Abolish Copyrights and Patents? A Soho Forum Debate
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN points to it as a substantive debate on intellectual property from two libertarian angles, with Kinsella as the abolitionist voice.
What it is
A Soho Forum debate in which patent lawyer Stephan Kinsella argues for abolishing copyright and patents against law professor Richard Epstein. Both come from libertarian perspectives.
Recommended by 3 HN commenters across 3 different months, 2022 to 2023.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec breck · 2023-04 · on “'Delete Act' seeks to give Californians more power to block data tracking”
Anything by Stephan Kinsella is worth watching: [this video] > ignore the current economic system and wellbeing of the authors and artists who produce work. I'm not ignoring it, I will freely admit that I do not care about preserving the wealth of Atherton and Beverly Hills at the expense of poor children having second rate information. If they can figure out a way to make money in a world with actual property rights, great for them. I also don't think Oxcontin or mRNA vaccines or Fox News or CNN, etc, make a good case for having patents and copyrights.
Recommends aaa_aaa · 2022-10 · on “Vectis IP Announces Call for Patents Essential to the Opus codec”
Here is a debate on IP with two different libertarian perspective: [this video] `Abolish the IP laws` side provides some pointers to related research and empirical evidence against IP.
Recommends interroboink · 2023-05 · on “Supreme Court Rules Andy Warhol’s Prince Art Is Copyright Infringement”
I thought this was a decent debate on the subject: "Abolish Copyrights and Patents? A Soho Forum Debate" ( [this video] ) One thing that struck me was that both sides in that debate agreed that the current copyright/patent system was not in very good shape. That's one nuance that I think can get lost in these discussions — somebody says "copyright can be good" and is met with the retort "look at how bad our system is right now" without allowing for the possibility that we could have a better system, rather than outright abolishing it. Anyway, I think there are good points on both sides; you seem to be more on the absolutist side (fair enough), but you might enjoy watching it.