0005librokant

Roberto Casati

Il libro non è una sedia

 (Maggio 2000)

[Spesso nelle discussioni sul web si tende a usare concetti del mondo reale (‘comunità’, ‘linguaggio’, ‘portale’) per capire la realtà virtuale. Credo che questo sia un errore. Si deve fare il contrario: usare categorie del web per capire il web, e soprattutto per capire come il web possa cambiare il mondo extravirtuale.]

Che cos’è un libro? Che cos’è un contenuto culturale? Perché i contenuti culturali hanno un’economia, e come è possibile valutarli?

In un articolo molto sottile pubblicato nel 1785, Immanuel Kant aveva discusso del diritto d’autore. La sua idea è semplice. Alcuni modi di copiare un testo sono forme di pirateria, altre no. Il mio editore fa molte copie del mio libro e non è un pirata. Il mio vicino di casa copia il mio libro e lo rivende, ed è un pirata. Dov’è la differenza? Secondo Kant i libri generano un diritto di impedire a chiunque altro di copiarli o leggerli in pubblico, e questo diritto può venir ceduto a un editore dietro compenso. Ma da dove viene il diritto? Per Kant emana dalla natura stessa del libro, che non è una cosa come le altre. Produrre un libro non è come produrre una sedia. Kant pensa addirittura che i quadri, a differenza dei libri, possano venir imitati e riprodotti senza che si debba al loro autore alcun compenso.

Kant si preoccupa di trovare una buona giustificazione del diritto d’autore perché avverte che la retribuzione di parole e idee non sia affatto pacifica. Se le idee e le parole sono una merce, sono una merce strana. Se costruisco una sedia e te la offro, la sedia se ne va con te. Per questo è facile vendere e comprare sedie: il trasferimento dell’oggetto può riassumere il trasferimento dei diritti che ho sull’oggetto. Ma se ti canto una canzone, il testo e la musica non mi lasciano quando arrivano alle tue orecchie. Per questo è difficile capire come vendere una canzone. L’invenzione del diritto di copia ha permesso di trasformare la vendita di un prodotto astratto in quella di un prodotto concreto - un disco, un volume cartaceo, un supporto fotografico. Il trucco sta nel fatto che il trasferimento dei diritti è limitato. Quando comprate la mia sedia, ci fate quel che volete. Quando vi vendo il mio libro, potete regalarlo a un amico o bruciarlo, ma non potete farne copie e rivenderlo a vostra volta.

Tutto questo meccanismo di protezione del libro dà per scontato che i contenuti culturali siano merci - per quanto strane. Ma non è affatto detto che debba essere così. Se nessuno fosse disposto a pagare le canzoni non avrebbe molto senso cercare di venderle e inventare un modo per venderle. Libri e canzoni - e articoli di giornale, e immagini - diventerebbero prodotti culturali non mercificabili. L’ipotesi sembra assurda? Ci sono sempre stati contenuti culturali che non vengono affatto venduti: canti improvvisati durante una passeggiata, disegni regalati, libri stampati a spese dell’autore, lettere d’amore, aneddoti durante le conversazioni. Perché pagare per le canzoni o i libri? Forse perché hanno un valore? Non è certo un valore intrinseco: se diventassimo tutti analfabeti, i libri non varrebbero più granché. Un eventuale valore dipende da circostanze esterne, e vorrei mostrare che queste circostanze stanno evaporando.

Veniamo al punto fondamentale: come facciamo a conoscere il valore di un contenuto culturale?

