Quote:
Originally Posted by NatCh
I'm not sure that I agree with the assertion that we have a "natural right" to copy.  |
So when the Constitution was written, the founders recognized that the natural order of things was for ideas to be copied. Copyright was intended as a temporary monopoly to delay copying for a short time, to give the creators incentive to create works without having them instantly duplicated.
Jefferson in particular has a great quote, that I think really highlights the 'natural' right to copy:
Quote:
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If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property.
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