From: S
Sent: Monday, March 26, 2018 1:22 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: question

Dr. Block: Hello I’m a regular reader of your excellent blog at LRC. Here’s a moral question that I’d like to see addressed from a libertarian perspective. Let’s say someone publishes a very expensive cryptocurrency newsletter. A purchaser of this newsletter gives away the newsletter’s crypto picks (as well as extensive screenshots of the newsletter) on an Internet message board. Now, I’m against the notion of intellectual property, but let’s say the customer has signed an agreement with the publisher stating that he will not publicly disclose the newsletter’s crypto picks or content. To reveal the crypto picks would be breaking the contract with the newsletter publisher. In my view the customer would clearly be doing something immoral.

Now let’s say a random man is scouring the Internet and looking for the newsletter’s latest cryptocurrency pick, since he does not want to pay the high cost of the newsletter. He finds the message board in question and discovers the crypto pick and screenshots that were revealed by the customer. He knows full well that the revealer of the crypto pick is breaking a contract with the newsletter writer, even if he himself has signed no such contract. He buys the cryptocurrency in hopes of making a profit. Is this man doing anything wrong? What if a newsletter buyer sells full access to said newsletter—including buy and sell alerts, etc.—for a reduced price? Would the purchaser of the “bootlegged” newsletter be doing something wrong? I’d greatly appreciate any response.

On Mon, Mar 26, 2018 at 11:25 AM, Walter Block wrote:
Dear S: My mentor on all issues concerning IP is Stephan Kinsella. Stephan, would you please take a hack at this important question?

From: Stephan Kinsella
To: Walter Block
Cc: S
Sent: Mon, Mar 26, 2018 1:02 pm
Subject: Re: question
Well the second man is clearly doing nothing wrong at all. You are entitled to act on any information that you possess.
To me, more interesting is your assumption that the customer did something immoral. I don’t agree that he did, or, at least, that it’s not clear. The reason is: rights and ethics are probably only intersecting sets, meaning not every action that is a rights violation is necessarily “immoral” (libertarianism is a theory of political norms, not of personal ethics), just like not every immoral action is a rights violation. Meaning: even if it’s a contract breach doesn’t mean that it’s immoral to do so. Further, if you understand contracts as Rothbard/Evers did, contracts are not binding promises. They are just means of transferring title to property. Meaning that there is no such thing as “breach” of a contract. There are just actions that trigger some payment of money. (This is similar to the theory in the law of “efficient breach” contract theory.)

And finally, i doubt that such contracts would be feasible at all in a society without copyright law. Suppose I want to get your newsletter. And there is no copyright law. okay so I can either pirate it, or buy it. I might buy it if the price is reasonable and it’s more convenient. But why would I sign an agreement to be legally liable for huge monetary damages if I use, reveal, copy it? I mean the author should be glad I am willing to pay him anything at all instead of just pirating it (which in my view would be both legal and perfectly moral). If he insists I sign some huge liability contract, I won’t sign it and I will just pirate his work. So it’s ridiculous to assume authors would not only manage to persuade people to pay them (when they really don’t have to) but also sign up to a huge liability contract. Therefore, I think any such contract or terms of use, if any at all, would just have minor damages. Which means that the customer would have the right to leak the newsletter and pay a minor fine–so what. It’s really just a pre-negotiated fee for use.

So my answer is: not only did the second man (third party) not do anything immoral or illegal, I don’t think the customer himself did either. EVEN IF he violated a contract, that is *not a crime* since as Rothbard argues it is only an action that specifies some payment of money. That’s all. That’s not immoral.

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