Social Science Research Council

The massive fortification of intellectual property is one of the stunning success stories of the neoliberal project. It has been the primary method deployed to transmute the marketplace of ideas from a dream scenario into quotidian reality. The dogma that no one would think, or at least convey their thoughts to others, unless they somehow received market recompense for their labors, is a tremendous slander on the history of science and culture, but nevertheless has carried the day to become folk wisdom in the neoteric order. Students have to be taught not to ‘steal’ digital music files, even though within their lifetimes making copies of music had been treated as fair use under copyright law. Likewise, students have to be taught not to ‘steal’ research that they may have carried out themselves, unless they have secured permissions from everyone from their thesis advisor to their university technology transfer office. Since the marketplace is the greatest information processor known to humankind, there is no way that a few extra property rights imposed here and there might actually throttle the further production of knowledge and culture.