I prodotti ‘concreti’, come le sedie, sono soggetti a certe leggi di mercato, e questo permette di valutarli relativamente ad altri prodotti concreti. Se confronto il prezzo di una sedia con quello di un fiammifero, ottengo un’informazione sul valore relativo, in un determinato contesto, della sedia e del fiammifero. Se per esempio la sedia costa cento lire e il fiammifero cento milioni, mi verrà il sospetto che ci sia penuria di fiammiferi e eccesso di sedie. Il sistema dei prezzi funziona come una miniera di informazioni. Sappiamo che il sistema può venir distorto, in particolare in situazioni in cui il mercato non è libero. In un’economia pianificata il sistema dei prezzi non informa granché, dato che il fiammifero può costare cento milioni, e la sedia cento lire, anche se c’è eccesso di fiammiferi e penuria di sedie. Ora i prodotti culturali non sono mai stati veramente soggetti al libero mercato. In effetti, la loro selezione, il marketing con cui vengono offerti al pubblico, la presenza di innumerevoli mediatori tra l’autore e il lettore, la pressione di istituzioni accademiche, ecclesiastiche (si pensi all’imprimatur) o statali (si pensi ai libri di certi notabili politici stampati a spese del contribuente e distribuiti nelle scuole medie), l’insufficienza o la parzialità dei recensori - tutti questi fattori distorcono qualsiasi tentativo di ottenere un’informazione affidabile sul valore dei prodotti culturali semplicemente guardando alla loro vita commerciale. Prendete la monografia accademica. Gli editori accademici tendono a richiedere contributi per la pubblicazione, o la garanzia di certo numero di "adozioni" da parte degli studenti dell’autore, o invitano l’autore a comprare un certo numero di copie; oppure, in casi leggermente meno incivili, hanno linee editoriali dettate da scambi di favori tra i membri dei comitati di lettura o più semplicemente da mode culturali. I contenuti culturali non sono come le sedie perché la loro economia è lontanissima dal libero mercato e non è in grado di riflettere il loro valore. Se servisse una controprova, pensate alla reazione del vostro libraio il giorno in cui gli riporterete un libro che non vi è piaciuto chiedendogli un rimborso.

Facciamo entrare in scena il web.

Sono un ricercatore. Quando pubblico un testo specialistico di ricerca sul mio sito web, mi auspico un accesso non ristretto, anzi il più largo possibile, e gratuito. Mi interessa che il mio articolo venga letto, che vi sia una risposta da parte dei lettori, spero di poter iniziare una conversazione e-mail su un problema che interessa me e chi mi legge. Potrei cercare di pubblicare il testo presso un editore, ma dovrei aspettare mesi, attendere il vaglio di un comitato di lettura che può essere ostile alla mia linea di ricerca per le ragioni più svariate, correggere le bozze. Ho inoltre la certezza che il testo verrà letto solo da un numero magari selezionato ma certo molto ristretto di persone, che per di più dovranno pagare per accedere al libro, il quale a un certo punto sarà esaurito. Di fronte alla scelta, non esito a pubblicare sul web (anche se so che questo mi costerà caro, almeno per qualche anno ancora, in termini di riconoscimento accademico!).

I contenuti culturali passano inevitabilmente al web, perché i loro autori sono stanchi dei filtri privati o istituzionali. E sul web la vera valutazione è possibile - anzi viene costantemente effettuata. Non dai mediatori privati o istituzionali, ma dai consumatori. I consumatori valutano i prodotti ‘concreti’ comprandoli. Sul web invece i contenuti culturali vengono votati. In che modo? Creando un link verso il contenuto che si apprezza. I comitati di lettura delle riviste divengono obsoleti nel momento in cui i testi pubblicati sul web vengono fatti oggetto di valutazione da parte dei lettori, che creano link verso le pagine che apprezzano. Il sistema tende a produrre un circolo virtuoso. Se faccio link verso pagine che vengono ritenute buone dai lettori della mia pagina, la mia pagina verrà valutata positivamente da questi lettori e riceverà a sua volta molti link. Se invece faccio pubblicità a pagine non tanto buone, la mia pagina non sarà votata da nessuno. L’onestà e la competenza vengono premiate. Una pagina ben votata è una pagina che acquisisce autorità e la trasmette ai propri link. Attenzione, non sto proponendo un modo nuovo di trattare i fenomeni culturali o di valutare i prodotti culturali: sto semplicemente descrivendo la realtà democratica del web, una realtà che esiste già! E difatti un motore di ricerca come Google è il migliore sulla piazza proprio perché sfrutta le informazioni già contenute nella struttura dei link. Con il web abbiamo il vero libero "mercato" per i prodotti culturali, anche se è un mercato dove non si compra e non si vende nulla. Ma questo significa anche la morte dei contenuti culturali fatti circolare al di fuori del web. Li si riconoscerà immediatamente come non valutabili. Se gli editori non assumeranno il rischio di mettere a disposizione gratuitamente e integralmente sul web i testi dei loro autori (offrendo certo la possibilità di acquistare o regalare una copia cartacea) si ritroveranno in una nicchia economica da Soviet.

