Okay, hey, this is Stefan can sell I'm doing part three of my tutorial and the number of intrepid. People tuning in has declined from week to week, which shows how fascinating IP law is but still I thought it would be good to get this recorded for future use. This will probably be can sell on Liberty episode. 412 312 wherever you are. Can sell IP law tutorial part three. So in the earlier episodes I talked about just a general overview of what IP law is. And then patents and lecture one and then number two I talked about copyright. And today I'd like to talk about the remaining types of IP I'm not going to go through them exhaustively, because it would be tedious and that's not really the point but it's just to kind of give people a vocabulary for distinguishing between types of IP law. And so, as I mentioned in previous lectures I'm on slide one right now I'm going to go to slide to. I'll talk about slide to in a second, but as I mentioned in the last lectures, there are like four main types of so called intellectual property that's patents, which has to do with inventions copyright which has to do with creative or artistic works. And then there's trademark and trade secret and then there are other subsidiary types that are pretty new inventions, not inventions, pretty new legal innovations in the last 50 years. So, let's talk about trademark next but before that I had a couple of questions between the last talk and today. I wanted to mention something I think I talked on this briefly touched on this before. I tried to emphasize that all IP law is domestic, just like all regular laws domestic so if you own a home in America or Australia or Poland, then the local domestic law which in all the law we call that municipal law is what governs your property rights say in your home.  So all rights in the sense or domestic or, or, or municipal or local. In the sense of tangible resources like your body or a car or a house. It, it, it wouldn't make a difference about as to whether this right was recognized internationally or domestically because there's only one, you know, you only want on one car, or one body or one house.  But when it comes to international search intellectual property, then we get to the sort of weird situation where. So you have people accusing China of violating American or Western IP rights. So they'll say that China steals IP. Now, they're just technically legally wrong about this because China. China as a country or Chinese companies can only violate Chinese law they can't violate. There is no international law of copyright or patent. There are international treaties that China and other countries have signed on to and these treaties require these countries to implement in their national legal systems in their municipal law. And trade mark law, which adheres to minimum standards and most of them do this like they sign on to the burn convention of the Madrid convention of the Paris convention, the Paris cooperation, the patent cooperation treaty, or the Paris convention, or or GATT, and they comply with it by they by enacting local laws and then they enforce those laws in their courts. No countries laws are perfectly enforced in any realm in murder or, or trespass or, or IP infringement. But China has an IP law America has an IP law Europe European countries have IP laws, and they all enforce them to varying degrees of efficiency in their own in their own government courts. So it's just wrong to say China steals Western IP it's like literally impossible. At most you could accuse them of not having sufficient IP laws, but they do because they're in compliance with the Bayne treaties. Or you could say that they don't they don't enforce their laws as efficiently as the Western countries do but you know what's the difference between 70% and 62% enforcement. They're all inefficient and they're all just different ways that inefficient government courts enforce their, and their legal systems enforce their state laws. So, now, someone had a question. I had mentioned that since the United States exceeded to the burn convention in the 1980s and since West other Western countries and most countries in the world now are parties to the burn convention that you no longer need what's called copyright formalities to have a copyright, which means you don't have to put a copyright notice on the work and you don't need to register the copyright in the in the national copyright. Excuse me agency in your country. And someone said, I read somewhere that you need to register the copyright in America before you file a lawsuit. Is that correct and yes that is correct and that doesn't contradict what I said to have an enforceable copyright you don't need to register it. You have a copyright from the moment that you fix the original work of expression in a medium. As soon as you write it down basically you don't even have to make it public. Excuse me I'm copying, I'm coughing here. You don't have to make it public. That is you don't have to publish it it can be secret to be private manuscript might be harder to prove then but theoretically, you know, you have a copyright as soon as you fix it in a medium of expression, a tangible medium of expression. And you don't need a copyright notice anymore, and you don't need to register it now before it as a technical matter in in the American system and I'm not sure how the other countries legal systems work. But before you file a lawsuit in federal district court in the United States accusing someone of copyright infringement. You do need to file a copyright registration in the copyright office, the Library of Congress and that takes like $25 or something is very cheap and simple just a form. It's easy it's just formality. It's sort of like before you sue someone you have to send them notice, or something like that it's just a formality You do have to register copyright in the United States before you file a lawsuit, but you don't have to have a registration, or you don't have to file a lawsuit to threaten someone and to extract royalties from them, which is the predominant way that copyright is used or to send a copyright takedown notice to YouTube and make them take down a video something like that. Okay. Now, I'm going to go to slide three now. Again, this this tutorial series I've talked a lot and other lectures and and and writings about the legitimacy of patent and copyright and other types of IP law from a libertarian and economic point of view. In this tutorial series I just want people to understand what the IP law with the light with the laws are and I've already talked about patents which cover inventions and copyrights which cover creative works. And I've already mentioned that the patents, the problem patented copyright of the two big ones that's why I mentioned them first they're the ones that do the most damage. They have the most attention and they're the classical types of IP. And they both originate statute and patents distort and impede technological innovation. They impoverish the human race that's why I focus on them. That's why we don't live in the Jetsons world, or as much of a Jetsons world as we could, and copyright distorts culture and freedom of expression and the press and threatens internet freedom. And it's increasingly copyright is increasingly used to, to impede practical freedoms like the ability to repair your, your, your own property like an iPhone or a tablet or a computer or a tractor or a car, because there they have. They have software in them now in the form of ROM or chips or, or, or some kind of little computer in them, which, and the software is covered by copyright and so the companies that sell these products use their ownership of the copyright to restrict what you can do with them which, you know, makes the products less valuable to you because now you have to pay money to official licensed retailer or someone to repair it or something like that. You see how copyright is also harmful in the practical space. All right, slide for already talked about types of IP copyright and patent of the two main types and in the United States they're both federal or national. And there is no state version of that because the versions of state law that did exist before the United States Constitution was ratified in 1789 were basically preempted, either by the Constitution in 1789 or by the copyright and patent acts of 1790 does someone have a question sorry. Okay. Now the other two types would be trademark. Now trademark is a state and federal hybrid system which I'll get into in a minute and trade secret those are the big four types, which is mostly state although there's federal aspects. And then the other specialty types are both hold designs, which is sort of a type of copyright semiconductor mask work protection, which came about in the 80s, which was a special congressional law passed in the United States to protect the semiconductor industry because it originated here and you had Texas instruments and IBM and Intel and these kind of companies. And the database rights in some countries, which was needed because in some countries, the courts would hold that copyright doesn't extend to databases because copyright only extends to original creative expressions, and the database is just a collection of facts. Even despite how much, no matter how much time it took to assemble the facts, like let's say you made a map of the earth, or database of every, you know, phone book something like that is very useful takes a lot of effort to do it but there's really nothing creative about it you're just assembling facts. So copyright doesn't apply to that in every jurisdiction so database rights were created to handle that in some countries I think the United States has never done that yet. So database rights are sort of related to copyright but it has to do with your in the the inalienable rights of the creator of an artistic work to be recognized as the creator, like that's attribution or credit, and also to prevent it from being destroyed later, like a mural or something like that on a building or on a refrigerator or whatever. So special protections as I mentioned in previous lectures like newspaper, like, you know, special government seals like the National Security Agency seal or the CIA seal.  