# Primary Sources on Copyright - Record Viewer
Fichte: Proof of the Unlawfulness of Reprinting, Berlin (1793)

Source: Berlinische Monatschrift (1793), 443-482

Citation:
Fichte: Proof of the Unlawfulness of Reprinting, Berlin (1793), Primary Sources on Copyright (1450-1900), eds L. Bently & M. Kretschmer, www.copyrighthistory.org

Back | Record | Images | Commentaries: [1]
Translation only | Transcription only | Show all | Bundled images as pdf
            Chapter 1 Page 4 of 41 total

446

This explains why our proof will
unavoidably have a somewhat sophistical
appearance, one we will however do our
best to polish up. Let the reader not
become suspicious on this account, for
our proof is most easy to clarify and
confirm in concreto. - There are after all
a good many maxims in circulation on
this subject that all informed and
thoughtful people with no vested interest
in the opposite view accept and according
to which they judge others' and their
own actions. Now, if all of these maxims
can be easily and naturally deduced from
the principle we will be asserting, then this
will serve as a test of its validity, and it
will become clear that it is this very
principle that was at the root of all our
judgments in these matters, however obscure
and undeveloped they may have been.
      To begin with, then, the principle: We
are the rightful owners of a thing the
appropriation of which by another is physically
impossible. This is a proposition that is
immediately self-evident and needs no further
proof. And now to the question: Is there
anything of this sort in a book?


    

No Transcription available.

Our Partners

Copyright statement

You may copy and distribute the translations and commentaries in this resource, or parts of such translations and commentaries, in any medium, for non-commercial purposes as long as the authorship of the commentaries and translations is acknowledged, and you indicate the source as Bently & Kretschmer (eds), Primary Sources on Copyright (1450-1900) (www.copyrighthistory.org).

You may not publish these documents for any commercial purposes, including charging a fee for providing access to these documents via a network. This licence does not affect your statutory rights of fair dealing.

Although the original documents in this database are in the public domain, we are unable to grant you the right to reproduce or duplicate some of these documents in so far as the images or scans are protected by copyright or we have only been able to reproduce them here by giving contractual undertakings. For the status of any particular images, please consult the information relating to copyright in the bibliographic records.

Primary Sources on Copyright (1450-1900) is co-published by Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge, 10 West Road, Cambridge CB3 9DZ, UK and CREATe, School of Law, University of Glasgow, 10 The Square, Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK