WEBVTT NOTE 16. Knowledge, True and False 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:06.800 CHAPTER XVI. KNOWLEDGE, TRUE AND FALSE. 2 00:00:06.800 --> 00:00:12.800 Our theory of property rights can be used to unravel a tangled skein of complex problems 3 00:00:12.800 --> 00:00:20.780 revolving around questions of knowledge, true and false, and the dissemination of that knowledge. 4 00:00:20.780 --> 00:00:26.640 Does Smith, for example, have the right—again, we are concerned about his right, not the 5 00:00:26.640 --> 00:00:40.640 to print and disseminate the statement that Jones is a liar, or that Jones is a convicted thief, or that Jones is a homosexual. 6 00:00:40.640 --> 00:00:45.640 There are three logical possibilities about the truth of such a statement. 7 00:00:45.640 --> 00:00:48.640 A. That the statement about Jones is true. 8 00:00:48.640 --> 00:00:52.640 B. That it is false and Smith knows it is false. 9 00:00:52.640 --> 00:00:59.280 Or, see, most realistically, that the truth or falsity of the statement is a fuzzy zone, 10 00:00:59.280 --> 00:01:02.360 not certainly and precisely knowable. 11 00:01:02.360 --> 00:01:07.980 For example, in the above cases, whether or not someone is a liar depends on how many 12 00:01:07.980 --> 00:01:14.080 and how intense the pattern of lies a person has told, and is a judge to add up to the 13 00:01:14.080 --> 00:01:22.400 category of liar, an area where individual judgments can and will properly differ. 14 00:01:22.400 --> 00:01:26.120 Suppose that Smith's statement is definitely true. 15 00:01:26.120 --> 00:01:31.240 It seems clear then that Smith has a perfect right to print and disseminate the statement, 16 00:01:31.240 --> 00:01:34.560 for it is within his property right to do so. 17 00:01:34.560 --> 00:01:39.120 It is also, of course, within the property right of Jones to try to rebut the statement 18 00:01:39.120 --> 00:01:41.060 in his turn. 19 00:01:41.060 --> 00:01:47.260 The current libel laws make Smith's action illegal if done with malicious intent, even 20 00:01:47.260 --> 00:01:49.880 though the information be true. 21 00:01:49.880 --> 00:01:56.020 And yet, surely, legality or illegality should depend not on the motivation of the actor, 22 00:01:56.020 --> 00:01:59.080 but on the objective nature of the act. 23 00:01:59.080 --> 00:02:04.320 If an action is objectively non-invasive, then it should be legal regardless of the 24 00:02:04.320 --> 00:02:10.000 benevolent or malicious intentions of the actor, though the latter may well be relevant 25 00:02:10.000 --> 00:02:13.000 to the morality of the action. 26 00:02:13.000 --> 00:02:18.660 And this is aside from the obvious difficulties in legally determining an individual's subjective 27 00:02:18.660 --> 00:02:34.660 It might, however, be charged that Smith does not have the right to print such a statement, because Jones has a right to privacy, his human right, which Smith does not have the right to violate. 28 00:02:34.660 --> 00:02:45.660 But is there really such a right to privacy? How can there be? How can there be a right to prevent Smith by force from disseminating knowledge which he possesses? 29 00:02:45.660 --> 00:02:52.780 Surely, there can be no such right. Smith owns his own body, and therefore has the property 30 00:02:52.780 --> 00:02:58.980 right to own the knowledge he has inside his head, including his knowledge about Jones, 31 00:02:58.980 --> 00:03:05.060 and therefore he has the corollary right to print and disseminate that knowledge. In short, 32 00:03:05.060 --> 00:03:10.400 as in the case of the human right to free speech, there is no such thing as a right 33 00:03:10.400 --> 00:03:16.400 to Privacy except the right to protect one's property from invasion. 