edited version of a longer interview. The longer one can be obtained by requesting access here. Lu's description for the longer interview (which will be posted anon): Interview Highlights In this interview, Stephan speaks directly to prospective law students, internet entrepreneurs, and technology capitalists about the practice of law and the dangerous world of intellectual property. We also took time to discuss his own academic career and his multiple transitions from engineering student, to lawyer, to proprietor and independent scholar. This was a fun interview and reminds me of reason I began this project in the first place.

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 138.  This is my appearance on the most recent episode (376) of Ben Stone's Bad Quaker podcast, Recorded July 16, 2014, posted July 27, 2014. From his description page: "Stephan Kinsella and Ben Stone have a chat about getting even, property rights, and how many libertarians can dance on the head of a pin. Links: Stephan Kinsella Against Intellectual Property Getting Even: Forgiveness and Its Limits" We also talked about Tesla and patents.  

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 137. I participated in an impromptu Google Hangout by Daniel Rothschild for his "Live Free, Die Old" podcast, including Matt Gilliland and James Cox, on the night after I did a Liberty.me seminar. Rambling and casual. We give poor Cox a bit too much grief for being confused and apparently relativist about rights. Good times. *** For an extra, see the Youtube at the bottom, a 30 minute talk between me and Cox, when I was in Banff Canada and lost in the woods and shooting the sh*t with him.

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 136. A discussion with Carlos Morales on the Truth Over Comfort podcast. We discuss children's rights, spanking, my article "How We Come To Own Ourselves," "intractable" issues like abortion, etc.

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 135. My discussion with Bernie Greene of the Life, Liberty and Proper Tea podcast, released July 18, 2014. From his shownotes: "Stephan Kinsella has made some profound contributions to the liberty philosophy. Here we touch on the nature of law in a free society, IP, democracy vs other forms of tyranny and, of course, pipe smoking. https://www.stephankinsella.com/ And this is Stephan’s podcast feed. It includes some incredibly interesting stuff including an entire lecture series on Libertarian Legal Theory. I’ve listened to many of the podcasts several times. Truly excellent stuff. https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/kinsella-on-liberty/id595093254"

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 134. [Update: Transcript is here, and appended below.] This is my appearance as a Guest panelist on This Week in Law, Episode 267 (July 18, 2014).  Brief description: “Are patent trolls losing ground? Dish Anywhere in the Aereo aftermath, FCC gets 1 million comments on U.S. net neutrality debate and more!" Once again, the hosts and the other guest were congenial to my radical anti-IP views, and the other guest, law professor Harry Surden, basically acknowledged that there is no clear empirical evidence in favor of the patent system. (BTW the title of the show stemmed from my use of the fancy SAT word eleemosynary—it's used in Louisiana law on occasion, which is how I know, but it is obscure, but a fun word, so I had to drop it in the conversation... Some of my previous posts related to some of the topics discussed: Net Neutrality Developments Against Net Neutrality A Libertarian Take on Net Neutrality Costs of the Patent System Revisited Yet Another Study Find

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 133. I appeared on Ernie Hancock's show for all 3 hours of the July 9, 2014 episode to discuss intellectual property and related issues in detail. We discussed the constitutionality of IP, cryptocurrency/bitcoin, and related matters. This was a followup to the June 18 episode which featured Reed Jessen who was speaking about a way to fight patent trolls, which I called into. My previous appearances on Ernie's show: KOL089 | Declare Your Independence with Ernest Hancock radio: Intellectual Property, L. Neil Smith and KOL060 | Guest on Ernest Hancock’s Declare Your Independence radio show: intellectual property and libertarianism (2010).

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 132. Michael Shanklin passed on to me a variety of questions on libertarian theory and applications for his Voluntary Virtues network. I'll be a regular guest monthly. Relevant links: Fraud, Restitution, and Retaliation: The Libertarian Approach.

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 131. Jeff Tucker and I discuss the recent announcement by Tesla that it will cease enforcing its patents. Relevant links: All Our Patent Are Belong To You, By Elon Musk, CEO, Tesla Tucker, Tesla Shock: A Company Favors Competition Kinsella, The Patent Defense League and Defensive Patent Pooling

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 130. From the Bad Quaker podcast with host Ben Stone, Jeff Tucker and I discuss a variety of libertarian issues, including abortion and the like. Update:  Here is the (lightly edited) text of the email I sent Tucker and Stone a few hours before the podcast, that was alluded to at the end: There is something I've been chewing over in my mind lately that I've been thinking about discussing or putting on a podcast, and I'll briefly mention below, in case you two think this is worth talking about. It concerns the interrelationship between concepts of aggression, self-ownership, and homesteading of external resources. Basically libertarians sometimes treat aggression as a primary, and then struggle with including trespass to property as a case of it, ... so then some of them finally admit that aggression depends on property rights-you need to know who owns an apple before you can tell if someone's forceful taking of it (or keeping of it) is "aggression or not." But then you