Il web rende esplicita la natura dei contenuti culturali. Sul web i contenuti diventano quello che sono, entità astratte, difficili da inquadrare nel diritto di copia. Situazione che mi fa terminare su una nota di leggera nostalgia.

La ragione per cui si pagano le canzoni e il libri è contingente, ed è certo legata a un momento storico molto preciso. Finora gli autori avevano bisogno di un intermediario per arrivare al pubblico. Questo bisogno tende inevitabilmente a scomparire. Un largo pubblico pagante esiste da poco tempo. Questo pubblico si troverà sempre di più di fronte a un’offerta sterminata di contenuti culturali gratuiti e avrà sempre meno voglia di pagare quelli paganti. Senza il diritto di copia, la vita dell’autore professionista sarà appesa al filo della solidarietà del lettore, che gli verserà un obolo - come a un aedo - per ringraziarlo di mantenere in vita l’arte della parola. Senza quest’obolo, lo scrittore professionista diventerà una figura socialmente marginale, e il Diciannovesimo e il Ventesimo secolo verranno ricordati nella storia culturale dell’umanità come i Secoli dell’Autore. Per duecento anni l’umanità avrà potuto permettersi - dietro il compenso, o grazie al miraggio, di royalties sontuose - il lusso di schiere di autori che hanno dedicato la loro vita a scrivere opere magnifiche, con rari eguali nei millenni precedenti e in quelli successivi.

[Fare liste di riepilogo]

Roberto Casati

Copyright -- 18^th century musicians. Cf. Lydia Goehr.

(Un libro non è per Kant nemmeno il pensiero espresso, ma un certo modo di esprimere un pensiero - e coerentemente Kant ritiene che non si debbano agli autori royalties per la vendita di traduzioni.)

(Lo storico Robert Darnton, in un bellissimo articolo sulla Rivista dei Libri, ha documentato l’assassinio editoriale della monografia accademica in seguito a fenomeni di moda editoriale.)

La nuova domanda

Contenuti liberi versus contenuti piratati: il vero problema per l’industria culturale verrà dal contenuto libero, non dal contenuto piratato.

Si venderanno persone che cantano, o che hanno pensieri.

Why is culture becoming freer?

Ask the right question: Is there any need that cultural products have a price? This is not clear. It seems prima facie unlikely that anybody is willing to produce anything at a loss. Cultural products are objects whose production requires time and resources as does the production of food or the lease of phone time, so why there should be an asymmetry here with food or phone time?

It all depends on the type of product. Food and phone time are physical entities with very straightforward identities. You and I cannot eat the same sandwich unless we share it; you and I cannot use the same phone line at the same time unless we talk at different times. Now some cultural products are like that. Paintings are physical objects. If I buy a Picasso, I assume nobody else can hang this very same thing in their room. Moreover, I establish a very particular relationship with the painter. When I buy the painting, I become part of a story that originates in Picasso's life. Something I can be proud of, something that will produce an endless array of conversation topics with my friends. To establish this very special relation, the physical support is indispensable.

But most of culture is not about support or about a direct historical relation with the producer, it is about content. I want to have access to what Picasso painted and to so do I do not need to own a Picasso. I am prepared to pay a certain amount of money to go to a museum and see the real thing, but for most uses I'm quite happy with a proxy.

Why people give away their creations.

Nobody knows. But this is not the right question to ask. The question is: why should authors get paid at all for cultural work? There is no reason why authors should get paid at all for their work. Many authors really do appreciate being paid for their books, but many other authors really did not care. They would like to get published. To be read by other people. To receive feedback. The idea of making money with their books is not a top priority. Some authors pay for the publication of their books, and they really do not expect to make a profit.

Why people produce quality sites that may be better than institutional cultural sites.

Because. People can have access to information and have no interest in hiding it or selling it. So they create a page web with a letter by Chateaubriand they possess, a picture of a lost corner of Paris, etc.

What is the difference between free content and piracy?

Piracy is infringement of copyrights. If I copy your copyrighted music and sell it to my friends thereby making a profit, or give it away thereby preventing you from making a profit you would otherwise make, I am infringing your copyright. Free content is nothing to do with piracy. Free content is the spontaneous distribution of non copyrighted content on the web for free.

Why big cultural business is scared of the new technologies.