And then there are proposed rights in different countries for sort of a quasi intellectual property right in newspaper headlines are linking to them, or fashion designs I believe that Canada is freaking out right now because Facebook is threatening to block Facebook from Facebook's feeds. If Canada's new law is going to force Facebook to pay a fee to two companies whose headlines it links to or something like that so that's the dimensions of these, and then defamation which is not usually considered to be a type of IP right I'm going to go into this later and explain why I think it should be and why it's it's illegitimate just like all forms of IPR. Okay, but so today I'm going to talk about trademark trade secret and defamation of we have time. I'm going to slide five now. Okay, trademark. We've talked about patents, which have to do with inventions practical devices or processes copyright which is creator artistic works like a novel or a painting or a movie. And by the way, there's something in America we use the term and intellectual property to refer to all these types of rights, because they all have to do with legal protections for creations of the intellect things that are not tangible, or plural material things like boats or cars or land or sticks or dogs or cows. But intangible things that are the product of the mind. And one of the things that in Europe, the term industrial property is sometimes used but I think it doesn't cover copyright because that's created it covers the patent and trademark and maybe trade secrets because they have a sort of industrial use. But I think the term is blurry and maybe it includes copyright now because it's come to be seen as a rough European substitute for the American term. So industrial, industrial property or intellectual property anyway they all cover all these types of things. Copyright is one of them to usually a trademark, we're all used to trade marks the trademark is a mark, I mean the word is in there the word mark it's a symbol, or a name or a word or a device or something used by a person or a company to identify the source of goods or services. Okay, so you know you give you give your product or your company or your brand a name or a mark to distinguish it from the ones from other companies. So consumers can tell the difference, right. And so you can stand apart and so and it goes along with your reputation. So it lets consumers make decisions and it allows the companies to own these trademarks. To to to profit off of their reputations right that's the that's the idea behind it okay slide six. In the US in 1995 the United States Supreme Court, in the quality case, you know, kind of explain the whole purpose of trademark law it's being to prevent others from copying a source identifying mark to reduce the customers cost of shopping and making decisions to quickly prevent the potential customer that the item with the mark is made by the same producer as others similarly marked in the past. And to help the producer we, you know reap their wards of building up a reputation for quality in that given product line. Okay, so that's the purpose of trademarks. I had some different ways of using trademarks for brand names or for slogans or for logos. And if you're on slide seven some examples like Coca Cola, which is a wordmark, that's just Coca Cola is the, the wordmark which identifies products made by the brand of the Coca Cola company. And then their slogan, it's the real thing that's trademarked. And then you can have a logo like they're always Coca Cola thing or even the shape of their bottle right. You can have other things too like sounds or colors, you know, like this pink color for some kind of installation for your attic, or maybe the yellow color for a certain type of sweetener or the pink color for a packet of sweetener, or blue for another type you know so you have sense and smells, motions, holograms, configurations or shapes like, like the Coca Cola bottle shape, which is somewhat functional but somewhat identifies the Coca Cola brand name I gave and slide eight I give some other examples, the Apple the Apple symbol the Coca Cola wordmark, stylized, not just the words themselves with the way it's, it's you know, sort of the typography, Amazon's logo Google Samsung McDonald's Microsoft the Nike swoosh forward ignore USB to that's where I copied this from one of their slides. Okay, and a recent a recent trademark dispute was just recently. And then slide nine. There's a famous guitar brand called Gibson and they have something called the flying V. You see the picture at the bottom here the flying V is the top of the bottom of the bottom when I forgot what it's called. And then a company called Dean made similar shaped guitars and of course they were sued by Gibson for trademark infringement, even though they were making an actual functional guitar. The reason is that you can't sell a guitar with that shape to the bottom part. If it because it would make people think it's a Gibson or something like that so. Anyway, now in the United States as I mentioned earlier, patent and copyright or both federal laws, they're national and in most countries are national most countries have a unified national system anyway so in most countries all these laws are national. There are systems like the United States where the private laws largely made by the states and not the federal government. There are certain fields of law where the federal government has dominance or has preempted the field. So for example, in any trust law in the United States or in tax law maybe. There's no federal law there's no, there's no, there's no, well I don't know if there's state antitrust law but anyway the federal antitrust law would, would dominate. Let me let this guy in. And that's that's what's happened with patent and copyright because there is the clause in the Constitution which I mentioned earlier, which I repeat here article one section eight clause eight it grants to Congress, the power to promote the progress which means the, the practical knowledges, and the useful arts which meant creative works. I actually got the backwards science met the creative creative works of novelist and painters and people like that, and useful artists inventions. So anyway, the point is patent and copyright. The acts in 1790 passed by the Congress were were authorized by the Constitution, and that's why those are federal or national fields. Now, in the 50s up until the 1950s in the United States, trademark law was mostly a state based thing because it was sort of like, you know, laws against murder, marriage laws, divorce laws community property law. Those are all handled by the states, every state like in all all the 50 states in America had their own little independent systems mostly common law based but you know, it was the private law comes from the states. The feds only can interfere in the areas are given permission to do that. So trademark law was one of those just like defamation law and trade secret law these are all state based laws. And they all came from the common law of England. And the states were the ones that in the United States when they succeeded from England and went from being colonies, embodying the common law in their, in their colony courts to becoming states with their state courts. They kept the common law tradition alive, and they kept the private law of property and crime and torts and, you know, things like that including defamation and trademark and trade secret. So that's why these things were state laws. Well, there was a movement towards to make the law national and uniform across the country in the 50s. And just like patent and copyright had already been nationalized in 1790, because of the constitutional grant, but there was no constitutional grant for the Congress to enact trademark law. So instead, the Congress relied upon the commerce clause power which they've relied upon many, many, many times in the last 100 plus years to enact laws where there was no express authority given to them. No power enumerated to enact a given law by saying that well under article one section eight clause three Congress has the power to regulate commerce. Okay, so they started using this in the 1930s after the Great Depression to regulate like they're the famous case was what could be Philburn. One of Roosevelt's laws said that you know, we're trying to control prices by limiting production of weed or something like that. So they made it