Exclusive right

“ Preparation of Derivative Works The exclusive right to prepare derivative works, specified separately in clause (2) of section 106, overlaps the exclusive right of reproduction to some extent. It is broader than that right, however, in the sense that reproduction requires fixation in copies or phonorecords, whereas the preparation of a derivative work, such as a ballet, pantomime, or improvised performance, may be an infringement even though nothing is ever fixed in tangible form. ”

“ We have seen that there are two rights endued with this intrinsic character—viz., that of absolute control over one's own self or person, and that of similar control over whatever else has by honest means come into one's exclusive possession, or become due or owing to him exclusively ”

“ One of the mistakes oftenest committed, and which are the sources of the greatest practical errors in human affairs, is that of supposing that the same name always stands for the same aggregation of ideas. No word has been the subject of more of this kind of misunderstanding than the word property. It denotes in every state of society the largest powers of exclusive use or exclusive control over things (and sometimes, unfortunately, over persons) which the law accords, or which custom, in that state of society, recognizes ”

“ For the essence of legal right is, as I have frequently remarked already, action. What the air is to the flame, freedom of action is to the feeling of legal right. Refuse it this freedom, and the feeling dies. ”

“ But if in the formation of a constitution, we depart from the principle of equal rights, or attempt any modification of it, we plunge into a labyrinth of difficulties from which there is no way out, but by retreating. Where are we to stop? Or by what principle are we to find out the point to stop out, that shall discriminate between men of the same country, part of whom shall be free, and the rest not? If property is to be made the criterion, it is a total departure from every moral principle of liberty, because it is attaching rights to mere matter, and making man the agent of that matter. ”

“ But it is clearly laid down as a fundamental principle of the all-pervasive common law, that rights given by the Creator are unalienable, [Pg 17] and that no human being, however emphatically he may declare, or will, or agree to the contrary, may by any possible act of any other human being or of any set of human beings, whether calling themselves a government or not, or by any possible means, deprive himself, or be deprived of the right of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness—these being necessarily incidental to the original right of equality. ”

“ The great principle of the common law, which is equally the teaching of Christian morality, so to use one's property as not to injure others, forbids any other application or use of the rights and powers conferred. ”

“ That these rights are equal is so familiar and stale an expression that it hardly need be spoken. "All men are created equal," each having rights, that are inalienable, and each having the right to resist the encroachment on his rights by another. ”

“ It seems to be an inevitable conclusion that, subject only to the limitations just mentioned, we are entitled to do what we please with our own, and this also seems to be in accord with the principles of justice, of which, indeed, the law of equal freedom is the embodiment. But does this cover the whole extent of our obligation? Every right has for its correlative a duty to be performed. Are all such duties included in the limitations upon rights that have been mentioned? ”

“ I shall, therefore, says a writer on government, assume it as an incontrovertible position, as a first principle, that the right of private opinion, which is, in fact, no other than the right of private judgment upon any subject presented to the mind, is a sacred right, with which society can, on no pretense, authoritatively interfere, without a violation of the first principles of the law of nature. ”

“ FROM the Nature of civil Liberty, thus delineated, the Nature of Licentiousness will easily be fixed: Being indeed no other than "Every Desire carry'd into Action, which in any Respect violates those equal Laws, established for the common Benefit of the Whole." ”

“ If 'sovereign' = 'general will,' the distinction of 'de facto' and 'de jure' is inapplicable to it. A certain desire either is or is not the general will. A certain interest is or is not an interest in the common good. There is no sense in saying that such desire or interest is general will 'de jure' but not 'de facto,' or vice versa. On the other hand, if 'sovereign' = the supreme law-making and law-enforcing power, the distinction is equally inapplicable to it. ”

“ The rights themselves are regarded as the natural and inalienable rights belonging to every individual, or as political, and based upon or arising from principles inherent in the very nature of a system of free government. ”

“ In saying that only among 'persons' can there come to be rights, and that every 'person' should have rights, I have been careful to explain that I use 'person' in the moral, not merely in the legal, sense. ”

“ When we call anything a person's right, we mean that he has a valid claim on society to protect him in the possession of it, either by the force of law, or by that of education and opinion. If he has what we consider a sufficient claim, on whatever account, to have something guaranteed to him by society, we say that he has a right to it. If we desire to prove that anything does not belong to him by right, we think this done as soon as it is admitted that society ought not to take measures for securing it to him, but should leave it to chance, or to his own exertions. ”

“ The objection to calling them 'innate' or 'natural,' when once it is admitted on the one side that rights are not arbitrary creations of law or custom but that there are certain powers which ought to be secured as rights, on the other hand that there are no rights antecedent to society, none that men brought with them into a society which they contracted to form, is mainly one of words. ”

“ In framing our language, therefore, we may say, that all rights are the rights of persons; but they may be rights to, either persons, or things.
All that men desire, either with persons or things, is to render them subservient to the end, for which they are desired as means. They are so rendered by certain powers over them. All rights, then, when the term is closely investigated, are found to mean powers; powers with respect to persons, and powers with respect to things. What any one means when he says that a thing is his property, is, that he has the power of using it in a certain way. ”

“ Are we at liberty, upon any principles of reason, or common sense, to adopt a restrictive meaning, which will defeat an avowed object of the constitution, when another equally natural and more appropriate to the object is before us? ”

“ Yet he ventured to criticize that very phrase; for liberty ought not to be American, but human; else it is no longer a right, but a privilege; and privilege can nowhere be permanent. The nature of a privilege (said he) is exclusiveness, that of a principle is communicative. Liberty is a principle: its community is its security; exclusiveness is its doom. ”