34 00:03:16.400 --> 00:03:21.920 The only right to privacy is the right to protect one's property from being invaded 35 00:03:21.920 --> 00:03:24.080 by someone else. 36 00:03:24.080 --> 00:03:29.360 In brief, no one has the right to burgle someone else's home or to wiretap someone's 37 00:03:29.360 --> 00:03:31.660 phone lines. 38 00:03:31.660 --> 00:03:37.600 Wiretapping is properly a crime not because of some vague and woolly invasion of a right 39 00:03:37.600 --> 00:03:45.400 to Privacy but because it is an invasion of the property right of the person being wiretapped. 40 00:03:45.400 --> 00:03:50.520 At the present time the courts distinguish between persons in the public eye who are 41 00:03:50.520 --> 00:03:56.960 adjudged not to have a right to privacy against being mentioned in the public press, and private 42 00:03:56.960 --> 00:04:00.680 persons who are considered to have such a right. 43 00:04:00.680 --> 00:04:04.120 And yet such distinctions are surely fallacious. 44 00:04:04.120 --> 00:04:09.060 To the libertarian, everyone has the same right in his person and in the goods which 45 00:04:09.060 --> 00:04:15.480 he finds, inherits or buys, and it is illegitimate to make distinctions in property right between 46 00:04:15.480 --> 00:04:18.320 one group of people and another. 47 00:04:18.320 --> 00:04:24.000 If there were some sort of right to privacy, then simply being mentioned widely in the 48 00:04:24.000 --> 00:04:30.460 press, that is, previous losses of the right, could scarcely warrant being deprived of such 49 00:04:30.460 --> 00:04:32.040 right completely. 50 00:04:32.040 --> 00:04:39.400 No, the only proper course is to maintain that no one has any spurious right to privacy 51 00:04:39.400 --> 00:04:45.440 or right not to be mentioned publicly, while everyone has the right to protect his property 52 00:04:45.440 --> 00:04:47.540 against invasion. 53 00:04:47.540 --> 00:04:53.220 No one can have a property right in the knowledge in someone else's head. 54 00:04:53.220 --> 00:04:58.160 In recent years, Watergate and the Pentagon Papers have brought to the fore such questions 55 00:04:58.160 --> 00:05:04.760 Treatments as Privacy, the Privileges of Newspaper Men, and the Public's Right to Know. 56 00:05:04.760 --> 00:05:09.640 Should for example a Newspaper Man have the right to protect his sources of information 57 00:05:09.640 --> 00:05:11.480 in court? 58 00:05:11.480 --> 00:05:17.320 Many people claim that Newspaper Men have such a right, basing that claim either A. 59 00:05:17.320 --> 00:05:24.600 on special privileges of confidentiality allegedly accruing to Newspaper Men, lawyers, doctors, 60 00:05:24.600 --> 00:05:35.600 on the public's right to know, and hence on the widest possible knowledge as disseminated in the press. 61 00:05:35.600 --> 00:05:40.600 And yet it should be clear by this point that both such claims are spurious. 62 00:05:40.600 --> 00:05:48.600 On the latter point, no one person or group of people, and therefore the public, has the right to know anything. 63 00:05:48.600 --> 00:05:53.600 They have no right to knowledge which other people have and refuse to disseminate. 64 00:05:53.600 --> 00:06:00.600 For if a man has the absolute right to disseminate knowledge inside his head, he also has the 65 00:06:00.600 --> 00:06:04.880 corollary right not to disseminate that knowledge. 66 00:06:04.880 --> 00:06:07.280 There is no right to know. 67 00:06:07.280 --> 00:06:13.360 There is only the right of the knower to either disseminate his knowledge or to keep silent. 68 00:06:13.360 --> 00:06:18.980 Neither can any particular profession, be it newsmen or physicians, claim any particular 69 00:06:18.980 --> 00:06:34.000 The solution to the problem of the newsman's sources, indeed, rests in the right of the 70 00:06:34.000 --> 00:06:41.760 knower, any knower, to keep silent, to not disseminate knowledge if he so desires. Hence 71 00:06:41.760 --> 00:06:47.300 not only newsmen and physicians, but everyone should have the right to protect their sources 72 00:06:47.300 --> 00:06:51.540 or to be silent, in court or anywhere else. 73 00:06:51.540 --> 00:06:56.500 And this indeed is the other side of the coin of our previous strictures against the compulsory 74 00:06:56.500 --> 00:06:58.480 subpoena power. 