Comments Elsewhere

Yet more from the Property in Ideas controversy in LIBERTY: J. William Lloyd, on “Copyright.” (February 7, 1891). http://fair-use.org/liberty/1891/02/07/copyright From Lloyd: “Do I, then, deny copy­right? Yes and no. I deny false, legal copy­right, which is the priv­i­lege of the first man [sic] who ex­er­cis­es his fac­ul­ties in dis­cov­ery or pro­duc­tion to for­bid oth­ers to im­i­tate with­out per­mis­sion. This is re­al­ly not copy­right, but the in­va­sion of true copy­right, which is the in­alien­able right of every man [sic] to copy what­ev­er he pleas­es if he can, a part of that com­plete nat­ur­al lib­er­ty of the in­of­fen­sive for which we An­ar­chists per­sis­tent­ly stand. That there is no of­fence in copy­ing is proved by the sim­ple fact that, even if I think a thought sim­i­lar to the thought of my fel­l­ow, he [sic] is not there­by at all pre­vent­ed from think­ing it; if he copies my hoe, he does not by so doing take away my hoe, or pre­vent my using it, or mak­ing as many as I please like it. This con­sid­er­a­tion alone is all-suf­fi­cient to make true An­ar­chists en­dorse free copy­right, inas­much as all ac­tion not in­va­sive is truly free and jus­ti­fi­able. “Legal copy­right, patent-right, is only one form of that hydra head­ed mo­nop­oly which is re­duc­ing us all to slav­ery. This is the true copy­right, my right and your right to copy and re­pro­duce every­thing our sens­es com­pre­hend; any­thing less than this stops human growth and blocks the wheels of progress.”