An actual free market would do away with patent and copyright laws, since they violate property rights.

If I truly owned a computer, it would be my right to execute any pattern of bits that doesn't actively create a connection to the outside and cause chaos to other people's property, even if it goes against the wishes of the original person who defined that pattern of bits.

Likewise, if I built a factory with parts I have purchased, I could produce any widget I had the plans to, even if it happens to function similarly to plans specified in some public library of patents.

Patents are, like, the opposite of censorship. They're the government saying that if you want legal protection for your invention then you have to openly share exactly how you did it with the world. (Except for military patents.)

The legal protection includes the assurance that the government will use force to prevent others from engaging in certain expression or activities, on your behalf, under threat of financial penalties or worse.

Bold of you to be critical of capitalism around here; but I can't completely disagree with you.

IP rights exist as a result of state force; copyright and patents can't really exist without it. They are fundamentally reliant upon the state using its force to censure those who use intellectual property without authorization. And yes, before someone states as much: digitally enforced proof of ownership is just an automated, digital state.

But capitalism doesn't require intellectual property to operate, and so I wouldn't call censorship a crucial foundation of capitalism.

Capitalism somehow existed well before the modern IP rights system.

The US patent office was created in 1832, the UK's, in 1850s, and the modern form of patent laws appeared in 1880s.

Copyright goes all the way to 1660s, but until relatively recently, the terms of copyright were much shorter, and extent, narrower.

>Censorship is a crucial foundation of capitalism

No, nothing to do with capitalism, but elitism, that happens in capitalism communism and even tribalism.

>fedz for liberating science

Again no, liberating the free (as in free beer) access to papers. If you want to liberate science you need to pay the scientist for what they want to study (and not you)

Elitism a crucial foundation to Capitalism.

X Is a crucial foundation to Y is a transitive relationship.

>Elitism a crucial foundation to Capitalism

And Communism, but it's not the foundation....that is totally wrong.

meds now!

I don’t believe the historic record shows this to be true. The liberal democracies (all capitalist) of the west have the least amount of censorship in human history. Communist regimes would(and continue) send people to camps, monarchs would behead those who offended them, and empires would crucify dissenters. The actual material conditions of our history don’t really show capitalism as being particularly dependent on censorship compared to other governmental/economic systems.

Becoming rich in capitalism beyond what you can earn from your own labour often requires exploiting some imbalance in the system. That imbalance is very regularly something we find out about later and the general public considers unethical. Whether it's the sweatshops of the clothing industry, sitting on science like tobacco/oil, the predatory lending of the banks... Every industry does it and it relies on getting rich and getting out before people find out.