75 00:06:58.480 --> 00:07:04.500 No one should be forced to testify at all, not only against himself, as in the Fifth 76 00:07:04.500 --> 00:07:09.740 Amendment, but against or for anyone else. 77 00:07:09.740 --> 00:07:15.820 Compulsory testimony itself is the central evil in this entire problem. 78 00:07:15.820 --> 00:07:20.540 There is, however, an exception to the right to use and disseminate the knowledge within 79 00:07:20.540 --> 00:07:26.880 one's head, namely, if it was procured from someone else as a conditional rather than 80 00:07:26.880 --> 00:07:28.620 absolute ownership. 81 00:07:28.620 --> 00:07:34.900 Thus, suppose that Brown allows Green into his home and shows him an invention of Brown's 82 00:07:34.900 --> 00:07:41.940 hitherto kept secret, but only on the condition that Green keeps this information private. 83 00:07:41.940 --> 00:07:47.180 In that case, Brown has granted to Greene not absolute ownership of the knowledge of 84 00:07:47.180 --> 00:07:53.140 his invention, but conditional ownership, with Brown retaining the ownership power to 85 00:07:53.140 --> 00:07:56.660 disseminate the knowledge of the invention. 86 00:07:56.660 --> 00:08:01.880 If Greene discloses the invention anyway, he is violating the residual property right 87 00:08:01.880 --> 00:08:09.800 of Brown to disseminate knowledge of the invention, and is therefore to that extent a thief. 88 00:08:09.800 --> 00:08:16.300 Violation of common law copyright is an equivalent violation of contract and theft of property. 89 00:08:16.300 --> 00:08:22.080 For suppose that Brown builds a better mousetrap and sells it widely, but stamps each mousetrap 90 00:08:22.080 --> 00:08:24.680 copyright Mr. Brown. 91 00:08:24.680 --> 00:08:30.200 What he is then doing is selling not the entire property right in each mousetrap, but the 92 00:08:30.200 --> 00:08:36.560 right to do anything with the mousetrap except to sell it, or an identical copy, to someone 93 00:08:36.560 --> 00:08:38.120 else. 94 00:08:38.120 --> 00:08:45.080 The right to sell the brown mousetrap is retained in perpetuity by Brown. Hence for a mousetrap 95 00:08:45.080 --> 00:08:51.440 buyer, green, to go ahead and sell identical mousetraps is a violation of his contract 96 00:08:51.440 --> 00:08:59.320 and of the property right of Brown, and therefore prosecutable as theft. Hence our theory of 97 00:08:59.320 --> 00:09:05.520 property rights includes the inviolability of contractual copyright. 98 00:09:05.520 --> 00:09:08.440 A common objection runs as follows. 99 00:09:08.440 --> 00:09:14.120 All right, it would be criminal for Green to produce and sell the brown mousetrap. 100 00:09:14.120 --> 00:09:19.280 But suppose that someone else, Black, who had not made a contract with Brown, happens 101 00:09:19.280 --> 00:09:25.060 to see Green's mousetrap and then goes ahead and produces and sells the replica. 102 00:09:25.060 --> 00:09:28.040 Why should he be prosecuted? 103 00:09:28.040 --> 00:09:33.120 The answer is that, as in the case of our critique of negotiable instruments, no one 104 00:09:33.120 --> 00:09:38.440 One can acquire a greater property title in something than has already been given away 105 00:09:38.440 --> 00:09:40.440 or sold. 106 00:09:40.440 --> 00:09:45.520 Green did not own the total property right in his mousetrap in accordance with his contract 107 00:09:45.520 --> 00:09:51.840 with Brown, but only all rights except to sell it or a replica. 