The landmark economic book that argue against "intellectual property" AKA intellectual monopoly is now available in print form. The economists David K. Levine and Michele Boldrin challenges conventional wisdom about patent and copyright and argue that we are better off without them. Of course, this book wouldn't be complete without praise of free software. :)

Patent and copyright law are stifling innovation and threatening the global economy according to two economists at Washington University in St. Louis in a new book, Against Intellectual Monopoly.

GNU GPL actually *depends* on copyright, an intellectual monopoly, in order to spread intellectual freedom. Moreover, it seems to doom free software into a kind of symbiosis with copyright, forcing it to remain a supporter of that monopoly, since without it, the approach used to make the GPL so powerful would not work.

[…] this does result in the paradoxical situation that the GNU GPL actually *depends* on copyright, an intellectual monopoly, in order to spread intellectual freedom. Moreover, it seems to doom free software into a kind of symbiosis with copyright, forcing it to remain a supporter of that monopoly, since without it, the approach used to make the GPL so powerful would not work.

Regular readers of this blog will know that I am not a fan of the term “intellectual property”, and that I prefer the more technically correct term “intellectual monopolies”. Despite that, I strongly recommend a new book from someone who not only approves of the term “intellectual property”, but of its fundamental ideas.

The International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA) wants countries such as Brazil, India, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam to be placed on the US government's blacklist of copyright sinners for supporting open source software

Here is just a quick roundup of news which revolves around our ‘favourite’ patents trolls, our ‘favourite’ anti-Free software laws, and Microsoft’s latest intellectual monopoly offenses.

Pretending that ownership of software is possible and thus trying to enforce this ownership (as copyright and patent laws do) actually leads us to violations of actual physical property.

I write this to clarify my ideas and illustrate more precisely what happens if we actually reject the idea of intellectual property.