Libertarian Perspectives On Intellectual Property - Left-libertarian Views

Left-libertarian Views

Roderick T. Long argues that the concept of intellectual property is not libertarian. He holds that prohibiting people from using, reproducing, and trading copyrighted material is an infringement of freedom of speech and freedom of the press, and that since information exists in people's minds and other people's property, one cannot own information without owning other people. As proof that authors and publishers will continue to produce without copyrights, he cites the fact that hundreds of thousands of articles are uploaded onto the Internet by their authors every day, available to anyone in the world for free and that nearly all works written before 1900 are in the public domain, yet pre-1900 works are still published, and still sell. Benjamin Tucker writes, "...the patent monopoly...consists in protecting inventors...against competition for a period long enough to extort from the people a reward enormously in excess of the labor measure of their services, – in other words, in giving certain people a right of property for a term of years in laws and facts of Nature, and the power to exact tribute from others for the use of this natural wealth, which should be open to all."