 | The Law of Intellectual Property — Part 1, Chapter 2, Section 15By Lysander Spooner (1855) |
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| The Law of Intellectual Property — Part 1, Chapter 2, Section 15By Lysander Spooner (1855) |
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Individualist Anarchist and Unitarian Christian Abolitionist
: The greatest natural rights thinker of the 19th century was the American lawyer and maverick individualist Lysander Spooner. He responded to the tumultuous events of his era, including the Panic of 1837 and the Civil War, with pamphlets about natural rights, slavery, money, trial by jury and other timely subjects. (From: Jim Powell Bio.)
• "The doctrine that the majority have a right to rule proceeds upon the principle that minorities have no right in the government; for certainly the minority cannot be said to have any rights in a government so long as the majority alone determine what their rights shall be." (From: "Free Political Institutions," by Lysander Spooner.)
• "Again, the doctrine that the minority ought to submit to the will of the majority proceeds, not upon the principle that government is formed by voluntary association and for an agreed purpose on the part of all who contribute to its support, but upon the presumption that all government must be practically a state of war and plunder between opposing parties..." (From: "Free Political Institutions," by Lysander Spooner.)
• "There is no particle of truth in the notion that the majority have a right to rule, or exercise arbitrary power over, the minority simply because the former are more numerous than the latter. Two men have no more natural right to rule one than one has to rule two." (From: "Free Political Institutions," by Lysander Spooner.)
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Part 1, Chapter 2, Section 15
Another objection is, that ideas cannot be seized, on any legal process.
Admitting, for the sake of the argument, what is probably true, that no way can be devised, by which a man's property, in ideas, can be taken on legal process, that fact interposes no obstacle whatever to their being treated, by the law, as property. There are many kinds of property, which the law protects, but which, nevertheless, the law cannot seize. For example. Reputation is property, and is protected by the law; yet it cannot be seized and sold, to pay a fine, or satisfy a debt. A man's health, strength, and beauty are property; and the law punishes an injury done to them; yet they cannot be seized and sold, on legal process. All a man's intellectual faculties and powers, are property; yet they cannot be taken for a debt, or confiscated for crime. Music is property; and a single hour's melody will often bring thousands of dollars in the market. Yet it cannot be taken in execution for a debt. Labor, of all kinds, is property; but no kind of labor whatever can be seized by the law.
This objection, like all the others, is therefore without foundation.
I have thus answered, or attempted to answer, every objection, worthy of an answer, (except two—one to be noticed in the next, and the other in the succeeding, chapter,) that I remember ever to have read or heard, against the right of a man, on principles of natural law, to an absolute and perpetual property in his ideas.
Individualist Anarchist and Unitarian Christian Abolitionist
: The greatest natural rights thinker of the 19th century was the American lawyer and maverick individualist Lysander Spooner. He responded to the tumultuous events of his era, including the Panic of 1837 and the Civil War, with pamphlets about natural rights, slavery, money, trial by jury and other timely subjects. (From: Jim Powell Bio.)
• "Again, the doctrine that the minority ought to submit to the will of the majority proceeds, not upon the principle that government is formed by voluntary association and for an agreed purpose on the part of all who contribute to its support, but upon the presumption that all government must be practically a state of war and plunder between opposing parties..." (From: "Free Political Institutions," by Lysander Spooner.)
• "There is no particle of truth in the notion that the majority have a right to rule, or exercise arbitrary power over, the minority simply because the former are more numerous than the latter. Two men have no more natural right to rule one than one has to rule two." (From: "Free Political Institutions," by Lysander Spooner.)
• "The doctrine that the majority have a right to rule proceeds upon the principle that minorities have no right in the government; for certainly the minority cannot be said to have any rights in a government so long as the majority alone determine what their rights shall be." (From: "Free Political Institutions," by Lysander Spooner.)
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Part 1, Chapter 2, Section 15