illegal for someone to have a farm and to grow wheat on his own farm. And he sued saying this violates my property rights and the federal government has no authority to do this and the court upheld the law in Wicked v. Philburn saying that the commerce clause gives power Congress the power to regulate commerce. Okay, this, this power was only meant to basically establish a free market, a free trade union within the United States which is one reason we, the United States became prosperous is because we had this vast, you know, free trade union among the states. And that's what the commerce clause was meant to do and Congress could make the trade regular regulated make sure like things are being passed fairly between the states but basically it established a free trade zone. But Congress in the court seized upon this grant of power to say that. Well that means Congress can do pass any law that affects commerce that any law that regulates any activity of any American company or a citizen that affects commerce that goes between between states and if someone grows wheat on their own farm, then they don't have to buy wheat to feed their own animals. And if they don't have to buy wheat, some of that wheat would come from producers and other states which would cross state borders, which would be interstate commerce so therefore Congress has the power to make it illegal for you to grow wheat on your own farm which is obviously ridiculous but the point is, the federal government has stretched that commerce clause to become virtually a general authorization of power, which is how they enacted the Lanham Act which was the federal act, giving a federal form to trademark law in the United States. But because it wasn't as clean or clear as the authorization for copyright and patent. They didn't preempt or get rid of state trademarks so they both exist now so we now only have this two tier system. And it's like we do with sec security regulations we have what's called the blue sky laws in the United States where every state has their own regulations about securities, and then the sec and the federal government regulates them as well so of course you just have to hire lawyers who can do both and so you pay twice the fees and lawyers get get rich off the results. So that's the same thing with trademarks so if someone wants a trademark and they're in Texas or California or Colorado or wherever they are, you know, they hire an attorney and the attorney does a federal trademark registration, and a state trademark registration. Okay, so anyway, that's just that's just the land land, we're on slide 11 now. Okay, so according to the original common law in England and in the United States states, common laws arise just automatically sort of like copyrights do. That's automatically because of the copyright act by virtue of compliance with the burning convention which says that there are no formalities and they are right. And those are just statutory but it's automatic because of the statute. Common law rights in trademarks arose automatically automatically by use just if you start using a work, a name in public to identify you're good, then you have a trademark in and then there are certain legal remedies the courts came up with for you to enforce your trademark. Nowadays, in most states, you can also register like an official registration procedure, just like in the old days you could get married with with with a procedure, or you could have what's called a common law marriage is if you hold yourself out as married you're considered married, but most people to be safe they use a statutory marriage form which the government says if you use this forum that counts just like a power of attorney. There's something called a statutory durable power of attorney whenever the legislature gets involved and they pass a law saying, you do it the old way which is recognized by custom in the courts in the common law but here's an official way that we will bless for sure. Lawyers and people tend to gravitate towards that because this is it's safer, because you know that it's going to work in the courts because no one can deny it then. And that's what happens with trademark so in the United States today if you want to trademark what you do is you do a trademark search in the federal database usually. And if it looks like there's no one using the same mark then you file a register, you file a trademark registration in both your local state and federally so you have sort of to now federally. In the United States, the trademark office is maintained by the US PTO United States patented trademark office which handles the patent system and the trademark system copyrights are handled for some reason by the Library of Congresses of the Commerce Department. Then you can use your filing in a given country like United States or Brazil or Poland or wherever. And then you can take that and you can file in other countries based upon this treaty call the Madrid, the Madrid system treaty. So, same thing with the burn convention for copyrights or the Paris Convention or the patent operation treaty for patents. There's ways to take your local filings and extended to other countries in the world. Okay. Now, when you have a trademark. What this means is that you are so you're said to be is the company that uses the mark to identify their, their brands or their company or their goods and services in commerce. They're said to be the owner or the holder of the trademark. And the rights they have is the right to prevent other companies from using the mark in a way that would be likely to confuse consumers. Now think about that. People that usually object to my criticism of trademark law would say something like well. So you're in favor of consumers being defrauded. So the presumption of that criticism or that objection is that trademark law is the purpose of trademark law is to stop consumer fraud. But it's not as they just said the trademark law doesn't say you can't defraud consumers. So trademark law says that you can't use my mark. If it's likely to confuse consumers. Okay, so the first thing is confusion is not clear. I don't even know what confusion means to be honest it's, it's not fraud, because fraud has a clear meaning in the law and by the way we already have fraud law. So for people to say we need trademark to stop consumer fraud. Well, why can't fraud law do it. We already have fraud law and we have contract law. So trademark law obviously does something different and it does. So it stops consumer confusion. Okay, and number one you don't have to, and you don't have to prove consumer confusion. You have to prove likelihood of it. Okay, so number one we're not approving fraud and we're not proving that there is fraud. We're only proving confusion and we're not proving that there is confusion we're proving there's a likelihood of it. The third problem is that the person who files a lawsuit the plaintiff is the trademark holder it's not the defrauded or confused consumer. Because there might not be a confused consumer like this you, if you only have to show likelihood of confusion. Well, for a given consumer either they're confused or they're not so if you can show proof of that they're confused. So instead of that to be a lesser standard than fraud. Okay, so the whole thing is, is not a fraud standard it's likelihood of consumer confusion. And the problem with this is that. So let me give an example. We just Greg just joined. So, as an example. Someone buys a knock off Rolex watch for $20 from the back of a van from some guy on the street in New York City, their own vacation there and they say, Hey, I want to buy a fake Rolex watch. Now everybody knows that real Rolex has cost 2000 10,000 20,000 $50,000 or they're crazy right. No one in the world is buying a Rolex watch for $20 and believing that it's a really a Rolex watch they know that they're getting a fake. They're no they're getting a knock off and they want the knock off because they won't be able to afford a real one. So that consumer is not defrauded. And they're not confused. There's no fraud at all. And yet Rolex would be able to go to court and say that, well, we have a competitor selling a watch that says Rolex.  And so we're going to get a court injunction to stop that. And we're going to seize all these fake relaxes and destroy them with a steamroller and a big demonstration and Times Square and have it on CNN and everyone's going to run scared and we're going to stop competition that way. That's all fine and well and good but that's not has nothing to do with fraud or even consumer confusion. Okay, so that's the main problem with trademark. Sorry. Can I ask a question. Yeah, go ahead, Matt. So, would you relate that to the idea of standing, like maybe in this case the company suing another company. It's kind of dubious whether they would have standing in a normal situation but by trademark law they're given standing. Absolutely. And if we're talking about a fraud lawsuit. It's not just standing. I mean, it's the person with the actual injury is the defrauded consumer. So it would be like if I went to a fake McDonald's expecting I was going to get a McDonald's. I mean, you're not going to have a lawsuit for a $5 hamburger. So let's imagine I hired this McDonald's restaurant down the block to cater my son's birthday party.   