108 00:09:51.840 --> 00:09:57.520 But therefore Black's title in the mousetrap, the ownership of the ideas in Black's head, 109 00:09:57.520 --> 00:10:03.680 can be no greater than Green's, and therefore he too would be a violator of Brown's property 110 00:10:03.680 --> 00:10:08.720 even though he himself had not made the actual contract. 111 00:10:08.720 --> 00:10:13.680 Of course there may be some difficulties in the actual enforcement of Brown's property 112 00:10:13.680 --> 00:10:21.100 right, namely that as in all cases of alleged theft or other crime, every defendant is innocent 113 00:10:21.100 --> 00:10:23.460 until proven guilty. 114 00:10:23.460 --> 00:10:29.520 It would be necessary for Brown to prove that black, green would not pose a problem, had 115 00:10:29.520 --> 00:10:36.600 access to Brown's mousetrap and did not invent this kind of mousetrap by himself independently. 116 00:10:36.600 --> 00:10:42.460 By the nature of things, some products, for example, books, paintings, are easier to prove 117 00:10:42.460 --> 00:10:50.040 to be unique products of individual minds than others, for example, mousetraps. 118 00:10:50.040 --> 00:10:56.080 If then Smith has the absolute right to disseminate knowledge about Jones, we are still assuming 119 00:10:56.080 --> 00:11:00.920 that the knowledge is correct, and has the corollary right to keep silent about that 120 00:11:00.920 --> 00:11:07.760 knowledge, then a fortiori, surely he also has the right to go to Jones and receive payment 121 00:11:07.760 --> 00:11:11.680 in exchange for not disseminating such information. 122 00:11:11.680 --> 00:11:16.160 In short, Smith has the right to blackmail Jones. 123 00:11:16.160 --> 00:11:21.680 As in all voluntary exchanges, both parties benefit from such an exchange. Smith receives 124 00:11:21.680 --> 00:11:27.240 money and Jones obtains the service of Smith's not disseminating information about him, which 125 00:11:27.240 --> 00:11:33.400 Jones does not wish to see others possess. The right to blackmail is deducible from the 126 00:11:33.400 --> 00:11:38.880 general property right in one's person and knowledge, and the right to disseminate or 127 00:11:38.880 --> 00:11:45.760 not disseminate that knowledge. How can the right to blackmail be denied? 128 00:11:45.760 --> 00:11:51.600 When I first briefly adumbrated the right to blackmail in Man, Economy and State, Volume 129 00:11:51.600 --> 00:11:57.240 1, I was met with a storm of abuse by critics who apparently believed that I was advocating 130 00:11:57.240 --> 00:12:03.520 the morality of blackmail, again a failure to make the crucial distinction between the 131 00:12:03.520 --> 00:12:10.280 legitimacy of a right and the morality or aesthetics of exercising that right. 132 00:12:10.280 --> 00:12:31.280 Furthermore, as Professor Walter Block has trenchantly pointed out, on utilitarian grounds, the consequence of outlawing blackmail, for example, of preventing Smith from offering to sell his silence to Jones, will be to encourage Smith to disseminate his information, since he is coercively blocked from selling his silence. 133 00:12:31.280 --> 00:12:44.280 The result will be an increased dissemination of derogatory information, so that Jones will be worse off from the outlawry of blackmail than he would have been if blackmail had been permitted. 134 00:12:44.280 --> 00:12:57.280 Thus Block writes, What exactly is blackmail? Blackmail is the offer of a trade. It is the offer to trade something, usually silence, for some other good, usually money. 135 00:12:57.280 --> 00:13:06.280 If the offer of the blackmail trade is accepted, then the blackmailer maintains his silence and the blackmailee pays the agreed amount of money. 136 00:13:06.280 --> 00:13:15.280 If the blackmail offer is rejected, then the blackmailer may exercise his right of free speech and perhaps announce and publicize the secret. 137 00:13:15.280 --> 00:13:24.280 The only difference between a gossip and blabbermouth and the blackmailer is that the blackmailer will refrain from speaking for a price. 