J’ai defini la propriété. Quant à la définition du privilège, tout le monde la connaît: c’est une loi privée, privata lex. Ai-je besoin d’ajouter, d’une part, qu’il existe des privilèges parfaitement légitimes; et, d’autre part, que souscrire au dogme de la propriété littéraire, c’est décider, d’un mot, que le monopole des productions de l’intelligence sera concentré, à perpétuité, entre un petit nombre de privilégiés.
EXTRACTS ON INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT.
I refer to the following extracts, wishing they accorded more with the views I myself espouse. It is about twenty years since Mr. Cobden told me he was opposed to Copyright. Whether the philanthropist, statesman, and patriot changed his opinion, I do not know, but I trust my propositions are such as many profound admirers of his will find consistent with his policy and principles:—
EXTRACT FROM THE COBDEN CLUB PRIZE ESSAY, BY DR. LEAVITT, OF NEW YORK. 1869.
When the people of these two nations shall all read freely the same books, and when the audience of both English and American authors shall be the whole English-speaking public throughout the world, the petty jealousies, the trivial misapprehensions, the unhappy distrusts, which dishonour the intelligence of the age, will be known no more....
The proposed International Copyright has an important bearing in this connexion. The object of this copyright is to give to the authors of books, or their assigns, the exclusive right of publication in both countries, in order to keep up the price in both. That this enhancement of the price in one country of books produced in the other will have a tendency to limit the mutual circulation of current literature, will not be questioned.
Whether the proper encouragement of authors requires this to be done, is the point which the two Governments should first settle. Copyright does not exist, except as created by law, for it begins only when the steps are taken which the law prescribes, and it continues only so long as the law extends it. There is, therefore, no natural right involved. A man’s thoughts are his own only so long as he keeps them to himself. When he has uttered them they become the thoughts of all who receive them, and who thenceforth use them at pleasure. The title to a thought by original invention is no better than the title to an asteroid by original discovery. The clothing of a man’s thoughts in language no more entitles him to their exclusive publication, after they are gone forth to the public, than a man’s careful study of the clothing of his person entitles him to forbid the imitation of his garb and gait as he walks the streets. The law creates Copyright on the assumption that the public good will be promoted by the encouragement thus granted to authors to publish their works....
The pecuniary return realised from their publications is neither the only nor the chief encouragement by which authors of merit are induced to publish their works. The good they may do to mankind, the reputation they may acquire, and the satisfaction of seeing their thoughts widely diffused and received, and made a part of the mental wealth of their country and age, outweigh a thousandfold, to an enlarged and generous mind, the value of the material silver and gold yielded by their Copyright. And it cannot be doubted that these higher returns are directly increased by freedom of publication unrestricted by Copyright; because cheapness of price, and variety in the forms of publication, are prime elements in the widest circulation of books....
It is impossible to exaggerate the value of this international exchange of ideas through the medium of books, as a means of that general assimilation of thought and life which is the highest guaranty of political and commercial intercourse and permanent friendship between the two countries. While each nation, for the most part, buries its own literary trash, and each retains the exclusive circulation of books adapted specially to its own use, the whole volume of the best thoughts of one country have now their widest diffusion, through their freedom of publication in the other.