Okay, I might have a breach of contract claim against them or maybe a fraud claim. So I would be able to sue them in some kind of court to redress my the damages because they defrauded me. And by the way, this is why this thing is so impractical because these companies would be sued and they would go out of business they wouldn't be able to get to the first place because they wouldn't be able to make it. But anyway, let's the point is, the defrauded consumer is the one with the actual injury.  But this is what happened to trademark lawsuit the trademark law gives the right to sue to the holder of the trademark. I have a quote here from a fairly mainstream article on page slides 12. You know there's a guy he's kind of trying to sort out like what's the nature of trademarks and he kind of repeats in legal language what I said earlier like people think it's about the consumer deception but it's kind of only ambiguously related to that because you don't have to show deception. You only have to show, or even fraudulent misrepresentation only have to show, you know, likelihood of confusion, and also discoveries by the third party. So yeah, so the trademark law gives standing as you could call it to the holder of the trademark, which doesn't which is not being defrauded or even confused. In fact, if they weren't confused. If they were confused, they wouldn't be able to file the lawsuit the fact that they're filing the lawsuit knows shows that they're not confused they know the difference. But, but not only is it like wrong to give them standing but it actually it takes away the rights of the consumer who is defrauded like it's transferring their right to sue. You know, in most private law systems, if if I'm harmed by someone's tort or offense and I have the right to sue them. Let's say I have a potential million dollar claim against someone but I don't have time to wait. Maybe I'm 95 years old and I don't have time to wait. I might sell that right to another company who would collect for me on their behalf. Maybe I'll sell it for 67 cents on the dollar, like they'll give me $600,000 and then they take the right to sue and they, you know, they take the risk then that they're going to either get a million or nothing. But the point is, I would have this this economic right this right to sue. And I can use it, I can get rid of it, I can compromise with it, I can take it to court, I can sell it to someone else. But trademark law basically takes that right away from the defrauded consumer, and it gives it to another company. So it's a taking a property from the from the actual victimized person. Well, a lot of defenders of trademark say that well that's the most efficient way to do it like the most efficient way it's like a class action idea the most efficient way to have trademark rights enforced is to take it away from the consumers who are actually victimized, and give it to the one company who has the financial incentive to pursue it. Well, I don't know, you can get I you can give the give the financial incentive to me, give everything to cancella I'll file lots of lawsuits I'll make a billion dollars like the whole thing is totally unjust and ridiculous. Anyway, does that answer your question. Yes, thank you. Okay. 13 I've already gone through this. All right, so that's trademarks. Any remaining questions about trademarks otherwise I'll turn to trade secret. Yeah, real quick. You explained that with the Rolex example that the company would be able to seize those, you know knockoffs with the company be able to seize those from people who bought them as well. I'm not 100% sure but I think technically they could but as a practical matter, they go after the big targets right so they go after the the non sympathetic victims like you know the shady, the shady knockoff companies. They're not going to go after you know there might be 1000 people in the country or 10,000 people walking around with it with a fake Rolex. I think theoretically they could like you know you could file 10,000 lawsuits against you know some guy walking around Las Vegas with a fake Rolex watch trying to pick up hot chicks. Yes, I just, I think that they focus on the big fish. And you're saying that a. Imagine a person tried to make a claim that they bought this Rolex, you know maybe they didn't buy it out of the back of a truck maybe they went to a jewelry shop set up somewhere. And then maybe they later claim Oh I found out this wasn't real. I guess that would be a normal fraud case against the knockoff company and not a trademark violation. Actually, I mean, my view is, you would have a contract claim, or maybe a fraud claim based upon the company the person you bought it from. So if the pawn shop. Mr represents it, it says this is a real Rolex, and you buy from them, then you have a claim against him either a contract claim, if it was sort of an honest mistake or a fraud claim if they were like trying to deceive you.    Like the point is lying is not a crime. Being deceptive is not a crime it has to be an act of fraud and an act of fraud means using deceptive communication as a way to obtain possession of someone else's own resource. And genuine or informed consent that's really what fraud is. But mere dishonesty or puffing or lying is just a part of life, you know. Mm hmm. Okay. Let's go to trade secrets now and trade secret is a is a weird type of law. It does have roots in the common law like trademark does. At first glance, you might have someone saying in solo, how could you libertarians oppose trade secrets what's wrong with keeping a secret. I agree, but do you need a law that says you have a right to keep something secret. No, all you need is a reasonable legal system which gives everyone property rights in the autonomy of their bodies. In other words, if, if, if I'm free from compulsion or aggression, then I can keep whatever secrets I want. You know, it's just like if I own a computer or if I own a home, then I don't need a separate right saying I have a right to keep a piece of paper with words on it in my home that like that's covered already by the fact that I own the home. Like, once I own, once I have secure ownership of a home and privacy within that home, I can do whatever I want within it. I can, I can, I can walk around naked. I can have a tanning salon. You know, I can, I can, I can do meditation. I don't need special rights for all these things I can do with the thing that I own, which is my body and my resources. Right. And by the same token. If I have property rights in my body, which means I'm free from compulsion, no one can put a gun to my head and say can sell a tell us the secret. You know, tell us your theory of gravity or whatever my or tell us the plot of the novel you've been thinking of in the back of your head for 10 years. And I can keep anything I want secret. It's not a property, right? It's just a practical consequence of the fact that I have the ability to control what I do with my own body and my own property. So a trade secret just means that you have a company, either an individual merchant or, you know, a larger company, which has certain things that it does which are not generally well known and widely known. They're proprietary to the company, you know, Coca Cola may have a certain formula for its beverage. Some chemical company might have a certain proprietary process of mixing these chemicals to make gasoline. And this technique or process may not be patentable, because it may be old. But but knowing it is useful and keeping it secret is useful because it gives them a competitive advantage over someone else. So that's what a trade secret is a trade secret is information that you have that is not public widely known publicly, and that knowing it and having it be secret gives you a competitive advantage over other people. There's lots of things like that. This is what life is like for private people and for companies, right? So that's what the trade secret is. Anyway, in the United States trade secrets are governed, again by state law, and most states have adopted this, the definition given by this uniform trade secret act proposal. I think 48 states plus DC and other things so so as most of the country. It's not federal there is a federal law which makes it criminal to try to get people's trade secrets so there could be criminal penalties. But anyway, if you look at the definition here, so it's this information, right, which gives you an advantage, which it's a trade secret if the owner takes reasonable measures to keep it secret. And then you derive value from not being known to people in other words, you get some advantage. Now what's interesting is that it's something you take reasonable measures to keep secret doesn't say the secret. But that's why, for example, if, if, if Apple is making iPhone number 17 right, and it's got some new feature, and only Apple knows what that's going to be or only Apple knows how to make it or they know the internal feature or something or the composition something like that. That information is valuable to them because they can use it to make the iPhone 17. It's, it's has something to do with making the product be what it is and be valuable, and keeping it secret is an advantage because it makes it harder for other people other companies to duplicate that feature right away, or ever, and they're competing, you know, Android phones or whatever right