138 00:13:24.280 --> 00:13:30.080 In a sense, the gossip or the blabbermouth is much worse than the blackmailer, for the 139 00:13:30.080 --> 00:13:36.000 blackmailer at least gives you a chance to shut him up. The blabbermouth and gossip just 140 00:13:36.000 --> 00:13:42.080 up and spill the beans. A person with a secret he once kept will be much better off if a 141 00:13:42.080 --> 00:13:47.920 blackmailer rather than a gossip or blabbermouth gets hold of it. With the blabbermouth or 142 00:13:47.920 --> 00:13:51.500 For gossip, as we have said, all is lost. 143 00:13:51.500 --> 00:13:57.500 With the blackmailer, one can only gain, or, at worst, be no worse off. 144 00:13:57.500 --> 00:14:02.500 If the price required by the blackmailer for his silence is worth less than the secret, 145 00:14:02.500 --> 00:14:06.880 the secret holder will pay off and accept the lesser of the two evils. 146 00:14:06.880 --> 00:14:11.240 He will gain the difference to him between the value of the secret and the price of the 147 00:14:11.240 --> 00:14:12.960 blackmailer. 148 00:14:12.960 --> 00:14:17.840 It is only in the case that the blackmailer demands more than the secret is worth that 149 00:14:17.840 --> 00:14:45.360 There are other and less important problems with the outlawry of a blackmail contract. 150 00:14:45.360 --> 00:14:50.960 It goes that in the above case, instead of Smith going to Jones with an offer of silence, 151 00:14:50.960 --> 00:14:55.800 Jones had heard of Smith's knowledge and his intent to print it, and went to Smith to offer 152 00:14:55.800 --> 00:14:58.540 to purchase the latter's silence. 153 00:14:58.540 --> 00:15:01.000 Should that contract be illegal? 154 00:15:01.000 --> 00:15:03.420 And if so, why? 155 00:15:03.420 --> 00:15:08.440 But if Jones' offer should be legal while Smith's is illegal, should it be illegal for 156 00:15:08.440 --> 00:15:14.900 Smith to turn down Jones' offer and then ask for more money as the price of his silence? 157 00:15:14.900 --> 00:15:20.840 Furthermore, should it be illegal for Smith to subtly let Jones know that Smith has the 158 00:15:20.840 --> 00:15:27.220 information and intends to publish, and then allow Jones to make the actual offer? 159 00:15:27.220 --> 00:15:33.460 But how could this simple letting Jones know in advance be considered as illegal? 160 00:15:33.460 --> 00:15:38.340 Could it not be rather construed as a simple act of courtesy to Jones? 161 00:15:38.340 --> 00:15:44.060 The Shoals get muddier and muddier, and the support for outlawry of blackmail contracts, 162 00:15:44.060 --> 00:15:50.180 especially by libertarians who believe in property rights becomes ever more flimsy. 163 00:15:50.180 --> 00:15:55.580 Of course, if Smith and Jones make a blackmail contract and then Smith violates it by printing 164 00:15:55.580 --> 00:16:02.460 the information anyway, then Smith has stolen Jones' property, his money, and can be prosecuted 165 00:16:02.460 --> 00:16:07.200 as in the case of any other thief who has aggressed against property rights by violating 166 00:16:07.200 --> 00:16:08.820 a contract. 167 00:16:08.820 --> 00:16:14.780 But there is nothing unique about blackmail contracts in this regard. 168 00:16:14.780 --> 00:16:20.140 In contemplating the law of a free society, therefore, the libertarian must look at people 169 00:16:20.140 --> 00:16:26.340 as acting within a general framework of absolute property rights and of the conditions of the 170 00:16:26.340 --> 00:16:29.820 world around them at any given time. 171 00:16:29.820 --> 00:16:35.220 In any exchange, any contract that they make, they believe that they will be better off 172 00:16:35.220 --> 00:16:36.940 from making the exchange. 