They say that it is all about piracy (see recent lawsuit against MP3), but this makes no sense. The real reason they are scared is that in the long run there cannot be competition with free products. Free is free. Picture it like that. You are bay-sitting your grandchildren and they ask for a cartoon. You discover that the biggest cartoon maker of all has moved to the web. You can purchase one of their last multi-million production for as little as 1$. Not bad. But you remember there was a little web site where parents have listed and positively rated some amateur cartoons by students from a design school. Here you are, with your choice between the big production and the small production. The only difference is the 1$, and you decide not to pay it. Repeat this process one hundred million times a day, and you get a picture.

Big cultural businesses are justly scared. For there is absolutely nothing they can do, short of buying all phone lines and all terminals (as they did with movie theatres and frequencies).

Why there are no return policies for books and cultural products?

Note that books and cultural products in general are among the few things for which there are no return policies. Just try and go to Barnes and Noble and tell them you really did not like the last Thomas Harris, wouldn't it be possible to return it and get another one? But why on earth shouldn't books be returnable?

What is the new book like?

The new book is electronic and free. If you like it you pay it. It is shareware. Somebody can offer you to print the book for you and then you pay a small amount for this service.

There are a number of intermediate solutions between the old book (on paper, where the production and the distribution of that thick object is left in the hands of the publisher, who charges the reader in exchange for its work) and the new book (intrinsically and totally free). Electronic books are offered for a small fee (you can pay a few dollars in order to get a pdf file on some sites), and they definitely costs less than paper book. But just think of it. You have to pay before you read it. If you do not like it, how can you manifest your discontent? Not by returning the book and retrieving the money. Somebody is trying to commercialise strange gadgets that look like books and can retrieve content on their screens at a cost. All these things - the intermediate solutions - are going to die very soon because of the unbeatable web competition from free content. Think again of the grandparents looking for content to feed their grandchildren. Think of yourself in front of expensive academic books, or less expensive academic pdf publications, on the one hand, and so many promising free academic web sites to explore on the other hand.

Is the e-book going to replace the p-book? (bo-oring question).

Of course not. It will be possible to print on demand any e-book, if you want to have something to carry around when you are on travel and in many other occasions in which you do not want to carry out one more fancy electronic gadget.

In sum:

Content is becoming available on the web at great speed.

People put content online because they like to do something that can be appreciated, not because they want to get rich.

Free content is not piracy - it is me posting my poems on the web for anybody to retrieve.

Free content is inevitably going to compete with paid content.

Free content in the long run is going to be preferred to paid content.

There is no reason to think that any middle person or institution should make money out of cultural content.

Hence:

Section 2/

How to tell rubbish from good cultural products, and why the web allows better distinctions

Umberto Eco has recently lamented the absence of filters on the web. His argument is that untutored will quickly get lost in the excess of information. They need someone to tell them where to go. Well, what is wrong with this idea of filters? Almost everything. It presupposes that people are in a minority condition. That there really is someone who knows better than them. That they need to know certain things and not others, and that somebody know what they should know. In particular, some people are alleged to have some privileged access tot he value of cultural products. This in turn presupposes that some cultural products are intrinsically valuable.

But above all, the idea is wrong because on the web, you do not need any filters any more. There is a universal indicator of the extrinsic value of any cultural product on the web. This is the structure of the linking system. Let me explain by comparison with something we all know, the price system.

Money knows a lot of things.

A price system contains some amount of information about the priced objects. The system may be not optimal, but especially if it is built bottom-up (say, from exchanges and trade), by and large it does contain valuable information. If I go to a grocery store, I am surrounded by a very large number of objects. A digit indicates the price of each of them. The price system is relatively reliable: an ordinary corkscrew costs less than an ordinary vacuum-cleaner. The price system "knows" that an ordinary corkscrew is less valuable than an extraordinary corkscrew. It knows that extremely rare corkscrews are more valuable than overproduced vacuum-cleaners. The price system relies on my mathematical competence: I know that an ordinary vacuum-cleaner costs less than two ordinary vacuum-cleaners, etc.

Not all price systems are bottom-up. In a planned economy a price system is imposed top-down; as it is well known, this generally degrades the quality of the information concerning the priced objects.

Let's move to cultural products.

Cultural products are evaluated.

Cultural products (paintings, theatrical pieces, love letters, textbooks, songs) are generally considered good or bad, better than other products, or indifferent relative to other products. Evaluation seems to be related to some subjective appreciation. I like Picasso, you prefer Kandinsky. But there is also the feeling that it is not all in the eye of the beholder. This in turn would explain why consensus on the value of a cultural product is a relatively accepted fact. General consensus has it that my poetry is less valuable than Shakespeare's. A plausible explanation is that may poetry probably is less valuable.

