Project Gutenberg's International Copyright, by George Haven Putnam

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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: ASCII

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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.

I