173 00:16:36.940 --> 00:16:43.940 Hence, all of these contracts are productive in making them, at least prospectively, better off. 174 00:16:43.940 --> 00:16:50.940 And, of course, all of these voluntary contracts are legitimate and licit in the free society. 175 00:16:50.940 --> 00:16:57.940 We have therefore affirmed the legitimacy, the right, of Smith's either disseminating knowledge about Jones, 176 00:16:57.940 --> 00:17:04.940 keeping silent about the knowledge, or engaging in a contract with Jones to sell his silence. 177 00:17:04.940 --> 00:17:09.440 We have so far been assuming that Smith's knowledge is correct. 178 00:17:09.440 --> 00:17:16.440 Suppose, however, that the knowledge is false, and Smith knows that it is false, the worst case. 179 00:17:16.440 --> 00:17:20.940 Does Smith have the right to disseminate false information about Jones? 180 00:17:20.940 --> 00:17:26.440 In short, should libel and slander be illegal in the free society? 181 00:17:26.440 --> 00:17:30.440 And yet, once again, how can they be? 182 00:17:30.440 --> 00:17:35.440 Smith has a property right to the ideas or opinions in his own head. 183 00:17:35.440 --> 00:17:40.440 He also has a property right to print anything he wants and disseminate it. 184 00:17:40.440 --> 00:17:48.440 He has a property right to say that Jones is a thief, even if he knows it to be false, and to print and sell that statement. 185 00:17:48.440 --> 00:17:56.440 The counter view, and the current basis for holding libel and slander, especially of false statements to be illegal, 186 00:17:56.440 --> 00:18:11.440 is that every man has a property right in his own reputation, that Smith's falsehoods damage that reputation and that therefore Smith's libels are invasions of Jones' property right in his reputation and should be illegal. 187 00:18:11.440 --> 00:18:23.440 Yet again, on closer analysis, this is a fallacious view. For everyone, as we have stated, owns his own body. He has a property right in his own head and person. 188 00:18:23.440 --> 00:18:29.440 But since every man owns his own mind, he cannot, therefore, own the minds of anyone else. 189 00:18:29.440 --> 00:18:38.440 And yet, Joan's reputation is neither a physical entity, nor is it something contained within or on his own person. 190 00:18:38.440 --> 00:18:47.440 Joan's reputation is purely a function of the subjective attitudes and beliefs about him contained in the minds of other people. 191 00:18:47.440 --> 00:19:09.480 Let us consider in fact the implications of believing in a property right in one's reputation. 192 00:19:09.480 --> 00:19:14.240 Suppose that Brown has produced his mousetrap and then Robinson comes out with a better 193 00:19:14.240 --> 00:19:15.480 1. 194 00:19:15.480 --> 00:19:21.600 The reputation of Brown for excellence in mousetraps now declines sharply, as consumers 195 00:19:21.600 --> 00:19:27.620 shift their attitudes and their purchases and buy Robinson's mousetrap instead. 196 00:19:27.620 --> 00:19:33.100 Can we not then say, on the principle of the reputation theory, that Robinson has injured 197 00:19:33.100 --> 00:19:39.740 the reputation of Brown, and can we not then outlaw Robinson from competing with Brown? 198 00:19:39.740 --> 00:19:41.780 If not, why not? 199 00:19:41.780 --> 00:19:48.580 Or should it be illegal for Robinson to advertise and to tell the world that his mousetrap is better? 200 00:19:48.580 --> 00:19:54.140 Or, to take another example, suppose that Robinson publishes an investment advisory letter 201 00:19:54.140 --> 00:19:59.020 in which he sets forth his opinion that a certain corporation's stock is unsound 202 00:19:59.020 --> 00:20:01.620 and will probably decline. 203 00:20:01.620 --> 00:20:05.760 As a result of this advice, the stock falls in price. 204 00:20:05.760 --> 00:20:11.260 Robinson's opinion has injured the reputation of the corporation and damaged its shareholders 205 00:20:11.260 --> 00:20:16.100 through the decline in price caused by the lowering of confidence by investors in the 206 00:20:16.100 --> 00:20:17.660 market. 