Against Intellectual Monopoly dares step out front, on a topic very dear to our hearts, to prove that "the great role of patents in giving us modern software is unadulterated fantasy." And they show this by reviewing the history of software innovation and its present workings. Neither Google nor YouTube nor any other driving force is using patents to retain competitive advantage, and those who do collect patents mostly do it in order to avoid patent trolls, e.g. those who would patent a technology already in use in order to possess and restrict its use.

Leonard E. Read, the founder of the Foundation for Economic Education in 1946, is often heralded for his role in kick-starting the libertarian movement after World War II. The sons of FEE went on to do great good for the world, and FEE is often called the father of all libertarian think tanks – institutions that work outside official academia to advance radical ideas.

He did more than merely sponsor lectures and publish. As a matter of fact, others were doing the same. So far as I know, no one has yet noticed that he used a secret weapon in his struggle, something that made him truly different and unusually effective. He eschewed the use of exclusive copyright.

Fed up with the patent craze, The Economist Magazine wrote the following in a main editorial: "The granting of patents 'inflames cupidity', excites fraud, stimulates men to run after schemes that may enable them to levy a tax on the public, begets disputes and quarrels betwixt inventors, provokes endless lawsuits … The principle of the law from which such consequences flow cannot be just."

It's not in current issue. That was published in 1851, but every word of it remains true today. It was once conventional wisdom among economists that state-granted monopolies were as bad as mercantilism. But in the meantime, sometime after the middle of the 20^th century, the conventional wisdom became confused.

How strange this "intellectual property" issue is. In normal life, we tend to (or should) credit enterprise and markets for most innovations that surround us. I'm typing on a system here that includes products for several dozens different creative companies, with hardware and software and applications of all sorts stitched together through some miracle we call the coordinative power of the market. No news in that, I suppose. Ho hum.

But let the subject of IP come up, and most people will say that we only have this stuff thanks to IP. Think of the shift here. On the one hand, we credit markets. On the other hand, we credit monopoly. Both can't be true. Or if both are true, we have a serious theoretical tangle to unravel. So which is true?

As I think more about "intellectual property" in the form of patents and copyrights, it seems that the implications for social theory are profound. The behavior targeted and slaughtered by IP is one that provides a fuel for all social and economic development: imitation or emulation.

(Before I go on, I want to emphatically point to my personal debt to Michele Boldrin and David Levine's Against Intellectual Monopoly, from which everything in this article is derived.)

In the German-speaking world of art in the 18^th and 19^th century, imitation by composers was considered to be the greatest tribute. When Bach would write an elaboration of Buxtehude, it was seen as a wonderful gift to Buxtehude's legacy and memory. When Mahler would turn a phrase by Brahms, or re-orchestrate a Beethoven symphony, it was the tribute of one master to another. So it is in literature and economics.

When an author signs a publication contract, insofar as it contains strict and traditional copyright notices, he is pretty much signing his life away. It used to be that the publisher would maintain control only so long as the book is in print. Today, with digital printing, this means forever: your lifetime plus 70 years.

During this time, you can't even quote significant portions of your own writing without permission from the publisher, and you could find yourself paying the publisher for the rights. You can't read your own book aloud and sell the results. You certainly can't give a journal a chapter.

You could try to be sneaky and change the text a bit, right? Wrong. They've thought of that. You will own and control new matter but the old matter is still the private possession of The Man.