Re: We Are Not Amused

Lew, it’s indeed sad to see libertarians using the power of the state’s intellectual property “laws” (arbitrary statutes, diktats by the “law maker” state) to censor free speech–the group Public Citizen, quoted in the NY Times piece, is correct that such lawsuits have a “chilling effect on free speech.” Just another example of how copyright and patent are not the only bad types of state IP; trademark law, when defined and enforced by the state, also leads to unlibertarian outrages (trade secret too; the state corrupts everything). And not surprisingly, most of these type of libertarians support all types of IP law on “pragmatic” (self-interested) grounds.

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10:14 am on January 28, 2011