so that's a trade secret. And, and, and if some employee, or there's some mistake, and the secret sleep slips out like let's say the Coca Cola secret formula, or the KFC lebs and herbs and spices were leaked tomorrow. At a certain point they're no longer a secret they're publicly known so if something is publicly known it cannot be a trade secret because it's not a secret. But as long as it's still relatively secret and like only the original company knows it and maybe a few other people know it on the outside. Then, as long as you've made a reasonable effort to keep it secret. Then you can go to a court and say, I had this trade secret in this information. Here's my proof that I, I'm the owner of the trade secret and that it's a secret still because it's not widely known but I, we did have a company that's guessed it or that we had an employee that left and he went to a competitor, and he's told this competitor how to make this iPhone feature, but they haven't leaked it publicly yet. They can get a court order and injunction to the third party, not to use the information. That's the, that's the essential libertarian problem trade secret law. It's not that you can keep things secret. Anyone's entitled to keep things secret, but trade secret law says if you try to keep something secret, and if you fail, and it starts to be leaked, then you can go to court and get an order to keep it from being leaked further, even if that order is is against third parties. So I would have little problem if the order was against an employee who had left you and the employee was violating his, his contract with you, which where he said he would keep a secret. But once he banks the information public to a third party that third party is in no privative contract with you. So that's ultimately the problem trade secret law. I've got some examples here on slide 15. But the federal aspect is called the Economic Espionage Act of 1996, which means that if you steal trade secrets, it's actually a criminal offense, there could be federal prison time. Yeah, there's some examples where like the FBI or some law enforcement has like raided people's like I think some guy lost some Apple employee left that iPhone for on a bar stool sometime one time and some guy picked it up and found it to go back to his apartment and took pictures of it and put it online and then Apple sent the police to his apartment to take it from which I think they have the right to take the phone back because they own the phone. They don't have the right to tell them not to use information that he gleaned from looking at the phone that they left that their employee left in public, which is what trade secret law would allow. All right, we'll go on to other things next but any any questions about trade secrets before we move on. Since that's the fourth type of IP law and probably the most boring of those four. And we have no questions and then the remaining or even more boring, like both hold design semi different I'll just skip over those unless anyone has any questions but just keep in mind, these are all special types of laws and other countries have variations of this. I'm not aware of any international treaties. Beyond the first three patent copyright and trademark. I'm not aware of any international treaties, requiring countries to have equivalents of trade secret both hold designs, mass work database rights, moral rights, things like that. Although some of the gap and why both things may have provisions about that and some of the American bilateral investment treaties may have requirements requiring their partners to have something like this I'm not sure. I think most countries have all this anyway so that's the problem. Quick question.  Do you think stolen valor would fall under intellectual property. Um, that's a good question. I think you, I, to the extent that there are laws about it which I think there are some laws that have something to do with it. I think you could probably characterize it as a type of IP. Again, to the extent that you use stolen valor. And by the way I think this means like pretending you are like a warrior and the veteran or something like that and getting special favors or treatment or status because of that. Again, to the extent that you're doing something legally wrong is because it's fraud, right, and if it's fraud then that should be covered by fraud law. So that would not be a bad look if you stress these, if you stress my concept. If you stress the idea of IP broadly enough, almost every bad estate law will be viewed as a type of IP. So for example, I characterize patent and trademark law as negative servitudes or negative easements because it gives the holder of the of the IP right, a negative veto right over how other people use their resource their property. So like a patent can Apple's patent lets them tell Samsung or Motorola you can't make a phone with your factory and your materials shape like this, right or a copyright, let's the copyright holder tell another publisher, you can't use your book and your ink to make a book with this shape with this arrangement of words on it. So that's a negative servitude. And if you stress that concept far enough you could say that like, you know, all the bad laws like the drug war, or, or, or our conscription like so those laws say that if you use your body in a way that we don't like drug losses if you use a body in a way we don't approve of, we're going to put you in jail. So that's a negative servitude over someone's body. But at a certain point, we already have class, we already have categories for this is called slavery or you know something like that or aggression. So I think we should reserve the IP categories to this unique area of different types of legal systems. But yeah, there is some affinity with stolen valor and with the NSA seal stuff and with the religious symbol protection, etc. So basically I think I've explained to this point in the first two talks and this one. The main types of so called recognized intellectual property patents for inventions copyright for creative works trademarks for sources of identification for goods and services trade secrets for proprietary information companies try to keep secret but might fail to So then the special types like semiconductor mask works for integrated circuits and both hold designs and databases and moral rights and things like that. Now there's one final thing I'd like to talk about and that's defamation law so defamation law is another type of law that arose on the common law in England and other countries. So defamation is the broad category, the subtypes are libel and slander you probably heard libel, because libel is the most common libel is the written or permanent form of defamation, and which nowadays is most most defamation is libel slander would be like you just tell someone something verbally or orally like you slander you slander someone's reputation by saying something about them. Those are usually harder to prove and it's not permanent because it's sort of ephemeral it's only in the memory of the person who hears it. So usually most defamation suits or libel suits.   So even though some true some statements about someone's character may damage them. If they're true, you're said to be have a privilege to say the truth. So, you know, I might not like it. If you reveals to the world some some unsavory fact about my private life. If it's true, then I've got to take the consequences. If I sue you for defamation or libel, then you could defend by saying yeah but it's true that's why you have these lawsuits where the defendant usually says okay but my defense is that what I said was actually true. Right. Now there are other exceptions to defamation liability in addition to truth. There are certain privilege things like statements before Congress or parliaments or in court. You know, if a witness on the stand says something or if, if a congressman makes a speech and says something, they usually can't be attacked.  That's not really a statement of fact it's just my opinion about you I don't, I'm basically saying I don't like you and I have the right to not like you, and I have the right to say that I don't like you.  