International Copyright

Copyright, by George Haven
Putnam

Project Gutenberg's International Copyright, by George Haven Putnam
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
Title: International Copyright Considered in some of its Relations to
Ethics and Political Economy
Author: George Haven Putnam
Release Date: September 16, 2007 [EBook #22619]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK
INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT ***

Produced by A www.PGDP.net Volunteer, Dave Morgan, Richard J.
Shiffer and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
http://www.pgdp.net

[Transcriber's Note: Every effort has been made to replicate this text as
faithfully as possible, including obsolete and variant spellings and other

inconsistencies.]

INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT
CONSIDERED IN SOME OF ITS RELATIONS TO ETHICS AND
POLITICAL ECONOMY
BY
GEORGE HAVEN PUTNAM
AN ADDRESS DELIVERED JANUARY 29TH, 1878, BEFORE THE
NEW YORK FREE-TRADE CLUB
NEW YORK
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 182 FIFTH AVENUE 1879.
COPYRIGHT, 1879, BY G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS.

INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT.[1]
[1] A paper read January 29th, 1878, before the New York Free-Trade
Club.
The questions relating to copyright belong naturally to the sphere of
political economy. They have to do with the laws governing production,
and with the principles regulating supply and demand; and they are
directly dependent upon a due determining of the proper functions of
legislation, and of the relations which legislation, having for its end the
welfare of the community as a whole, ought to bear towards production
and trade.
As students of economic science, we recognize the fact that, in all its
phases, it is in reality based upon two or three very simple propositions,
such as:

Two plus two make four.
Two from one you can't.
That which a man has created by his own labor is his own, to do what
he will with, subject only to his proportionate contribution to the cost
of carrying on the organization of the community under the protection
of which his labor has been accomplished, and to the single limitation
that the results of his labor shall not be used to the detriment of his
fellow-men.
It is not in the power of legislators to make or to modify the laws of
trade; it is their business to act in accordance with these laws.
Economic science is, then, but the systematizing, on the basis of a few
generally accepted principles, of the relations of men as regards their
labor and the results of their labor, namely, their property. There is
therefore an essential connection between the systems governing all
these relations, however varied they may be. Soundness of thought in
regard to one group of them leads to soundness of thought about the
others.
Interested as we are in the work of bringing the community to a sound
and logical standard of economic faith and practice, it is important for
us to recognize and to emphasize the essential relations connecting as
well the different scientific positions as the various sets of fallacious
assumptions. Further, we can hardly lay too much stress upon the
oft-repeated dictum that a system may be correct in theory yet
pernicious in practice, maintaining, as we do, that where the application
of a theory brings failure the result is due either to the unsoundness of
the theory or to some blundering in its application.
We claim, also, that with reference to the rights of labor, property, and
capital, the free-trader is the true protectionist. It is the free-trader who
demands for the laborer the fullest, freest use of the results of his labor,
and for the capitalist the widest scope in the employment of his capital;
and it is he who asserts that the paternal authority which restricts the
workingman in the free exchange of the products of his craft, which

limits the directions and the methods for the use of capital,
appropriates--or, to speak more strictly, destroys--a portion of the value
of the labor and the capital, and prevents the ownership from being real
or complete.
Authors are laborers, and their works are, as fully as is the case with
any other class of laborers, the results of their own productive faculties
and energies.
Literary laborers lay claim, therefore, to the same protection for a full
and free enjoyment of the results of their labors as is demanded by
those who work with their hands and who are in the strict sense of the
term manufacturers. Such enjoyment would include the right to sell
their productions in the open market where they pleased and how they
pleased, and if this right to a free exchange is restricted within political
boundaries, is hampered by artificial