But in that year the government struck a blow at the very principle of literary property.
The King's Council conferred upon the descendants of La Fontaine the exclusive privilege of publishing their ancestor's works.

That is to say, the Council took away without compensation from La Fontaine's publishers a copyright for which they had paid in hard cash.

The whole corporation naturally rose in arms, and in due time the lieutenant of police was obliged to take the whole matter into serious consideration--whether the maintenance of the guild of publishers was expedient; whether the royal privilege of publishing a book should be regarded as conferring a definite and unassailable right of property in the publication; whether the tacit permission to publish what it would have been thought unbecoming to authorise expressly by royal sanction, should not be granted liberally or even universally; and whether the old restriction of the booksellers to one quarter of the town ought to remain in force any longer.

M.de Sartine invited Diderot to write him a memorandum on the subject, and was disappointed to find Diderot staunchly on the side of the booksellers (1767).

He makes no secret, indeed, that for his own part he would like to see the whole apparatus of restraint abolished, but meanwhile he is strong for doing all that a system of regulation, as opposed to a system of freedom, can do to make the publication of books a source of prosperity to the bookseller, and of cheap acquisition to the book-buyer.