Page:Copyright, Its History And Its Law (1912).djvu/37

 It is at the moment of publication that the un-disputed possessory right passes over into the much disputed right to multiply copies, and that the vexed question of the true theory of copyright property arises. The broad view of literary property holds that the one kind of copyright is involved in the other. The right to have is the right to use. An author cannot use — that is, get beneficial results from — his work, without offering copies for sale. He would be otherwise like the owner of a loaf of bread who was told that the bread was his until he wanted to eat it. That sale would seem to contain "an im- plied undertaking" that the buyer has liberty to use his copy, but not to multiply it. Peculiarly in this kind of property the right of ownership consists in the right to prevent use of one's property by others without the owner's consent. The right of exclusion seems to be indeed a part of ownership. In the case of land the owner is entitled to prevent trespass, to the extent of a shot-gun, and in the same way the law recognizes the right to use violence, even to the extreme, in preventing others from possession of one's own property of any kind. The owner of a literary property has, however, no physical means of defence or redress ; the very act of publication by which he gets a market for his productions opens him to the danger of wider multiplication and pub- lication without his consent. There is, therefore, no kind of property which is so dependent on the help of the law for the protection of the real owner.

The inherent right of authors is a right at what is called common law — that is, natural or custom-ary law. The common law, says Kent, "includes those principles, usages, and rules of action applica- ble to the government and security of person and property which do not rest for their authority upon