Against Intellectual Monopoly |  | Authors: Michele Boldrin, David K. Levine
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Category: Book
List Price: $30.00
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Rating:  8 reviews
Sales Rank: 520156
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Pages: 312
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 5.9 x 1
ISBN: 0521879280
Dewey Decimal Number: 346.048
EAN: 9780521879286
ASIN: 0521879280
Publication Date: July 7, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
"Intellectual property" - patents and copyrights - have become controversial. We witness teenagers being sued for "pirating" music - and we observe AIDS patients in Africa dying due to lack of ability to pay for drugs that are high priced to satisfy patent holders. Are patents and copyrights essential to thriving creation and innovation - do we need them so that we all may enjoy fine music and good health? Across time and space the resounding answer is: No. So-called intellectual property is in fact an "intellectual monopoly" that hinders rather than helps the competitive free market regime that has delivered wealth and innovation to our doorsteps. This book has broad coverage of both copyrights and patents and is designed for a general audience, focusing on simple examples. The authors conclude that the only sensible policy to follow is to eliminate the patents and copyright systems as they currently exist.
Book Description
This book examines patents and copyrights. It argues that these are not necessary for innovation and are detrimental to the common good, rather than beneficial. Unlike competing titles, the book has broad coverage of both copyrights and patents and is designed for a general audience, focusing on simple examples.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 8
 Astonishing January 13, 2009
Jeffrey Tucker (Auburn, Alabama)
49 out of 52 found this review helpful
This book, which you must must must read, will challenge everything you think you believe about IP. In fact, I don't think any serious can come away from it thinking the same way about this subject. It is not only a wholesale shredding of the rationale of patent and copyright (which is radical enough); it also suggests a new historiographical project that would revise the entire history of innovation as well as a new social theory project that would add the social force of emulation as an important ingredient to what makes up the thriving civilization.
I've read widely on this topic, and this book makes other treatments seem amateurish. This is pioneering material here that offers a profound challenge to right and left, to economists and historians, to political philosophers and art critics. In short, this book changes everything.
Everyone who has ever considered this topic or the history of economic development must stop what he or she is doing and carefully consider the contents of this volume. Let it sink in for a while. The thesis takes a while to settle in.
Let me add that I have my doubts that other online reviewers have really gone through the book in detail, or read it at all. This is really shabby and pathetic. If you read one book closely this year, make it this one.
Fantastic and greatly needed June 16, 2009
Jorge Besada (miami, FL United States)
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
This book provides a very convincing case against patents. It is full of great history and research. What I especially liked is how in order to show the damage of patents it does a great job discussing the key role that knowledge plays in the economy. Although I do not recall seeing any references to Mises or F.A. Hayek, the book's knowledge/entrepreneurial focus gives it a very "Austrian" feel.
Blows IP out the water December 23, 2009
Brandon K. Brose (St. Louis, MO)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
If you ever needed REAL evidence that copyrights and patent protection aren't necessary, look no further. They provide PLENTY of examples, empirical evidence and reference to studies that prove without a doubt that there's no need for copyright. It's based on economic fallacies! I mean, hell, how many times have you been in basic Econ listening to your stupid professor complain about how, without copyright, "innovation wouldn't happen." Nonsense! It has happened in the past and would continue! The Econ professors and econ books that sing the praises of Intellectual Property (IP) never show any EVIDENCE that IP is needed for innovation.
And how could they?? there is none! Business can do just fine without IP. It's a tool for inventors to keep a monopoly on a particular innovation. It's another stupid gov't distortion of the market. For so many economists to have been bought by this concept is nothing short of ridiculous.
 Intriguing September 25, 2008
Skeptikos (Keene, NH)
18 out of 20 found this review helpful
First, I have not read the book in this form. I read a free version online. There might be some differences; I don't know.
Anyway-
I was pointed to this book while arguing that intellectual property is needed to overcome a public goods problem. After reading it, I've moved from confidently supporting minimal IP rights to tentatively advocating their abolition.
The authors provide plenty of evidence and a few intriguing theoretical arguments to bolster their position.
It definitely won't be the last word on this subject, but it will widen the debate and point it in new directions. Very much worth reading, if you're interested in IP issues.
A Very Good Primer February 26, 2009
John Spiers (Seattle, WA USA)
5 out of 9 found this review helpful
Anyone who has taken a seminar from me knows I attack "Intellectual Property Rights" (IPR) as a bad idea for small business. I draw on what I learned from the highly successful people I worked for long ago, and what has proven true being self-employed myself these last 25 years. As a practical matter far from harming my business, eschewing IPR gives me a competitive advantage when competing on design as opposed to monopoly or price.
I lay out this view in the morning session, and then follow up in the afternoon, while directly addressing contracting designers, with the views of a patent attorney by the name of Stephan Kinsella out of Houston. It was a delight years ago to read his critique from a patent attorney's point of view, with which I concurred. He is more radical (and right) than another lawyer who is somewhat anti-IPR, Lawrence Lessig, the Stanford Law professor. I've developed my arguments over time to the point I was invited to spend an hour making my argument to 17 patent attorneys at a leading IP firm in Seattle last Fall. The IPR lawyers know change is coming, and are working to correct the abuses.
With business and law advancing arguments against IPR, that left academia to round out the condemnation. Washington University professors Michelle Boldrin and David Levine do just that in their book AGAINST INTELLECTUAL MONOPOLY. These are not some flakes being contrarian to get attention, they are regime intellectuals and their book is endorsed by three Nobel Laureates and Lawrence Lessig.
Business in USA is split between the Hamiltonian and Jeffersonian ethics, one loving fascism and the other loving freedom. Obviously with war and economic depression and shortages the Hamiltonians have had the upper hand, so it is very welcome to see a central tool of the bad guys in the USA economy, IPR, being taken apart both by law and academia.
Lawyers practice law and academics practice theory, neither of which seem to be very well informed about how business happens. In some ways their arguments are far more important, since they influence the thinking of so many people. Although it is unstated, AGAINST INTELLECTUAL MONOPOLY proceeds from the theoretical basis laid down by R H Coase as he has laid out in THE FIRM, THE MARKET AND THE LAW. At some point I will review that enormously influential book, but suffice it to say Coase is a Hamiltonian. Essentially, their guiding light is "does policy result in aggregate in a net increase in prosperity.?" By their analysis, the answer is no, IPR is a net deficit. For this conclusion, the book is most welcome, and should be read for the examples that contradict the "pro-IPR" arguments. Jeff Tucker at the Mises Institute has read the book and wrote a series of essays that might be a companion piece that you should read alongside the book.
AGAINST INTELLECTUAL MONOPOLY carefully takes apart the IPR regime as it is, but says nothing about what might be if we were to rid ourselves of it completely. You'll be glad when you put the book down that you've been disabused of the notion that IPR is a good thing, especially the nonsense that we'd have no new medicines without patent monopoly to recover the up front costs. But what should we do? Coase was flexible on policies, because the acid test for his followers is the vague "net increase in wealth." their solution is wishy washy.
That leaves the task of someone writing a book that rejects IPR from a free market point of view, laying out what we would have absent intellectual property rights, and give any startup competitor a road map for crushing those who want to compete by monopoly, doing good while doing well.
I'm working on it.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 8
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