A letter written by Thomas Jefferson to Isaac McPherson in 1813 has become canonized into the copyright skepticism movement. You’re probably familiar with the letter, which reads in part:
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.
This letter has become, in the words of James Boyle, “very famous in the world of the digerati.”1 Just this past week, law professor David Post referred to this letter in a talk on Jefferson, copyright, and the net, calling it “one of the foundational documents for intellectual property law in the US.”
Copyhype (full article)
October 24th, 2011 at 11:02 pm
Leaving aside the distinction between patents and copyright, the usual quotation from Jefferson is open to the objection that its last two sentences are simply false. Those two sentences appear to claim, using the metaphor of a lighted taper, that the communication of ideas does not harm the person who communicates them. In many circumstances this simply isn’t true. Notably, if you have an idea for a valuable industrial process, or a powerful new theory of stock market prices, their value to you is greatly diminished if they become generally known. It is precisely their exclusivity that gives them much of their commercial value.
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