Yesterday, we were discussing Libertarians & IP (well, Solveig, Adam, Patrick, and I were barricaded behind our respective keyboards hurling emails, but that counts as discussion).

Adam made a sobering point:

[A]lmost every young libertarian I come in contact with these days is equally opposed not just to the sort of new copyright protections that the content providers seek, but even to traditional copyright laws and rules that pre-date the 76 Act. And not all of these people are wacko libertarian-anarchist types. Many respected young libertarian minds are turning against copyright. I don’t believe that the best strategy is to ignore them. You guys should engage them in debate and defend your views before this extreme anti-IP position becomes more mainstream.

Why is this, aside, of course, from their inexplicable failure to fully grasp the import of my book chapter on the topic?

One possible explanation derives from a conversation I had with Don Boudreaux, Chair of the George Mason econ department. He commented that many Libertarians seem focused on the concreteness of physical objects, placing great emphasis on one's ability to possess them in one's own two hands. They distrust the idea of owning an abstraction.

But, he went on, in fact many property rights in physical objects, beginning with real estate, are equally abstract. Easements, leaseholds, life tenancies, remainders, mineral rights and usufructs of all kinds, depend on a substantial capacity for abstraction. Moving on to other kinds of property, many of our current possessions are only electric charges on a hard disk.

Don is clearly right. So there is an odd disconnection between the sophisticaton about the abstractions involved in rights in physical property and the relatively concrete thinking underlying the opposition to intellectual property.

My theory d'jour, and I say theory because I cannot claim to have done the research in Libertarian writing to confirm or refute, is that Libertarians deal with even physical property at a high level of generality. They are not real estate or corporate lawyers who slice and dice physical property into increasingly abstract chunks. So their mental model is the fee simple in Blackacre, and because IP does not fit in that mold they are suspicious of it.

In any event, Adam is right. Something must be done.

ADDENDA (11:15 A.M): For lots more rumination on the Libertarian issue, mostly by Solveig, search this blog for "Libertarians."