And the proof and the standard of proof are different in different countries in the US is one of the best. And from my point of view, but it's in other words it's hardest to prove defamation here, because of our strong First Amendment protections but like in England. UK it's it's easier, which is why sometimes lawsuits are filed there. Like the one about the Holocaust with the Rachel Weiss movie I forgot the name of it. Anyway, in recent big cases in the US. I mean Alex Jones just lost a big case about the Sandy Hook school shootings where he said it was a false flag or something and he, I think the plaintiffs won like a billion, a billion dollar judgment against him. Fox News had a, an over a billion dollar claim against, I'm sorry, Dominion voting systems the voting machine companies and filed a defamation suit against Fox News for saying that their machines didn't, you know, were used to perpetuate some kind of rigged election in the in the Trump Biden election, and Fox settled for $800 plus million and was potentially in the hook for more and I think there's more lawsuits more defamation lawsuits coming from another company. So we're talking about billions of dollars of awards from these defamation suits. The recent Johnny Depp versus Amber Heard suit. I think Johnny Depp was awarded over $10 million from Amber Heard for defamation. So defamation is a real thing. Now, when you, when you read the textbooks and you talk about intellectual property it usually covers patents and copyrights and trademarks and trade secrets and the other special rights I mentioned before. It's rarely mentioned that defamation should be considered in the same league but I don't see why they shouldn't because as I mentioned earlier about trademark. For trademark you don't have to prove actual fraud. You don't even have to prove actual consumer confusion. You only have to prove likelihood of consumer confusion and with the with this other right which I didn't mention yet. Trademark law in the US and probably many other countries has been amended to include what's called an anti-dilution right, which means the trademark holder can sue someone for tarnishing the value of their of their mark, even if there's no likelihood of consumer confusion. So you see all these things show that when it comes down to it, trademark is really not about consumer deception or consumer confusion or consumer fraud. It's really a reputation right.  He said trademark rights are closely but ambiguously related to preventing deception of the consumer but it's ambiguous because you don't have to show deception or damages by the consumers. And then in the I'm going to conclude he says in practice trademarks or as much a protection of the holders goodwill as a protection of consumers from deception. In other words, trademark rights protect for the trademark owner or holder the value of their reputation which is what goodwill means right economic or business setting goodwill means this sort of intangible value you have from your reputation from your brand name. And here I have the objectivist by the way a sort of a subset or weird cousin of libertarians who are big defenders of intellectual property and defamation law, right because it all goes along with their sort of quasi and marxian notion of labor, like you have the right to a property right in in things that you create that quote have value or values as a noun that you create right this is their their whole theory of rights which I think is confused and kind of quasi marxian. So here's one objectivist in an iron rand forum. And then Steve Simpson he says libel laws are proper in my view. It's a complicated topic but the way I think about it is, you have a right to the value that you've created in your own reputation. Or in your brand, right. It took them years to make their reputation so you. So the ultimate issue is if you that if someone damages a value someone's created, like your reputation. It's almost an intellectual property right. Yeah, he's right. Like, he's actually correct that the so in my view defamation law should be viewed as a type of intellectual property right because it's very similar to trademark and defamation should be merged together. They're both just a way that the law recognizes a right in your reputation, which is an intangible thing protected by a type of IP law either defamation or trademark law. Oh, that's into my slides. So one more thing I'll point out. Murray Rothbard was skeptical of of patent law. And he also had a great article debunking defamation law in his article, his chapter knowledge true and false and ethics of liberty. So, Rothbard understood exactly the problem with defamation law that you don't own a reputation because the reputation is just what other people think of you. And you don't own other people's brains or minds or bodies so you you don't really have a right and what people think about you. So that's the problem with defamation law. Now if he had understood that defamation and trademark law basically the same thing he would have opposed trademark law too. Right, which is one of the three main types of IP. He also opposed patent law, which is the number one type of IP copyright. He said, you could have copyright by contract. Now I think he was wrong, confused on that but my view is that if he had just had, you know, before he died 95 before the big debate on IP really happened in libertarian circles starting in around 1995 right when the internet was happening. Right, right when Rockford died right when the internet happened is when the big debate on IP started happening with Wendy McElroy and then Tom Palmer, Sam Konkin, and then after that Roger Long and me and other people really started focusing on this issue and sorting it out. I'm simply saying, Robert made a slight misstep by thinking that a type of IP could be justified. He called it common law copyright, which is not a good name because that name was already taken by some other doctrine of common law which he didn't under he wasn't aware of a thing. But the point is, he made a slight misstep. He was good on patents. He was good on defamation law. He would have easily been good on trademark law if he had seen the connection and I think he would have abandoned this common law copyright idea. If he had had time to reconsider the sort of new work on all this stuff. That's one reason I want people to understand that defamation is a type of IP because Rob Barb so good on defamation law that he should have been, he should have extended the reasoning there to all types of IP. And I think he would have if he had just lived, you know, a little longer anyway, I'm done with my prepared talks but I'd be happy to take any any questions. Yes, I have a one question about this 3d printers case because they are probably going to change the future of the copyright in in the near like 10 or 20 years. How do you think they are going to affect copyright or are they going to strengthen it or diminish mostly because of its of the proliferation. So, I've talked before about how I think that copyright. So I think 3d printers have more to do with patent and copyright so copyright has a deal with with copying or reusing patterns of information. And the, the, the advent of the internet and encryption and digital digitization of files and torrenting all this has basically made copyright piracy impossible to stop. So, yeah, you can use the law of copyright to go after big companies. So they can maintain some control over it, but they can't stop piracy it's impossible. So, digital information has basically made the, the unreality and the unnatural aspects of copyright more apparent and it's made copyright very very difficult to enforce which is a good thing so in other words, copyright law is not going away but it's it's easy to it's quite easy to evade it right now, which is a good thing. I wish it was so easy to evade income tax. Now patent law, I think something similar could happen if, if, if 3d printing matures and the more that it matures, the more that you will be able to evade patent law so yeah you could easily just get an encrypted file and send it to the 3d printer in your basement or down the you know some community groups 3d printer down the street and make a device without anyone's permission or knowledge. So I think that will, you know, I do think it may take several decades before it matures, but eventually 3d printing should help us to evade patent law. I will say that, you know, one problem with patent law and copyright law is that you know the interests that are behind them and the governments will use these laws to distort and impede and hamper the development of these technologies long as possible so I don't know if it takes 1520 30 years to have 3d printing. Maybe it would, it would have only taken half that time, if not for government impediments to it, but I think it's coming no matter what they can't they can slow it down but they can't stop it so I do have hope for 3d printing. Hopefully maybe maybe in your lifetime. I see. Thank you. We have any other questions about anything related to IP I'm open to them now since we have a little time. Anything I didn't cover or that I did or anything at all related to IP or IP policy. I've got a question. Yeah, one of my friends is. He's libertarian, I would say he's pretty solid on his understanding of all these things and sees all the state interventions. When he, and he writes books, and when he puts them out he puts it with a copyright. And you know I'm sure he would favor a voluntary system over an involuntary one. But what he says is, he thinks that in the absence of the state there would be an elaborate system of trade secrets that would somehow be analogous to copyright. In some way so he doesn't have the hugest problem with just putting a copyright in his work. Right. What do you think of that. Well, first, so first of all, he's probably under a few misapprehensions about the system. Like I think there's nothing. There's nothing wrong with putting a copyright notice on your works. In fact, I think it's a good thing because if you have a work out there in public, let's say you want it to be shared or used the person that wants to copy it or put it in their new book or whatever. They need to know who to contact for permission, because we have a copyright system. So if you put a copyright notice it only helps them to be to be reassured like they need they know they know who they need to contact to get permission. If you find a work where it's it's not clear who owns the