# Primary Sources on Copyright - Record Viewer
Encyclopaedia Article on 'The Reprinting of Books', Leipzig and Halle (1740)

Source: Universitätsbibliothek Tübingen 34 A 398 [Reprint Edition of 1995]

Citation:
Encyclopaedia Article on 'The Reprinting of Books', Leipzig and Halle (1740), Primary Sources on Copyright (1450-1900), eds L. Bently & M. Kretschmer, www.copyrighthistory.org

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Reprinting of books is not really much better than a theft
carried out secretly and underhand. In general, it is carried
out only by those pseudo-publishers- or, rather, by mere
bunglers in the otherwise as noble as it is useful guild of
book publishers- who, driven in most cases by rampant
ambition or, rather, by a highly criminal greed for money,
venture to print and 'publish' (as they unwarrantedly assert
on the title-pages) such books as to which they have
neither rights nor permission, i.e. they undertake the
reprinting of works to which other publishers have full
rights. Now, the books which covetous reprinters make use
of may be either issued with a privilege or not. If the
rightful publishers have on their own received from
supreme persons the privilege to print a book and if, by
virtue of this grace which is accorded to them alone, others
are excluded from the same right, then it is pointless to ask
whether the reprinting of privileged books is permissible
for those who have not at all been issued with such
privileges. Even if there were no other ground on the basis
of which one could prove the wrongfulness of such
reprinting, acting against the explicit interdiction of those
whose mere will must be law for their subjects is quite
sufficient to constitute an act of obvious injustice. ¦


    


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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