point — Gury-Ballerini, Compendium of Moral Theology (8th ed., 1884)
Point IV. On the Dominion of Authors
- It is certain that any man by natural right has a right in the fruit of his industry and of his talent. For if a thing fructifies for the owner, a fortiori this ought to be true of internal faculties, since nothing can be more proper to man. Therefore anyone can use for his own advantage those things which he has devised by his talent in the sciences. Therefore the inventor of some art has a strict right that his secret not be stolen and, against his will, be published in public; and if this happens, the one causing damage is altogether bound to restitution according to the measure of the injury inflicted. But the difficulty is whether an author, once his works have been emitted into the light, can preserve them as proper to himself, and exclude others from the use of them 1. Hence:
1 Understand "from the use" which the Author of the work reserves for himself; what sort this is is gathered from the following questions.
- Questions. Q. 1. Whether he violates another's right who publishes a manuscript work in print without the author's consent?
Resp. Affirmatively. For this is openly repugnant to natural right; and among all it is established that as long as the work has not been emitted into the light, it remains entirely under the dominion of the author. Therefore there is no doubt that such a usurper is bound to restitution and to compensation for damages. - Carrière, n. 61.
Q. 2. What must be said of him who would publish in print the public lectures of some professor, or the sermon of an orator?
Resp. One must respond as in the preceding question. For to teach publicly or to preach is not to hand over one's work to another for publishing and selling. Thus judged the Tribunal of Appeals of Paris, February 28, 1801. - See Carrière, n. 61.
- Q. 3. Whether he who has published a book in print has the right of preventing anyone from committing it to the press and selling it with damage to the author or to the bookseller to whom the author transmitted his right?
Resp. 1. Affirmatively, by positive right in force in France and in most other places.
Resp. 2. If it is a matter of natural right, it is disputed. More probably it seems that an author does not have a perpetual right in his work, because a thing once handed over to the community becomes by that very fact of common right 2. Yet it is consonant with equity that by positive right some privilege be granted to the author for a certain time, or for his life.
2 This reason perhaps would prove that it is lawful for anyone to take harvests or grapes for himself at will, because the owner of the field or vineyard cannot guard them. Certainly if the law of nature itself requires that to each one there be preserved his right in the fruit of his industry and talent, as was set down beforehand (n. 566), and no fruit of industry in our matter can be received unless the work is handed over, as they say, to the community, surely the same law of nature requires that this handing over or publishing of the work to the community not deprive the author of the fruit of his industry.
Q. 4. Whether a recently published book can be committed to type in a neighboring kingdom without the author's permission?
Resp. It seems more probably that one must affirm, because the author by natural right can claim no certain right 3, and therefore cannot complain of violated strict dominion. The same must be said of the inventors of various arts. - Thus Carrière, ibid., etc. Moreover, in many places provision has been made excellently by treaties admitted among various dominions, by force of which the author can enjoy the same right elsewhere as in his own fatherland.
3 This general assertion likewise is repugnant to the principle which was established as certain in n. 566. For this reason the agreement of diverse republics is especially congruent with natural right, so that privileges granted anywhere to authors may also be preserved elsewhere. If this agreement is not admitted somewhere, the sanction of a violated duty will indeed be lacking there, but not the duty altogether. Nevertheless, since the publication of books in very distant regions less impedes the author from receiving a suitable fruit of his industry, that principle established above seems to press less as regards them.