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 129. This is a lesson/lecture I presented to a group of "Upper Elementary" Montessori students today at my son's school, The Post Oak School (Upper El includes 4th, 5th, and 6th grade students, and there were also a few third graders visiting from lower el, who are moving up next year). The students (25 or 30 or so) sat in a group at my feet, and were polite and interested the whole time. They asked many very intelligent and fun questions. I tried not to get too complicated, but did speak in fairly frank and sophisticated terms, tried not to talk down to them or dumb the talk down too much, and almost all of them hung in there till the end. The original plan was to speak for 40 or so minutes then take questions for another 15 or so, but we ended up going about an hour and 7 minutes, and then during lunch I had throng of students throwing more questions at me for another half hour. What amazing students; what an amazing school and educational approach. (This is one reason

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 128. From Jan. 2012, an interview by Peter Mac from The Peter Mac Show about the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA).

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 127. From December 2011, an interview by Stefan Molyneux for his Freedomain Radio program about the evil Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA. We discussed the First Amendment violations of and other problems with SOPA. 

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 126. This is my Mises University 2011 lecture, Intellectual Property and Economic Development (July 27, 2011), perhaps one of my better talks on IP and liberty. The original PowerPoint slides are here. Streaming audio, video, and a googledocs version of the slides are below. An unedited, raw transcript is also appended below (it may be cleaned up in due course). Transcript Mark Thornton:  Our first speaker this morning is Stephan Kinsella.  He is a patent attorney from Houston and the editor of Libertarian Papers.  His lecture this morning is going to be on Intellectual Property and Economic Development. Stephan… Stephan Kinsella:  Thanks Mark.  I’m very glad to be here at the Mises University.  I was here a couple of years ago.  It is always a great thing.  So let me get started.  I have a lot to cover so I will try to go as quickly as possible without going too fast. Most of you should already be familiar with the basic idea of praxeology.  There is a reason I’m g

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 125. Richard Heathen of Liberty Machine News interviews Stephan Kinsella about the evils intellectual property, why it it illegitimate and how it empowers crony capitalism through heavy handed state enforcement. (recorded April 10, 2014; uploaded May 12, 2014)  

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 124. This is my appearance from last Saturday (April 26, 2014) on the Patriot's Lament radio show in Alaska, with host Joshua Bennett. We discussed a variety of topics, including anarchy versus the state versus government, how anarchist societies would handle threats from states, the unique aspects of libertarianism and what sets it apart from all other political philosophies, and related topics. (Youtube)

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 123. Daniel Rothschild arranged for and moderated a debate between me and Objectivist/classical liberal (or whatever he is) Jan Helfeld. I lost my temper with the guy because I refused to let him do what I've seen him do to others—take the moral highground (which, as someone defending the state against me, a real libertarian, I was not going to let him do) and use his boring/bludgeoning "socratic" debate technique to try to boringly wear people down. I refused to give in to either, which resulted in the funny mess that you can see here. Of course, Helfeld never seriously tried to justify aggression or the state. He read from a prepared script, like a parakeet. And one of his arguments hinted at the idea that the state does commit aggression but that it is worth it because it prevents more serious aggression that would occur under a condition of anarchy; though he never made this argument explicitly. The other one suggested by him is that if Stephan Kinsella might in some

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 122. I appeared recently on the Canadian libertarian podcast Ed and Ethan: The Voice of Liberty in Canada (April 26, 2014) (I was a guest in 2012 and 2013 as well). We discussed the Aereo copyright case, IP in the Eastern District of Texas (see reporting by Joe Mullen), net neutrality, and other matters. This is my segment only; for the full show, go to Ed and Ethan’s show page for Episode 107. For background: see Dropbox clarifies its policy on reviewing shared files for DMCA issues, and links above.

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 121. I was interviewed by Redmond Weissenberger, of Mises Canada, for his Better Red than Dead podcast (iTunes). We discussed a variety of topics, including: store refuses to put boy's name on an Easter egg because of a copyright concern because he shares a name with a famous soccer player, positive versus negative rights, Alexis de Tocqueville on servitudes and liberty, and intellectual property (IP) as negative servitudes; Ayn Rand's confusion on property rights and IP; property as the least bad option; the impossibility of a post-scarcity world; the dispute over "privilege checking" and attempts to speak the language of progressives; Hoppe on immigration and monarchy. More information on some of the topics discussed can be found in the following articles and blog posts: Boy named after Wayne Rooney not allowed personalised Easter egg due to 'copyright law' DropBox Keeps Users From Sharing Copyrighted Material The Girl With the Xeroxed Tattoo Maori Angry About Mi