KOL389 | Disenthrall, with Patrick Smith and Larken Rose: The Morality of Copyright “Piracy”

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast: Episode 389. I appeared on Patrick Smith's show Disenthrall last night (July 15, 2022), along with Larken Rose, to discuss the morality of piracy of copyrighted content. Larken had posted a video earlier the same day (see below) regarding the HBO series The Anarchists, where he criticized the libertarians who were gleefully pirating the show (downloading unauthorized copies to watch for free) instead of subscribing to HBO to watch it legally. Larken is against copyright but still thinks it's wrong for people to "freeload" like this--he says it's a "poophead" thing todo. I disagree that it's wrong and mentioned this in a series of Tweets. At one point I suggested that not only is piracy and downloading not wrong, but you could make a case that a libertarian activist author who paywalls his books and doens't put a free PDF of it online is being a jerk, and Larken said something like "I take back my previous comment that you are not a commie!" But when I complimented Keith Knight for releasing his recent book online, (( Keith Knight, ed., The Voluntaryist Handbook: A Collection of Essays, Excerpts, and Quotes (2022; pdf). )) and said that I release all my work online and CC0, Larken sheepishly said he also puts most or a lot of his work online or without copyright. So does that mean he's also "a commie"? After Larken left, Patrick and I discussed another issue, so I am breaking it apart into two segments. This episode includes only the initial discussion about piracy with Larken and Patrick. Larken Rose's books include The Most Dangerous Superstition; see his Amazon author page; some of his books are also available online at z-lib dot org, or https://usa1lib dot vip/s/larken%20rose. Larken Rose video re Piracy: https://youtu.be/gGhT4Ip40RU Youtube of show: https://youtu.be/5c4-nO40IGo Odysee version of show: