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This comic was inspired by a controversy over the Shire Society Declaration.  The construction of the declaration was begun with a work by Libertarian author, L. Neil Smith.  Many changes were made after a lengthy discussion, but they remain quite similar according to a number of people.  I haven’t actually read the original work and I got turned off to the discussion for reasons described here.  I did ultimately find myself in enough agreement with the final product to sign it.

L. Neil Smith feels he has been plagiarized and has even mentioned that he CCed an email complaint to his lawyer, though I have yet to hear of any explicit threats of legal action.  This has resulted in a lengthy discussion of the notion of intellectual property and whether it’s a valid claim of property from a voluntaryist viewpoint.

One of the most eminently reasonable comments I’ve read about this controversy is from the Free Talk Live forum:

Even if you subscribe to the theory that L. Neil’s words and ideas are his even if you buy them from him, he still would not own the application of such, which is what the Shire Society did.

That would be like John Shaw writing a book on making flat screens or film editing and then claiming to own all the flat screens or films that readers may create in the future.

And in fact, it seems like he’d be really proud that someone was inspired enough to want to put his idea into motion in such a bold way.

My own views of intellectual property are a bit nuanced.  I definitely don’t believe anyone is entitled to damages or restitution because someone copied, not stole, your shit.  In that sense, I’m completely anti-IP.  On the other hand, I believe in the notion of IP in the sense that you can own an idea to the extent that you can “protect it” without violence.  You can either keep it secret or you can do a good enough job of branding it or at least date-stamping it so others will have difficulty claiming it as their own.  That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be able to make money off of copies but it might help you to counter that and make the money yourself in a peaceful manner.  I’m also a big fan of people expanding on ideas and making them better.  I think claims of damages for copying are unreasonable and they impede that creative process which many consumers stand to benefit from.  I’m also a big fan of reverse-engineering actual physical products and making your own versions of them, possibly improved or just at a lower price.  Patents are bullshit.  This is something else that consumers stand to benefit greatly from.

The work above is actually an original work by Davi Barker.  Sure, he constructed it with slightly modified pieces of my comics, but it’s an original work that I feel he deserves credit for creating.  My comics are instantly reproducible and therefore not at all scarce.  It’s my responsibility to figure out how to make money from such a product.  I do feel I deserve the common courtesy of being given credit for the building blocks of it, but that doesn’t imply damages or restitution of any sort, and he did give me credit.  He was able to construct his comic without doing any damage to me or my property whatsoever.  It seems absurd to claim “damages”.  Such a claim relies on the absurd notion that you are entitled to make money off your works.  In fact, because he did provide such an obvious credit to the building blocks of his work, his comic will most likely act as free promotion of my works!  Why should I complain about that?

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This pretty well describes my experience at The Porcupine Freedom Festival last year.  I don’t have the excuse of not knowing about the events though.  I had several I was looking forward to attending but I was having such a good time just hanging out and enjoying the nice camping experience with great people that I lost track 0f time and missed all or some of most of what I had planned to attend.  I was even late for an event I was supposed to speak at!  I felt so bad.  Sorry, Carla!  This year I will be careful not to have so much fun that I completely lose track of what day and what time it is.

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The P is for “PARTY”!

This year’s is shaping up to be the biggest ever. Campsites are going fast so register and reserve your site soon.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Video Summary: I was found guilty as I expected. I asked the officer if he had any evidence I had harmed anyone.

Answer: “No”.

“No further questions.”

It was very short. If you want them to stop using tickets as a source of revenue–

Challenge EVERY SINGLE TICKET in court!

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The original intent was to get this out on President’s Day but it snuck up on me. Then I thought I’d do it for Abraham Lincoln’s birthday which I’ve incorrectly believed to be the 22nd for years now. Yes, that’s Washington’s birthday. I know that now. I’m already sufficiently embarrassed but go ahead and make fun of me for it in the comments. Anyway, it doesn’t matter because I didn’t quite finish it yesterday before I had to take off for some volunteer work I had been scheduled for. So here it is late enough to seem completely off topic.

Excerpts from Lincoln’s first Inaugural Address–
(Read On…)

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Anarkitty gives us a lesson in personal hygiene. My cat loves to get into this position when guests are gathered all around.

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For more info on the subject this comic was inspired by, visit the Anarchy In Your Head blog where you can watch video of the assault as well as a video showing how you can help this injured officer.

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I think someone may have suggested the notion of having an Invisible Hand of the Market character opposing the Iron Fist of the State but if so, I no longer recall who. I apologize for not crediting you, if so.

My new computer had a faulty motherboard which I had to send back. The replacement arrived Monday and I finally got a chance to reassemble the computer including prying the CPU off the heat sink, cleaning all the gook off it, and putting new gook on it (to conduct heat). I hate that there was such a long delay between comics. There is more work to do on it, but at least it’s functional enough to make comics for now.