Locke Described Legislation Authorizing the Stationers' Company Monopoly on Printing (Copyright Act) as an Invasion of the Trade, Liberty, and Property of the Subject

I doubt that Locke's theory can justify copyright. To Epstein's trenchant critiques, I add one targeted at any supposed natural property right in expressive works: copyright contradicts Locke's own justification of property. Locke described legislation authorizing the Stationers' Company monopoly on printing--the nearest thing to a Copyright Act in his day--as a "manifest . . . invasion of the trade, liberty, and property of the subject." Today, by invoking government power a copyright holder can impose prior restraint, fines, imprisonment, and confiscation on those engaged in peaceful expression and the quiet enjoyment of tangible property. Copyright law violates the very rights--the tangible property rights--that Locke set out to defend. It gags voices, ties hands, and demolishes presses. But when they do not live under the command of a sovereign, Locke explained, humans enjoy "a State of perfect Freedom to order their Actions, and dispose of their Possessions, and Persons as they think fit, within the bounds of the Law of Nature, without asking leave, or depending upon the Will of any other Man." By nature, in a "State of perfect Freedom," we can freely echo each other's expressions.

--Tom W. Bell, Intellectual Privilege: Copyright, Common Law, and the Common Good (Arlington, VA: Mercatus Center at George Mason University, 2018), 70-71.