copyright, whether it's the publisher, or some author that's dead or their heirs or who their heirs are then you, you don't you can't even get permission because you don't know who to contact, or who to trust. So there's nothing wrong with putting a notice. Now, I know what he said what he's saying is he's imagining sort of what what Rothbard and some of these other guys talked about. Well, what they say is that well, copyright is not a problem because, okay, maybe the government doing it and the way they're doing it is not the best way to do it, but it's just a rough approximation of what would happen on a free market from a contract based system anyway. No, they're, they're wrong about that. Well, first of all, if they're right, they're right, let's try it and see let's get rid of copyright. Let's get rid of copyright and see what would happen. But I can tell you that every defender of copyright would who understands the nature of it would oppose that proposal. I think that a contract system could replace the copyright system that we have. That's why they want there to be a copyright act, because they know that it does things that you can't do by contract. So these, these people that say, Oh, well, it's just like, it's just like a legislative version of what you would have by contract anyway. Well, then why don't the interest behind it want to just go back to contract law and see what happens, because they sort of know right. The reason they know is that there is a difference in the law between what we call real rights, or in rim rights in Latin or Roman law, which is a right to a real thing, and impersonal rights or contract rights. Let's let's write personal rights between people. So you and I can have a contract where I agree.   But I have to keep it secret, right. So I have a special duty to keep the knowledge secret, because I agreed to it. So it's a pretty primitive contract. But that, that doesn't affect the world in general. Now, if, if, if you own your car, that's an in rim rate of a real right. I'm not entitled to steal that car, even if I don't have a contract with you because it's a good, it's a good against the world. So, real rights, we call real real doesn't mean not real it means like affecting a rest or a thing a physical tangible thing. Property rights are good against the world. You don't need other people's agreement for them to be good. And what happens is you can have private law between two or more parties because of contract and that affects only them and then everyone else on the outside is not bound by that because they're not in what's called the privacy of contract. Okay, I'm going to get to a more detailed answer in just a second but the point is there's a difference between contractual rights between a group of people and in rem rights good against the world. Patent and copyrights turn. But the thing is, like I said, the right way to characterize them as they are, they're really negative easements, but negative easements are also contractual in person rights which are fine as long as they're agreed to by the parties, but the law, the government just says, No, you have this right, even though the guy burdened by the right didn't agree to it. So they converted what should be a personal right or a contract right into a into a real right and that's the problem with it right that's the problem with it. Now, what he's imagining is something like this. Okay, in seller gets his way there's no copyright in the world, but John Grisham or who's a, you know, some popular JK rolling writes Harry Potter number eight, and she goes to Amazon and she says hey, here's my book. It's not private with you, but only if you sign an agreement with me agreeing to keep it private and also not private but but only to publish it to customers who sign an agreement with you, and with me, that they will not copy it either. You can, you're there imagining this worldwide web of cartelized type agreements where you can't escape from it like everyone's, everyone's enmeshed in this terms of service kind of in the world, where it's effectively the same as a copyright or a patent system. So if I go buy a book, if I go by Harry Potter number eight from Amazon for $10. Amazon can only give it to me if I sign a contract saying, Oh, I agreed up to JK Rowling's private copyright regime, something like that, right. And so in this way, everyone is covered by it. But the problem is that's not true because it once I had, but it's because of the nature of information that could be true for physical things, which haven't an identifiable owner but information doesn't have an owner. So if I copy, if I buy the Harry Potter book number eight. And I agree to keep it private and not to copy it. And then I have a contract with Amazon or with Harry with with JK Rowling not to copy it. And if I copy it, then I may be in breach of contract and I can be sued for a lot of money. But, okay, so what what if I do it anyway, if I if I if I digitize the book and I scan it and I put it on on the internet and so a billion people tomorrow can access the, the ASCII text file of Harry Potter number eight, then none of those people have signed a contract with Harry Potter or with Amazon. So the, the right that JK Rowling or Amazon would have against me doesn't do them any good they can. I mean, and plus I don't have millions of dollars they can get from me anyway I'm just some guy on the internet who bought a book for $10, which again is another problem with this idea. If, if, if my choice is I want the latest Harry Potter book and my choice is to buy it for $10 from Amazon. And to sign a contract obligating me to pay millions of dollars if I use it or learn from it, or I'm influenced by it in the wrong way. That's like, that's a cost. So I'm paying $10 plus I'm obligating myself to a potential lifetime of bankruptcy. So I would go get the pirated copy and I would not sign on the contract. So the thing is that these contract walls can never work very well because the only people that would sign it would be your loyal fans. So you're asking them to sign a minor a contract saying, Okay, if I copy it, I owe you $100 or $10, but not a million. But if it's only $100 or $10, then someone's going to just pay the fine and do it. And then the information is free. So these these contractual schemes can never work with information. This with these people don't understand they don't understand that there's something about the nature of knowledge. If it's public, it's public, you cannot put the genie back in the bottle. You know, if I have a new mouse trap design like an invention. If I want to sell it, like I might be able to make a new plow to let's say an improved design for a plow for my form. I can make this plow and give it to two or three of my close relatives and maybe we can plow our farms more efficiently. Okay, that's fine. But if I want to, I can keep a secret that way if I want to. But if I want to like profit from the plow design I've got to sell the plow but when I sell this plow, everyone sees Oh, can sell as new plow has a great new feature. And so very soon I'll have imitators. That's the price I have to pay for selling it. Once the information is out there it's out there there's no way to keep the genie in the bottle. So I think that the people that think that you can duplicate something like an in rem system or a real right system of protection of information which is what patent and copyright do with a contractual system or just wrong. But again, I'd be willing to, I'd be willing to get rid of patent and copyright and let people just use private contracts. But again, every every advocate of patent and copyright would oppose with her, the idea of getting rid of the patent right system and replacing it with contract because they, they understand like I do that you can't simulate the systems, you know, it would be like saying, you could simulate the tax system or, or the America's Disabilities Act with with private contract it just doesn't make any sense, or the drug war, how could you simulate the drug war with a private contract system doesn't make any sense. Well, I mean he's not here to talk for himself, but if I could, I mean I've just thought about this issue and whether it would really happen that way. And what I've imagined is, you know, maybe let's imagine that there's no copyright law or no state. And, you know, let's, let's take the modern examples of like movies and streaming services. And let's say that Netflix makes a movie. And, you know, they want it to only be shown on Netflix so that people have to subscribe to be able to watch the movie. So they want at least guarantee against like Amazon and Hulu, posting that. So, you know, these major streaming platforms might sign an agreement among themselves to not use each other's content and honor that and they can't really stop anyone from just downloading and pirating it. But maybe they would satisfy themselves that, you know, all other major services. All they can do right now right because right now they can only stop the major services because there's always there's always piracy going on in the background right. And that's my observation is that they've kind of given up really trying to stop people like individuals from torrenting movies and just watching them themselves. So like the enforcement wouldn't really be against individual