207 00:20:17.660 --> 00:20:20.620 Should Robinson's advice therefore be outlawed? 208 00:20:20.620 --> 00:20:27.020 Or, in yet another example, A writes a book, B reviews the book and states that the book 209 00:20:27.020 --> 00:20:28.380 is a bad one. 210 00:20:28.380 --> 00:20:33.800 The result is an injury to A's reputation and a decline in the sales of the book as 211 00:20:33.800 --> 00:20:36.260 well as A's income. 212 00:20:36.260 --> 00:20:40.520 Should all unfavorable book reviews therefore be illegal? 213 00:20:40.520 --> 00:20:46.280 As such are some of the logical implications of the property and reputation argument. 214 00:20:46.280 --> 00:20:52.000 I am indebted for the stock market example to Williamson M. Evers. 215 00:20:52.000 --> 00:20:58.160 In fact, of course, people's subjective attitudes and ideas about someone or his product will 216 00:20:58.160 --> 00:21:06.920 fluctuate continually, and hence it is impossible for Brown to stabilize his reputation by coercion. 217 00:21:06.920 --> 00:21:13.280 say it would be immoral and aggressive against other people's property right to try. 218 00:21:13.280 --> 00:21:19.400 Aggressive and criminal, then, either to outlaw one's competition or to outlaw false libel's 219 00:21:19.400 --> 00:21:23.480 spread about one or one's product. 220 00:21:23.480 --> 00:21:28.800 We can, of course, readily concede the gross immorality of spreading false libel's about 221 00:21:28.800 --> 00:21:30.480 another person. 222 00:21:30.480 --> 00:21:36.200 But we must, nevertheless, maintain the legal right of anyone to do so. 223 00:21:36.200 --> 00:21:55.720 Pragmatically, again, this situation may well redound to the benefit of the people being libeled, for in the current situation, when false libels are outlawed, the average person tends to believe that all derogatory reports spread about people are true, otherwise they'd sue for libel. 224 00:21:55.720 --> 00:22:00.840 This situation discriminates against the poor, since poorer people are less likely to file 225 00:22:00.840 --> 00:22:03.360 suits against libelers. 226 00:22:03.360 --> 00:22:09.400 Hence the reputations of poorer or less wealthy persons are liable to suffer more now when 227 00:22:09.400 --> 00:22:14.240 libel is outlawed than they would if libel were legitimate. 228 00:22:14.240 --> 00:22:20.120 For in that libertarian society, since everyone would know that false stories are legal, there 229 00:22:20.120 --> 00:22:24.840 would be far more skepticism on the part of the reading or listening public, who would 230 00:22:24.840 --> 00:22:31.640 would insist on far more proof and believe fewer derogatory stories than they do now. 231 00:22:31.640 --> 00:22:37.480 Furthermore, the current system discriminates against poorer people in another way, for 232 00:22:37.480 --> 00:22:43.640 their own speech is restricted, since they are less likely to disseminate true but derogatory 233 00:22:43.640 --> 00:22:49.480 knowledge about the wealthy for fear of having costly libel suits filed against them. 234 00:22:49.480 --> 00:22:56.400 Hence, the outlawing of libel harms people of limited means in two ways, by making them 235 00:22:56.400 --> 00:23:02.200 easier prey for libels, and by hampering their own dissemination of accurate knowledge about 236 00:23:02.200 --> 00:23:03.800 the wealthy. 237 00:23:03.800 --> 00:23:11.040 Finally, if anyone has the right knowingly to spread false libels about someone else, 238 00:23:11.040 --> 00:23:16.320 then a fortiori, he of course has the right to disseminate those large numbers of statements 239 00:23:16.320 --> 00:23:21.880 about others, which are in the fuzzy zone of not being clear or certain whether or not 240 00:23:21.880 --> 00:23:24.240 the statements are true or false.