Stephan Kinsella 's Techdirt Comments

Latest Comments (210) comment rss

  • On the post: Lucasfilm Steps In After FanFilm That Tried To Follow The Rules Was Claimed By Disney Over Star Wars Music

    Stephan Kinsella ( profile ), 22 Jan, 2019 @ 11:47am

    Re: Re: Re: Missing the point

    "I don't know how long you've been on this site, but Techdirt spends a great deal of time criticizing copyright law."

    Sure--its implementation or some details but not copyright law itself. You have to oppose copyright. Be an abolitionist. Otherwise your complaints are hollow.

  • On the post: Lucasfilm Steps In After FanFilm That Tried To Follow The Rules Was Claimed By Disney Over Star Wars Music

    Stephan Kinsella ( profile ), 22 Jan, 2019 @ 11:37am

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Missing the point

    almost every statement you made is confused and wrong. I'd be happy to explain it to you for free in a 20-30 minute phone call. Free offer. Just because I'm feeling nice today.

  • On the post: Lucasfilm Steps In After FanFilm That Tried To Follow The Rules Was Claimed By Disney Over Star Wars Music

    Stephan Kinsella ( profile ), 22 Jan, 2019 @ 11:35am

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Missing the point

    "No you don't, as your previous comment makes painfully clear. You are blinded by the poison of libertarianism, to the point where you apparently can't even recognize the existence of actual principles that conflict with your poisonous ideology, as evidenced by the way you label arguments derived from them "unprincipled.""

    Sorry that you view my desire to respect your rights as "poison". Sad. In any case-- if you want me to explain any of this to you, I'd be happy to. For free. Just let me know.

  • On the post: Lucasfilm Steps In After FanFilm That Tried To Follow The Rules Was Claimed By Disney Over Star Wars Music

    Stephan Kinsella ( profile ), 22 Jan, 2019 @ 11:23am

    Re: Re: Re: Missing the point

    not sure if I understand your comment. I'm a patent attorney, and electrical engineer; but also a libertarian. I understand patent and copyright law, and understand why they are evil and should be abolished. I understand why failure to have a principled view on this leads to confused and murky analysis.

    By the way I've written a great deal on this. www.c4sif.org. And I speak on this often. I have a podcast too. If you want to have a skype or phone call to discuss, which I could record for the edification of others, I"m happy to do so--for free. LEt me know if you want to do it. you can reach me at nskinsella@gmail.com or whatever.

  • On the post: Lucasfilm Steps In After FanFilm That Tried To Follow The Rules Was Claimed By Disney Over Star Wars Music

    Stephan Kinsella ( profile ), 22 Jan, 2019 @ 10:59am

    Re: Missing the point

    “Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.”

    But it's absurd to expect companies not to use legal rights available to them. And when they do, we should identify the real problem: not the fact that these enterprises used an existing law... but the law itself. I mean this is like saying that the problem with welfare is that if you offer free money to people, some people actually take it!

    to invoke Edmund Burke: " In vain you tell me that artificial government is good, but that I fall out only with the abuse. The thing! the thing itself is the abuse!"

    the problem is that the tech-libertarians are not real libertarians and have no consistent theory of rights or government or politics. So all they are left with is impotent mewling about how certain laws or policies are too much "abused" or a given usage is "insane" (whatever that means). They can't strike at the root because they have no solid principles. They have accepted the unprincipled utilitarian positivistic empiricism of our age, and thus are helpless to mount a coherent defense. So instead they whine about how some companies' use of IP is "insane". totally incoherent.

  • On the post: Lucasfilm Steps In After FanFilm That Tried To Follow The Rules Was Claimed By Disney Over Star Wars Music

    Stephan Kinsella ( profile ), 22 Jan, 2019 @ 10:50am

    The problem is copyright, not "abuse" or "insane use"

    "both Lucasfilm and Disney have shown themselves to be perfectly insane when it comes to IP protectionism. "

    There is nothing "insane" about it. These are just companies using the legal rights given them by copyright. The problem is the tech-libertarians don't have a principled opposition to copyright (or patent, for that matter), so all they can do is mutter "abuse" when someone actually uses the rights the law gives them. If you want to criticize the rights-holders here, criticizing the state for giving them these rights in the first place. How they use them is irrelevant.