people it would be against some company that started to try to imagine. Well, let me point out one thing so so the government laws have blocked various things companies could try to do. So you're talking about a cartel basically right which as a libertarian. We oppose any trust law. So we have no problem with cartels, but the government has done their best so the government is schizophrenic so the government grants monopolies in the in the form of FDA protection for new pharmaceuticals and in the form of patents and the form of copyright, and then they have an antitrust or an anti competition or anti monopoly law, which says it's illegal to have monopoly so the government is completely incoherent and schizophrenic. So for example, back in the, I can't remember the time frame back in the 50s or 60s whenever it was. There were these sort of quasi oligopolistic cartels or conglomerates, these, these agreements between the, the movie theaters, and the government broke them up under the. The late in any trust act or the ceremony, one of the. So, you know, they said, so like everything you would want to do like so your proposal is not unreasonable like you could have major book, book publishing associations, or, or movie companies or the music industry or groups or whatever, you could have them try to come together to somehow, you know, put some limits on leaks of the major, you know, things, maybe that could work, but the government would have to allow you to try but they wouldn't allow companies to try right now. So the government would basically outlaw attempts to do a private solution and claimed it well because people can't make copyright work privately we have to give it to you legislatively. The reason it can't work privately is because you're not, you won't, it's because you allow you outlaw cartels and, and you have your antitrust law so we should get rid of the antitrust law, the FDA and copyright and let's see what would happen. I don't think we would see something like, I still can't imagine a system like so let's say we have the system like your friend is imagining or you're imagining six or seven or 10 big companies all come together they kind of roughly respected, sort of like opaque does now with with you know there's some cheating but they roughly respect the, the oil limitations and all this. And, you know, there's really in the end there's nothing to stop some Chinese or Indian upstart company from saying, we don't care we're gonna, we're gonna scrape everything, and we're going to do a nice curated thing you pay us $2 a month and we're going to give you everything you want anyway, maybe it won't have all the features, you know it won't be as nice but some people would use that but like they use torrenting right now. I mean, most people don't use torrenting I think but I don't see most people there's probably lots of people do but people can afford a $10 a month or whatever it is for Netflix. They just do that, because it's easier. They get all the extra features they get the subtitles, they don't have to worry about the corruption but if the price gets too high. They might go to torrenting so maybe they'd have these intermediate services. So, I don't know. I don't think it would be like the same as we have now as the point it may. There may be ways that you can come together to have agreements that would do some some of the things that copyright does now. And we libertarians don't oppose that as long as it's done voluntarily and by contract. Okay. All right, well unless there's anything else I think we'll stop it today. This may be the end of my little three part series unless anyone can think of and you can email me later or send me comments when I post this. If there's anything else I could cover as a practical thing, be happy to do it. You know there's other practical things that do as a lawyer like licensing and contracts and that kind of stuff but I think that's enough practical stuff. For now, the rest of my material is all on the normative and policy and law stuff. But anyway, glad you turned in I hope everybody enjoyed it if you have any questions feel free to let me know. Thanks everybody. Thank you. Thanks.


Hello everybody and welcome back to The Abbridge. Today I am going to be painting and drawing on the iPad which is something that I'm not totally used to but I had real fun with this one. So if you don't know, Studio Ghibli have released loads of screen grabs of all their films that you can readily use for your own practice or whatever you want to use within the realms of like what's fair. So I decided that I wanted to redraw this scene from Spirited Away which will be my Patreon reward for this month because I really like the way that it turned out. I wanted to just use this because I think it's full of energy. It really tells a story and there's so many awesome characters here. Of course I wanted to do it in my own style and then add my own coloring so like I did before, I've done this before with a Kiki delivery service where I just used loads of pinks and different colors that I like. So you'll see later on in this video that I pick a color palette. So what I did is I went in and I roughed out a sketch of the scene. I also have a layer where the scene is on so I can use it as reference. And then what I'm doing is just drawing on a new layer out the lines a bit smoother, a bit more on point shall we say.   If you want I'm gonna make this this line work available on my Patreon so you can have a go coloring in yourself if you like and also this will be December's print. So check out my Patreon down below if you're interested but go ahead and relax and enjoy the video. Thanks!


In Taiwan, we are making the government transparent to the people. By trusting the people first with the open government data on procurement, on budgeting, on KPIs of government projects, everything is up in an e-participation platform for people to comment and deliberate publicly. However, the PRC regime is making the citizens transparent to the state through facial recognition, through tracking systems like social credit. They are making sure that nobody can meaningfully organize horizontally in a way to effect political progress. And with the private sector, Taiwan is leading the way to use sandbox systems across all ministries so that anyone with a good idea can challenge existing regulation and ask for a trial on the sandbox for a year or so. And if the civil society generally likes the idea, their version of regulation leads the way and become national regulation. And if it doesn't work, it's open innovation, so everybody learns from it. However, the PRC is doing the opposite, they're extending control into large enterprises by mandating a communist party branch in every company above a certain size. And so in Taiwan, we're just making all these differences and values very clear in our education system, making sure that people growing up in Taiwan understand the value of democracy and also trust all the children with the idea of they control their own educational trajectory. Autonomy, interaction, and the common good are the three guiding values of our new education system starting this year. And the teachers will give up the idea of them being the sole authority just as the government gave up the idea of we being the sole authority of any social environmental issues. Instead, we are to become facilitators and provide a safe space so that a democracy can deliberate substantially and agree upon common values that then everybody feels that they have contributed to and can implement them together across different sectors.


I tried to escape from prison What happened when you try to escape? Do you know what? I went I went I got pulled out in a production production order So what he did it took me to hybrid hybrid police station. There was a bit of building work going off there So they said moving down to kentish town.  He never put them on properly. It was a bit loose So as I walked out I could feel it. I could feel it. I thought you know if I if I give this a tug It's gonna come off in a minute So I got in the van. I think it was a eight-hole bill with me there The couple in the car in front three in the back three with me and we drove to there And then I can always remember this this cop was saying you know what you're gonna go away for a real long time, brother You know, you know what you can do yourself a favor. Tell us about everything Tell us about all your friends anything, you know, you'll be getting six years. You'll be out in three I said, you know what brother? So I'll be out tonight. I'll be out. I'll be out.      No one got out the second car pulled against the wall No one got out. I thought lovely the keys are in front when he knocked on the door I'm left with two two coppers and I thought, you know what?  I just whacked him on the chin. He's either on his aris and I thought I'm out of here I've gone down.   They had handcuffed me by this time and He said what's going on?  You know what's going on? I said listen, I've just got out of the van. They just all jumped me No, I'm handcuffed and they said no you tried to escape blah blah and then I went back to Pentonville And then I got put in the patches, you know, they're valiant green yellow and green stripe They said I was off key. I went down a block for a week and then I got back on the wing