Consensus aside, there was no reliable means, so far, to evaluate cultural products. A reliable information about the value of cultural products is limited to very few consensual phenomena - such as classical music, that polarises around a few attractors.

There is a simple reason for that. The only objective indication of value, a price system, was not applicable to culture because the economy of cultural products is not a bottom-up process. (The phenomenon is more evident in the case of reproducible content.)

The economy of cultural products is in the hands of a relatively small number of people. They by and large select and decide what will reach the remainder of the population. To mention but an example, consider the case of academic education and publishing. Faculties do not teach what the students would like them to teach - students cannot choose. Publishing houses thrive on the interaction with the university system. They expect teachers to have students buy certain texts. The receive state funding decided by committees largely dominated by faculties. (Literary agents come closer to being the real representatives of the general audience, but they still have very little margin in a top-down driven selection process.) The economy of cultural products is largely a planned, top-down economy, when it is not a pre-economic structure (managing a feudal allocation of goods.)

Enter the fact that cultural content is moving to the web at a remarkable speed.

As we have seen, the phenomenon so far includes music, pictures, academic texts, newspapers. By moving to the web, cultural content inevitably frees itself from the constraints of a top-down economy, simply because it is no longer priced. Priced content inevitably disappears. Free is free, no matter how cheap the competition from priced content may be. (This is why policies devoted to price or regulate web based content are doomed to fail?)

Put these factors together, and you'll discover the important news:

Web-linking is to cultural products what a price system has been to everything else.

As cultural products become increasingly available on the web, and as their money price vanishes, their value can finally be measured reliably in terms of the number and quality of the links that refer to those products. If Mrs. Smith publishes a poem on the web, and if the poem is very good, it will sooner or later be linked from many other pages. It may even become more valuable than a sonnet by Shakespeare.

Links can have different value themselves. They can have a quality, according to the type of page that hosts the link. But this authority is not a external to the linking system. Mrs. Smith' page is linked from many pages; it gains authority and transfers this authority to the links it hosts.

Is truth going to rule the information on the web?

Inevitably. Honesty confers authority. If Mrs. Smith's page contains links to valueless pages, it will sooner or later be de-linked from those who read Mrs. Smith's page.

[Is the quality of a link the same as the "quality" of a currency?? Some currencies are better than others.]

The link-value of a cultural product is a reliable measure of its value.

The rise of a link structure is probably one of the most significant changes in the whole history of culture. Everybody will be very soon able to publish cultural products on the web. These products will be quickly enough evaluated by the link system. Culture becomes truly universal because cultural products will be associated with a link value and there will be a reliable, non-planned measure of their value. (Resistance, of course, is to be expected from culture monopolists or feudal manager: academicians, culture ministries, literary critics, publishing houses, and in general from all those who make non link-money out of cultural products.)

But can we know about links?

Eco should not look much too far to find a solution to his obsolete filtering problem. The solution is called Google, and it may appear to you as a search engine like any other, but it is not. Google exploits the information contained in the structure of the linking system. (It is so insultingly smart that it has a "I'm feeling lucky" feature offering you what it calculates to be the page you most likely expect. It is darn right almost every time. But do I have to tell you? Who does not use Google??) What are the competitors of Google? Human based search engines. Call them by their name: filters.

To sum up:

The content on the web is not without structure. Links provide the structure.

Filters are useless.

Filters are worse than automatic link weighters.

Hence: nobody needs a filter.

Anyway, the filtering question takes us to the third argument. Filters are threatened by the new propagation of cultural products. Some big existing filters are going to suffer all too soon. These are the schooling and university system and commercial publishing houses.

Section Three// The next victims

The university

From many quarters the question has arisen about how universities can adjust to the web revolution. The question is out of place because in the very future there will be no universities. Or maybe there will be big institutions that still call themselves 'universities' but that will just keeping alive people on their payroll, with no student attending their courses, and desperately trying to 'move to a web based education'. In this section we shall see why the move is desperate, and why education does not need universities.

They call it 'distant education'. Isn't "distant" already a sign that something is not very good?

