Speech three: Victor Hugo’s Speech of June 25 1878 at Paris Congress

This is the third and final speech where Hugo advocates for the “paying public domain”. Speech no. 1 is here, and speech no.2 is here. Two points are particularly interesting in this speech.

One, Hugo interestingly mentions two kinds of heirs to an author—one heir to blood, meaning the author’s immediate family, and the other to spiritual heirs, representing society at large. Hugo believes the latter should be promoted. He also proposes creating a fund financed by public contributions – specifically to support authors and young writers- since there are no longer authors in the traditional sense. 

Disclaimer – The following text is an English translation of a French original. The translation was done using DeepL. Although I have made the best of my efforts to maintain the accuracy of the source material. I would suggest you check the original source in Pataille, J., ed. Annales de la Propriété Industrielle, Artistique et Littéraire. Vol. 25. Paris, 1880. Available through Gallica, the digital archive of the Bibliothèque nationale de France. If you don’t find the document, let me know. I will share a copy with you.

Third speech by Mr Victor Hugo, President of the Congress. Session of 25 June.

(Paying public domain / Domaine public payant.)

Gentlemen, allow me to enter freely into the discussion. I do not understand the declaration of war being made on the public domain.

What! Are the works of Corneille, La Fontaine, Racine and Molière not being published? Does the public domain not exist? Where are these works today?

What! Are the works of Corneille, La Fontaine,

Racine and Molière not being published? Does the public domain not exist? Where are, in the present, these disadvantages, these dangers, everything that the Book Trade Circle has been kind enough to announce to us for the future?

All these objections can be levelled at the public domain as it exists today.

The public domain is detestable, they say, upon the death of the author, but excellent as soon as the expiry arrives… of what? Of the strangest fantasy that legislators have ever applied to a mode of property,  the deadline set for the expiry of a book.

Here you are entering into the thoughtless fantasy of people who do not know what they are talking about. I have the right to speak somewhat freely about legislators. The men who make laws sometimes know what they are talking about; they do not know what they are talking about when it comes to literature.

Do they at least agree among themselves? No. The term of protection they grant is ten years here, twenty years there, fifty years elsewhere; they even go as far as eighty years. Why? They have no idea. I challenge them to give a reason.

And it is on this absolute ignorance of legislators that you, who know what you are talking about, want to base legislation! You who are competent will accept the ruling handed down by incompetents!

Who will explain the reasons why, in all civilised countries, legislation grants the heir, after the death of the author, a variable period of time during which the heir, as absolute master of the work, may publish it or not? Who will explain the gap that various legislations have placed between the death of the author and the entry into the public domain?

This capricious and bizarre invention of ignorant legislators must be destroyed.  It is up to you, indirect but competent legislators, to accomplish this task. 

In reality, what did those legislators who, with incomprehensible levity, legislated on these matters consider? What did they think? They believed that the heir of the blood was the heir of the mind. They believed that the heir of the blood must have knowledge of the property he was inheriting, and that, consequently, by giving him the right to dispose of it, they were making a just and intelligent law.

This is where they were greatly mistaken. The heir of the blood is the heir of the blood. The writer, as a writer, has only one heir, and that is the heir of the spirit, the human spirit, the public domain. That is the absolute truth.

Legislators have granted the heir of the blood a power that is full of disadvantages, that of administering property that he does not know. The heir of the blood is most often at the discretion of his publisher. Let the blood heir retain his right, and let the heir of the spirit be given what belongs to him, by establishing the public domain as payable, immediate . 

What! Immediately? Here comes an objection, which is not really an objection. Those who raised it had not heard my words. I am asked: What! Will the public domain immediately seize the work? But if the author has sold it for ten years, for twenty years, will the person who bought it be dispossessed? No publisher will want to buy a work anymore.

I said precisely the opposite, the text is there. I said: “Except for concessions made by the author during his lifetime, and contracts he has signed.” 

The result is that if you have sold the ownership of one of your works to a publisher for a specified period of time, the public domain will not take possession of that work until after the period you have set.