“ I hope the reasonableness and equity of this clause is so incontestably apparent, that it will find no opposition; for what can be more cruel, unjust, or oppressive, than to punish men for neglect of a law which they have endeavoured to obey. ”

“ The rule of law, Restrict your freedom through the conception of the freedom of all other persons with whom you come in contact! receives, it is true, a new sanction for conscience through the Moral Law; but the deduction of this sanction forms a part of the Science of Morality, and does not belong to the Science of Rights. ”

“ An enquiry into the origin of Rights will demonstrate to us that rights are not gifts from one man to another, nor from one class of men to another; for who is he who could be the first giver, or by what principle, or on what authority, could he possess the right of giving? A declaration of rights is not a creation of them, nor a donation of them. ”

“ That is a matter of individual taste and temperament; one loves contention more, and the other peace; from the standpoint of law both conclusions are to be equally respected; for the law leaves to every one who has a legal right, the choice of asserting his right or of surrendering it. ”

“ Not knowing, therefore, any other person, he may extend his freedom as far as he chooses, and take possession of the whole world. His right is really—if original rights ever could be real rights—infinite, for the condition which would limit it does not exist. ”

“ The order of castes, the order of rank, simply formulates the supreme law of life itself; the separation of the three types is necessary to the maintenance of society, and to the evolution of higher types, and the highest types—the inequality of rights is essential to the existence of any rights at all.—A right is a privilege. Every one enjoys the privileges that accord with his state of existence. ”

“ The degree of energy with which the feeling of legal right reacts against an infringement of legal right is, in my eyes, a sure measure of the importance which individuals, a class or people, really attach, both to the law in general and to a special branch of it, for themselves and their special aim in life. ”

“ In this complicated term, it is obvious that there is involved, on the one hand, the idea of the person to whom a share is allotted, and on the other hand, an idea of the things which are allotted. The one is the owner of the right, the person to whom it belongs; the other is the object of the right, namely, the person or thing over which certain powers are given.
All rights of course are rights to objects of human desire,—of nothing else need shares be allotted. All objects which men desire, are desired, either as the end, or as means. The pleasurable state of the mind is the end ”

“ These are all the rights which any man can ever possess, even in the most complex society. A right is nothing more or less than a defined natural power. It may vary in the degree of its definition. It may be enforced by all the authority of the whole community, and be called a legal right. It may be enforced only by the pressure of the opinion of the community or of a class, and be called a moral right. ”

“ It is that of the general will, which can neither be alienated nor represented. Is the prince above the law? The answer is, He is a member of the state, and cannot be so. Can the law be unjust? No one can be unjust to himself: therefore not the whole people to the whole people. How can we be free and yet subject to the laws? The laws are the register of our own will. (Ib.) Laws, in short, are properly those general 'conditions of civil association' which the associates impose on themselves. ”

“ If to question everything be unlawful and dangerous, we had better undeclare our independence at once; for what the Declaration means is the right to question everything, even the truth of its own fundamental proposition. ”

“ In dealing, then, with such phrases as 'jura personarum' and 'personal rights,' we must keep in view the difference between the legal and ethical sense of the proposition that all rights are personal, or subsist as between persons. ”

“ In all this our representation of the conception of Rights we have refrained from expressly refuting those who attempt to deduce the conception of Rights from the Moral Law, because, as soon as the true deduction of that conception has been established, every impartial mind will accept it as the true one without demanding that the incorrectness of other deductions be shown up. ”

“ But who is to proclaim the common will, thus determined in all respects, regarding the rights of the individual citizen as well as regarding the punishment to be inflicted upon their transgression? Who is to interpret this necessary arrangement and agreement? The masses themselves would be the most improper body for it, and by counting together the expressed wills of the individuals, the true common will could scarcely be obtained in its purity. ”

“ Rights, properly so-called, are corollaries from the law of equal freedom, and "so far is it from its being true, as some claim, that the warrant for what are properly called rights is derived from law, it is, conversely, true that law derives its warrant from them." ”

“ The point before us is not why we are under obligation to do a right act, but why the act is right. Manifestly the rightness of the proposed action is the ground of the obligation to do it; that is, the obligation is grounded on the right. ”

“ Right, therefore, has a personal or selfish reference, as it is founded on the law which determines a man’s actions in regard to his own being and well-being; and political justice is that which assigns the limits of these individual rights on their compatibility or incompatibility with each other in society. Right, in a word, is the duty which each man owes to himself ”

“ It may be taken to imply that rights and obligations can exist in a 'state of nature'—a state in which every individual is free to do as he likes—; that legal rights and obligations derive their authority from a voluntary act by which individuals contracted themselves out of this state; and that the individual retains from the state of nature certain rights with which no legal obligations ought to conflict. ”

“ The dividing line will remain obscure if we deal with empty abstract rights instead of worldly gains and losses, if we indulge in doctrinaire talk about 'rights' and 'remedies', instead of giving these concepts a content that carries meaning to the understanding of men. ”

“ The effect of ignorance of the causes of right, equity, law, and justice, is to make custom and example the rule of actions, as with children, or to induce the setting of custom against reason, and reason against custom, whereby the doctrine of right and wrong is perpetually disputed, both by the pen, and by the sword. ”

“ An objection might fairly be made to distinguishing one class of rights as 'personal,' on the ground that all rights are so; not merely in the legal sense of 'person' according to which the proposition is a truism, since every right implies a person as its subject, but in the moral sense, since all rights depend on that capacity in the individual for being determined by a conception of well-being, as an object at once for himself and for others, which constitutes personality in the moral sense. ”