School programs

Case study - Italian debate; cfr. Il Sole and

Ask the right question again. Why would students prefer talking to each other than listening to you? Have you ever experienced this in a ordinary conversation? If you do not listen much to John and start talking to somebody else it is because John is boring you.

By and large, education follows the same model across the whole board. Marylyn studies a subject matter for many years; she gets a degree from her University. She masters the subject matter, she knows all there is to know about it (or so they made her believe). Then she starts facing a class. No matter what the class contains: pre-schoolers, adolescents, undergraduates, graduates, senior consultant following a MBA, a guided tour in a museum, retired people looking for cultural enrichment -- the master-student system applies across the board. The idea is that Marylyn is a conveyor belt for knowledge. You cannot stop the belt (you can just ask questions here and there if she feels like answering you). You are not in charge for your own education. Why should you? You are ignorant, you do not know what she knows, you would never dare question her authority, she is paid for doing her job so leave her alone, whatever.

Picture it differently. Marylyn has some expertise in a domain. The domain is likely to be in constant evolution. She does not know all there is to know about it. She opens her knowledge to others by announcing that she is working on that domain and by giving away her findings (many researchers will be scared at the last sentence). Jill finds the findings interesting and start asking questions. The questions challenge Marylyn. Marylyn is going to search the question because she desires to provide an answer. The answer benefits Jill, but the question benefits Marylyn.

This is natural enough. It is the one of the ways knowledge has been created and transmitted for centuries. People met and discussed; they wrote open letters; they expected feedback from peers and students.

So why isn't this the way knowledge is created and distributed today? Because of that enormous mogul, the modern university. But universities as we know them, with their tragicomic grading systems and their overcrowded classes have been around for relatively little time, and there is no need that they live longer. Consider two very different cases, the American university and the European university. (The distinction oversimplifies, but it is only to make a very general point).

Modern universities are made of people - faculties. In America faculties are appointed on the basis of their CVs. The CV includes a list of publications. Faculties with good publications attract students, hence private money or public funding. So publications are money for jobs. They have to visible in good journals. They have to be original. The consequence is very straightforward: Disclosure is really not a priority for researchers who are looking for a job. Unfortunately these researchers are also those who are most likely to make good contributions - they have the time and the energy to search difficult questions.

A good teacher need not be a good researcher, and some universities value teaching careers. But think of the typical good teacher. She is well spoken. She is glamourous. She is a top-class performer. She keeps her class spellbound. All this is very good, but the class has little choice.

Faculties in the European university are appointed for a number of reasons.

Take the study of history in European Universities. We have an educational system in which that marvellous machine that is the brain of an adolescent is supposed to have more or less assimilated - at the end of five years - the content of three middle-size book. There is something deeply strange and disquieting with this. Three books in five years. A student should be able to read a book per day, no less. It is an insult to the student's intelligence, pride, interest, and to the very nature of her brain, that so much fuss is made about those three books. Any history teacher should enter the class on his first day and tell: "Look, they ask me to help you read these three books in the next five years. Is this serious? Please have them read by next week. Do not study them carefully, just read them and see what they are about".

There is no need

Various models:

The old university

The old university posted on the web.

The demand-driven university.

Case study -- shadowmill; how I developed the idea that my friends are genuinely intrigued by shadows and want to talk about them. How I moved from a 'footnotes to the book' site to a 'permanent seminar' site.

Case study - rob+aki on e-mail.

Case study - my own education! I simply profited of political turmoil to spend all the time I could in the high school's library. (had some good teachers who let me do)

Case study -- Laurent, Painter friend of AL. People bought his paintings although he was not a professional painter. Then he felt so uneasy that he gave away those he did not sell.

Read Siegel! Apply it to culture

Darnton

. ìTherefore,ü the reason why all works of art of others may be imitated for public sale, but books which already have their editor appointed dare [dŸrfen] not be counterfeited, lies in this: that the former are works (opera), the latter acts (operae), those may be as things existing [existirende] for themselves, but these can have their existence [Dasein] only in a person.

ìLikewise,ü the translation into another language cannot be held ìto beü a counterfeit; for it is not the same speech of the author, though the thoughts may be exactly the same.

This right of the author's, however, is no right in the thing, namely, the copy (for the owner may burn it before ìthe author'sü face), but an innate right in his own person, namely, to hinder another from reading it to the public without his consent, which consent can by no means be presumed, because he has already given it exclusively to another.