Intellectual Property-related Policies and Practices of Prominent Libertarians
Many libertarian organizations, such as the Reason Foundation, Independent Institute, Cato Institute, and Ludwig von Mises Institute copyright their publications. However, the latter nonetheless issues their work under Creative Commons Share Alike 3.0 standard, making entire books freely available on the Internet for access, reprint, and redistribution, making their "non-free" status somewhat irrelevant from the point of view of someone who merely wants to read them. Moreover, the site hosts many articles about the allegedly absurd lengths that copyright enforcement is taken to, which they claim have hindered the ability of consumers to buy the products they want. For instance, a Mises blog entry notes that a bakery is refusing to put Disney characters on its customized birthday cakes, lest it be liable for infringement; another blog criticizes the Marvel Comics lawsuit over the City of Heroes game that allows players to create characters that resemble those from its comic books. Mises writers also lamented the demise of the International Music Score Library Project in the wake of a cease and desist letter. The Independent Institute's collection of research does not seem to provide much coverage of intellectual property debates; its book Winners, Losers and Microsoft approaches the issue of copyright owner monopoly power only indirectly, opining that barriers to entry for a new product can be overcome by offering a discount during an introductory period; the ability to design software to be compatible with competitors' products; potential coordination of customers in switching to a new standard; etc. Cato scholars suggest that government remove barriers to private sector efforts to enforce intellectual property rights, noting for instance that "overzealous antitrust enforcement might hamper collective private efforts to license songs."
Susan Hogarth, leader of LPRadicals and candidate for North Carolina House of Representatives, does not include a copyright notice on the caucus website or on her campaign website, and has stated in posts to the lpradicals Yahoo group that she does not believe in intellectual property. Libertarian wikis tend to release their content under some sort of free or semi-free license; LPedia licenses its content under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 license. Libertarianwiki releases its content into the public domain.
Read more about this topic: Libertarian Perspectives On Intellectual Property
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