ABSTRACT
John Locke’s natural right theory of property has been so insistently applied to copyright philosophy, that it would be perverse to ignore it. Two main factors consolidated the hegemony of Locke’s philosophy in copyright discourse. First, Locke’s main theme of property ownership is based on a person’s natural entitlement to the products of his labour, and as discussed in Chapter 3, labour is a key requirement for copyright. Second, scholars find Locke’s theory of property, and the limits he sets on what a labourer can come to exclusively own and control, as a solid argument on which to solve contemporary problems in copyright.
