The Economics of Patents and Copyrights , by French researchers Francois Leveque and Yann Meniere of the Ecole des mines de Paris (an engineering university), is available for free, under the Creative Commons License. It concludes (p. 102): The abolition or preservation of intellectual property protection is ... not just a purely theoretical
“Intellectual Property” is the sticking point in US support for Russia to join the World Trade Organization. Meanwhile, this headline is an attention grabber: “ Bush Wants China to Send Copyright Violators to Jail .” The irony is ghastly: strengthen your state and jail your entrepreneurs or we won’t
From an interview with Milton Friedman ( 2 ), a good story about Mises and the Mont Pelerin Society. It’s told to critique him; but to me, it shows Mises’s integrity and principles. INTERVIEWER: Some of those debates became very, very heated. I think [Ludwig] von Mises once stormed out. MILTON FRIEDMAN: Oh, yes, he did. Yes, in the middle of a
[Update: see more extensive material in my personal post of the same title here .] In a recent thread , a commentator (Feirman) wrote: “Rand herself didn’t agree with everything Mises wrote, such as his a priori methodology, subjectivism and utilitarianism, and I am sure that other Randians pick bones with other of his ideas as well. But this
Dear President Harter, I am an attorney in Houston, Texas, a former adjunct law professor, and a widely published author on legal, economic, and related subjects. I am aware of the discliplinary action threatened against UNLV’s economics dept. Professor Hans-Hermann Hoppe. Dr. Hoppe is probably UNLV’s most prolific and pathbreaking professor; he
[To be published without footnotes in IP Law & Business , a trade publication for IP attorneys; this version includes references and links. Note: I assumed here the utilitarian criterion normally used to commend IP rights without challenging it.] In “Don’t Believe the Hype” (Feb. 2005, IP Law & Business ), authors Benassi & Gillespie argue that
It seems pretty obvious that most Austrians—especially Misesians and Rothbardians, but even the Hayekians etc.—are also libertarians. The correlation seems very high to me. I’ve often wondered why this is so. It could be that many people are Austrians because they were led to it by Rothbard or Mises, or some other libertarian, because they were
This is an anonymous post on Heinrich’s blog. It seems authentic but I am not sure, since to my knowledge it has appeared only there, which is odd. FWIW: MESSAGE FROM PRESIDENT HARTER (Anonymous) 2005-02-19 01:26 (link) Many of you have followed the recent news reports regarding a complaint filed against UNLV economics professor Hans-Hermann
As an opponent of modern statute-based federal copyright law, I’m in favor of any improvement, including incremental reductions in the scope of copyright. Lawrence Lessig suggests encouraging the Copyright Office to recommend changes to Copyright Law to make it easier to use “orphaned works”—copyrighted works where the rights holder is hard to
UNLV supports instructor Badger Herald by Sundeep Malladi Thursday, February 24, 2005 The University of Nevada decided Friday to dismiss a letter of instruction and all related materials from the file of an economics professor accused of homophobic comments made during one of his classes. Dr. Hans-Herman Hoppe was accused last March when
What is the Mises Institute?
The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.
Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.