Bob Murphy Grants EPJ Rights to Murphy's Blog

Following a back and forth between me and Bob Murphy, in the comments section of a post, on the absurdity of total open source as a defining foundation of all writing, Murphy has granted me the following:

...I hereby give you my full permission to take anything from my blog and do what you will with it. I ask not as a legal matter but as a personal courtesy that you acknowledge in your product that the ideas originally came from my blog.

I have given Murphy 24 hours to reconsider. If he doesn't, I plan to regularly publish selected Murphy posts at EPJ.

This was our exchange on the topic:

RW:As for Jeffrey Tucker, I happen to believe that the anti-intellectual property rights belief he is promoting is the worst thing that has hit the Mises Institute, and LRC, ever. It is anti-individual rights and anti-contract. It is anti-freedom (Why shouldn't I be able to contract in anyway with anyone with any of my writings?) Judging by the comments left here at EPJ, Tucker has picked up quite a following for what is one of the most dangerous ideas to ever be promoted. It is worse than wage price controls, it is worse than inflation, it is probably worse than even war.

To say an individual can create a written work and that anyone else can copy that work without permission is just about the most dangerous thing I can think of.

Maybe Tucker doesn't write for money but I do.

How many more books are you, Bob, going to stay up all hours and write under Tucker's view of writing as belonging to everyone? And if you believe in Tucker's open source view, please in all future writings arrange to send a copy to me with full publishing rights. You are a talented writer and I will make good money off you.

Tucker is not only wrong. He is dangerously wrong and I will prove so in my book. Further, as for his initial rude response to me, I was frankly very shocked. Bob, as you know, I tend to try to read people quickly. And as far as Tucker is concerned, anyone that responds to a sincere email with one word "bullshit" does not score very high in a lot of categories.

RM:Well I don't have the legal authority to do that with books I'm writing for publishers, so you can call me a hypocrite for signing such contracts if you want.

But I hereby give you my full permission to take anything from my blog and do what you will with it. I ask not as a legal matter but as a personal courtesy that you acknowledge in your product that the ideas originally came from my blog.

But if you want to make a million dollars selling my ideas to people, feel free. I hope you do.

Please note that I am not saying that open source can not be used as a marketing method. However, I believe that is all it is, a marketing method. I firmly believe that the rights to written works are the exclusive property of the owner of the works for him to market and grant sub-rights to the property in any fashion he chooses, open source or otherwise.

Obviously, I provide a more detailed response on the book I am writing on the topic.