  • On the post: Washington Redskins Appeal To SCOTUS On Trademark And Seek To Tie Their Case To That Of The Slants

    Stephan Kinsella ( profile ), 27 Apr, 2016 @ 07:09am

    Denying a Trademark doesn't violate rights

    The state should never grant trademark protection in the first place, just as it should not grant patent or copyright, so the USPTO denying the Redskins' a trademark doesn't violate its rights. It doesn't prevent the Redskins from using the logo or the mark. It just means the Redskins would find it harder to sue people who also used the mark.

    Ironically, denying the trademark would lead to MORE use of the "Redskins" mark--for example the Redskins would not be able to stop knock-off teeshirts, hats, and so on. So denying them a trademark would not prevent the team from using that mark, and many more third parties would also be able to use the mark.

  • On the post: Finding And Responding To The Media's Favorite Ridiculous And Misleading Free Speech Tropes

    Stephan Kinsella ( profile ), 21 May, 2015 @ 08:10am

    Rothbard did this long ago

    The libertarian theorist Murray Rothbard demolished the trope decades ago, in The Ethics of Liberty (https://mises.org/library/human-rights-property-rights).

  • On the post: Statutory Damages Strike Again: AFP & Getty Told To Pay $1.2 Million For Using Photo Found Via Twitter

    Stephan Kinsella ( profile ), 22 Nov, 2013 @ 07:24pm

    Nothing reasonable about it

    "Morel, reasonably, wasn't happy about this" -- I don't see what's reasonable about this at all. If you make information public, you have no right to complain if others use it.

  • On the post: Let Freedom Ka-Ching! On The 50th Anniversary Of 'I Have A Dream,' AT&T Can Use The Speech To Sell Phones, But You Can't Post It

    Stephan Kinsella ( profile ), 28 Aug, 2013 @ 03:39pm

    Who is "Dr." King?

    Just wondering.

  • On the post: Undownloading: Further Proof Those eBooks You Paid For Really Aren't Yours

    Stephan Kinsella ( profile ), 19 Aug, 2013 @ 04:52pm

    So is O'Donnell against copyright?

    This is the predictable result of the state having the right to impose copyright law on us. One wonders if the victim of this action is himself opposed to copyright law. I bet not. If so, he is on the receiving end of policies he supports.

  • On the post: Saudi Arabian Court Sentences Blogger To 7 Years, 600 Lashes Under Cybercrime Law

    Stephan Kinsella ( profile ), 01 Aug, 2013 @ 06:53am

    America is no exemplar

    The arrogance of the US on this topic is amazing. It has millions of people rotting in jail for victimless drug crimes. The drug war is one of the worst holocausts of human rights violations in human history. It is rich for the US to pretend like it is some shining exemplar of human rights, when it has the drug war--among many other fascist/police state policies, from selective service/conscription, to confiscatory taxation, regulation of markets, minimum wage law, pro-union legislation, draconian and fascist patent and copyright law, antitrust law, extraterritorial application/bullying of IP and antitrust and drug and gambling law, and so on. THe US is a fascist police state. Saudi Arabia is also terrible, but that does not mean the US is "modern" or civilized.

  • On the post: Vermont Declares War On Patent Trolls; Passes New Law And Sues Notorious Patent Troll

    Stephan Kinsella ( profile ), 23 May, 2013 @ 08:56pm

    Preemption

    I suspect this law will be held to be unconstitutional as preempted by federal patent law. Just a guess.

  • On the post: PSA To Parents: Step 1 After Your Child Is Shot Is Not Checking WebMD

    Stephan Kinsella ( profile ), 10 May, 2013 @ 02:29pm

    The state is always worse

    I hear you. I feel ya. But no matter how moronic or vile this mom is, the state is always worse. See this post: http://libertarianstandard.com/2012/01/26/rothbard-and-rockwell-on-conservatives-and-the-state/. THe state blunders and kills, far more than incompetent parents do.