But can this period be unlimited? You know, gentlemen, that property, sacred as it is, nevertheless has its limits. I am telling you something basic when I say that one does not own a house in the same way that one owns a mine, a forest, a coastline, a river, or a field. Property, as legal experts understand, is limited according to the extent to which the object belongs to the public interest. Literary property belongs more than any other to the public interest, and must therefore also be subject to limitations. The law may very well prohibit the sale by the author of the perpetual property of his work; this is a simple restriction. The law may prohibit absolute sale and grant the author, for example, fifty years. I believe that there is no author who would not be satisfied with a possession of fifty years.

This argument therefore collapses entirely and should not have been put forward. Immediate paid public domain does not remove the author’s ability to sell their book for a fixed period; the author retains all their rights.

Second argument: Immediate public domain, by creating enormous competition, will harm both authors and publishers.

Books will no longer find serious publishers.

I am surprised that the honourable representatives of the book trade who are here support a similar thesis and act “as if they did not know”. I will teach them what they know very well, what happens I will teach them what they know very well, what happens every day. During their lifetime, authors sell the rights to exploit a book, in a given form, in a given number of copies, for a given period of time, and stipulate the format and sometimes even the selling price of the book. At the same time, he sells another format to another publisher, under different conditions; to another, a different mode of publication; for example, a cheap illustrated edition . There is someone here talking to you who has seven publishers.

So, when I hear men whom I know to be competent, men whom I honour and esteem, when I hear them say, “We will not find publishers, in the face of competition and unlimited freedom of publication, to buy and publish a book,” I am astonished. I have proposed nothing new; every day, we have seen, we see, during the author’s lifetime and with his consent, several publishers, without harming each other, and even by helping each other, publish the same work. I have proposed nothing new; every day, we have seen, we see, during the author’s lifetime and with his consent, several publishers, without harming each other, and even by helping each other, publish the same work. I have proposed nothing new; every day, we have seen, and continue to see, during the author’s lifetime and with his consent, several publishers, without harming each other, and even helping each other, publish the same book. And this competition benefits everyone, the public, the writers, the booksellers!

Do you see any interruption in the publication of the great works of the great French writers? Is this not the most exploited area of the book trade? (Signs of approval.)

Now that it is well understood that entry into the public domain does not hinder the author and leaves him the right to sell the property of his work; now that it also seems to me to have been demonstrated that competition can be usefully established on books, after the death of the autor as well as during his lifetime, let us return to the matter at hand.

Let us suppose that the public domain is remunerative, immediate, and established.

If there is a direct heir, he pays the royalty to that direct heir; for note that we stipulate only for the direct heir, and that all the arguments put forward concerning collateral heirs and the difficulty of discovering them vanish.

But when there are no direct heirs, what happens?

One of two things: either the public domain continues to exploit the work without paying royalties, since there are no longer any direct heirs, or it continues to exploit the work by paying royalties.

To whom?

It is here, gentlemen, more than ever, that I affirm the usefulness of perpetual rent. You all know that nothing would be more useful than a sort of common fund, a considerable capital, solid revenues, applied to the needs of literature, which is constantly evolving. There are many young writers, young minds, young authors who are full of talent and promise, and who encounter immense difficulties at the outset. Some do not make it; they lacked encouragement, they lacked bread. Governments, as I explained Governments, as I explained in my first public remarks, have created the pension system, a system that is sterile for writers. But suppose that French literature, through its own strength, through this tithe levied on the immense product of the public domain, possesses a vast literary fund administered by a writers’ union, by this Society of Men of Letters which represents the great intellectual movement of Europe. Suppose that your committee has this very important function of administering what I would call “the civil list of literature”. Can you imagine anything more beautiful than this: all works that no longer have direct heirs fall into the public domain and the proceeds are used to encourage, invigorate and fertilise young minds? (Unanimous agreement.)

Could there be anything greater than this admirable aid, this august legacy bequeathed by illustrious writers who have died to young writers still living?

Do you not believe that instead of sadly and meekly receiving a kind of royal alms, young writers starting out on their careers would feel uplifted to see their work supported by such almighty geniuses as Corneille and Molière? (Prolonged applause.)

This is your independence, your fortune. The emancipation, the liberation of writers lies in the creation of this glorious heritage.

We are all one family; the dead belong to the living, and the living must be protected by the dead. What better protection could you wish for? (Explosion of bravos.)

I urge you to create the paid public domain under the conditions I have outlined. There is no reason to delay the taking possession of the human spirit for even an hour. (Long burst of applause .)

---

See you in the next post.