New-York tribune., 1886-05-30
SENATOR CHaCE on COPYRIGHT.

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The letter of Senator Chacc Oh his Interna-
tOnal Copyright Report (piinied on our sixth
page this morning,) contains so many ex-
cellent reflections upon the moral obligation OF
protecting the rights of authors that are
more than ever surpl .sed at the errors into
which he seems to have fallen. He admits that
an author has right to his book, and yet de-
clares that our paramount duty is to protect
that right only so far as we can do so without
interfering with the income of our own labor.
This, as we have said, is dishonest principle |;
our paramount duty" in such a case is to give
every man his own; labor is entitled to no pro-
lection except such as may be consonant with
respect for the rights OF others. Mr.. Chace CT
course does not deny this, and he asks us to ex-
plain his startling proposition by taking 1t in
connection with other passages of his Report.
He has a right to demand that whatever he says
shall be interpreted by the context but after
reading his letter we cannot see that we have
done him any injustice.
His fundamental mistake is one which has
been exposed over and over again by authOri-
ties on copyright and especially by long line
of llustrious judicial decisions. An authors
property in his production, he says, is not based
upon natural right, but is merely special
privilege granted by the State for special
reasons. In this opinion Senator Chace is con
tradicted by the uniform rulings of the highest
courts of England (from which We get all our
precedents in copyrighO for more than two CEN
turies by the opinions of Chief Justice Mans
field, Sir William Blackstone, and other distin-
guished iurists; and by the language of the
first copyright statutes enacted in the States of
the American Union. The authors absolute
right 20 his book and to the exclusive pubica-
ton of it was universally recognized by the
common law as n right Of property based upon
natural Justice. This was enforced for genera
tons before any statute of copyright was in
existence The history of legislation on that
subject shows that tic first statute was enacted
not 20 create II privilege but To furnish more
efectual safeguards for a hight already exist
ing; and when, many years afterward, the
British House Of Lords decided that the statu
had extlnguished the right at common law, that
very decision again affirmed in the plainest
manner the basis of the authors right in
natural justice. The decision of the House of
Lords. made before the Revolution, has neces-
sarily been accepted as precedent here.
How then does Mr.. Chace Justify himself 7
Why, by distinction between the authors
right to his book as chattel, and the right to
reproduce his book, which he says il a legisla-
tive privilege. A right to his book ? Oh, yes,
to the material object, the paper and the ink
constituting a single copy he may have that
he and his heirs forever, and the common law
will protect it; but let the book once get out of
his hands and, so far as abstract right goes,
there is no rea son why anybody should not re-
produce it and take all the benefit of it. In
other words, his property is his own. so long as
he does not attempt to use it the moment he
uses it, it becomes the property of everybody