  • On the post: When Startups Need More Lawyers Than Employees, The Patent System Isn't Working

    Stephan Kinsella ( profile ), 06 May, 2013 @ 06:17pm

    Re: Facts, just the facts!

    "Bottom line, there are fixes in place. The author should stop complaining and call a small firm or solo patent lawyer and get some real advice."

    This is horrible. Sometimes an innocent victim actually does lose, because of patent law. It does exist. And telling them to stop complaining is horrible--it is blaming the victim. As for advice--what if the lawyer says "Looks like the patent is valid, you infringe, and you will lose--might as well shut down your company." What then, jerk?

  • On the post: When Startups Need More Lawyers Than Employees, The Patent System Isn't Working

    Stephan Kinsella ( profile ), 06 May, 2013 @ 01:17pm

    Patent Stockholm Syndrome

    This poor guy is being devastated by patents. Yet, at 5:40, he admits he is not against the patent system, does not want to abolish it--only to "reform" the system that he admits is "totally broken." This is really sad. The patent trolls are just responding to the current legal system. And they are not the worst problem--they just want a little royalty. Software patents are not the problem--maybe they are for this guy, but not in general. It is high quality, good patents, practiced by practicing entities--Apple, etc.--that is the problem. The trolls are just responding to the legal system that guys like this are in favor of. Guys like this are a bigger problem than trolls are. It is because of people like this that we have a patent system at all--people who support the basic system and the state's right to impose these fascist laws on us.

  • On the post: Intuit Continues To Make Sure Filing Taxes Is Complicated

    Stephan Kinsella ( profile ), 08 Apr, 2013 @ 11:03am

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Slimy, but tax simplification is not good

    The problem with taxes is not that the system is complicated. It is that people are stolen from: taxed. The problem is taxes.

  • On the post: Intuit Continues To Make Sure Filing Taxes Is Complicated

    Stephan Kinsella ( profile ), 08 Apr, 2013 @ 11:02am

    Re: Re: Re: Slimy, but tax simplification is not good

    "As simpler system is harder to abuse."

    Yes, and that is a bug not a feature. It's good that people are able to game the system, "abuse" it, evade or avoid taxes. If making it simpler makes it harder to evade, that is hardly an arguemnt in favor of simplification.

  • On the post: Intuit Continues To Make Sure Filing Taxes Is Complicated

    Stephan Kinsella ( profile ), 05 Apr, 2013 @ 09:53am

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Slimy, but tax simplification is not good

    taxes are high relative to some baseline. there are various reaosnable baselines. One is what taxes ought to be: zero. By that standard taxes are high. Another is what they were in times past. By that standard they are high--compared to what king george taxed us for examlpe or taxes even in late 1800s. another standard is the amount of taxes that would be needed to fund a state that restricted itself to the core functions enumerated in the constitution--that would be a state at least 95% smaller than today's. I.e. a budget of at most $200B a year. Not $4T. Taxes needed to fund that level of state would be trivial. Our taxes are high compared to that.

    As for the comment that no one wants to cut spending--nonsense. We libertarians do.

  • On the post: Intuit Continues To Make Sure Filing Taxes Is Complicated

    Stephan Kinsella ( profile ), 04 Apr, 2013 @ 02:34pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Slimy, but tax simplification is not good

    loopholes are good. anything to allow you to avoid taxes is good. this is one problem with tax "simplification".

    I of course agree with other comments--that reducing the burden, ceteris paribus, is good. But the primary burden of taxes is not the complexity or record keeping: it's the amount. Focusing on "simplification" is giving in to their distraction.

    Consider: suppose you are paying on average 33% taxes now, after all the bullshit. You have a choice: you can just pay 45% of gross income on a postcard. No records, no nothing. Simple! What would you choose? HELLOOOOO

Next >>