EDITOR'S TABLE. 



73 



case, and dishonesty is the common 

 policy, the right of the individual may 

 be properly denied. But what is the 

 limit to this principle? How does ex- 

 isting dishonesty make an excuse for 

 still further dishonesty? If, because 

 the nations are governed by selfishness, 

 we may take an Englishman's literary 

 property without paying him for it, is 

 there not sufficient rascality, jobbery, 

 fraud, corruption, plunder, and general 

 selfishness in the operation of the Amer- 

 ican Government to justify the con- 

 sistent fleecing of an American author 

 also ? Again, Mr. Scott maintains that 

 because we send experts abroad to col- 

 lect information about manufacturing 

 processes, institutions, etc., and do not 

 pay for it, therefore he sees no " moral 

 wrong " in taking larger amounts of in- 

 formation in the shape of books without 

 paying for them. But do not Western 

 capitalists send on their experts to the 

 East to pick up information for West- 

 ern use in the construction and opera- 

 tion of manufacturing establishments 

 for which appropriated knowledge they 

 never think of paying? Would there, 

 therefore, be no moral wrong in taking 

 an American author's book on manu- 

 factures without compensation ? If the ! 

 logic is good for anything, it cuts up all 

 copyright, root and branch. 



Mr. Scott furthermore says, " The 

 whole system of laying duties upon 

 foreign merchandise is one of pure 

 selfishness, and as much a robbery or 

 piracy of the natural rights of the for- 

 eigner as anything yet done by an 

 American republisher." But because 

 we shackle our trade, and thus injure 

 the foreign manufacturer, certainly af- 

 fords no good reason for robbing a for- 

 eign author of his property. 



But Mr. Scott is most eminently 

 American in the following statement : 

 "The withholding of an international 

 copyright law does not take away from 

 them [foreign authors] what they never 

 possessed or had any right to claim. 

 The American republisher, therefore, 



in the absence of such a law, buys the 

 English book at the English price, and 

 thinks that he has done all that is re- 

 quired of him to become its absolute 

 owner, to do with it whatever the laws 

 of his country do not forbid. Who 

 shall say that among these rights is not 

 the right to reprint it ? " 



Must we not conclude that this par- 

 agraph betrays some perversion of the 

 moral sense ? The author who creates 

 the book by his labor, and makes it 

 valuable property, is denied even the 

 poor " right to claim " the ownership 

 of that property ; while the publisher, 

 who simply buys a single copy, becomes 

 its " absolute owner," with " the right 

 to reprint it" and to go on multiplying 

 it as long as he can make money out of 

 its market value. This is pretty rank 

 doctrine, and we do not see how those 

 who hold it need have much squeam- 

 ishness about the terms in which it 

 is characterized. Yet Mr. Scott's arti- 

 cle is a protest against the calling of 

 American republishes pirates, as he al- 

 leges is done by their foreign " calum- 

 niators." 



Now, there are two questions here : 

 (1 .) Is the term " piracy " properly ap- 

 plicable to any fcrm of republication in 

 this country? And (2), if so, who is 

 chargeable with it ? The taking by one 

 person of another person's property 

 without consent or payment is held as 

 a crime, is called stealing, and he who 

 takes it is known as a thief. If such 

 appropriation is accompanied by vio- 

 lence, it is commonly called robbery. 

 If the property has that peculiar form 

 which is termed literary, and is appro- 

 priated by indirection, as where the 

 embodiment of it is indefinitely copied, 

 the taking of it, without permission and 

 without remuneration, has in it the pe- 

 culiar meanness which has led to its 

 being metaphorically branded as "pi- 

 racy." It is the flagrant wrong of the 

 transaction that is marked by the 

 term of reprobation, and those are pi- 

 rates who are guilty of perpetrating it. 



