Copyright: Its History and Its Law. Bowker Richard Rogers

legal procedure. Unfortunately in the United States of America the forward movement which produced the "international copyright amendment" of 1891 and the code of 1909, conspicuously excellent despite defects of detail, was in some measure offset by retrogression, as in the manufacturing restrictions. Until this policy, which still remains a blot on the 'scutcheon, is abandoned, as the friends of copyright hope may ultimately be the case, the United States of America cannot enter on even terms the family of nations and become part of the United States of the world.

R. R. Bowker.

      December, 1911.

      Postscript. Since this book has been passing through the press, Cuba has been added to the countries in reciprocal relations with the United States with respect to mechanical music by the President's proclamation of November 27, 1911; Russia has made with France its first copyright treaty, in conformity with the new Russian code of 1911; and the new British code, referred to on p. 33, having passed the House of Commons August 17, passed the House of Lords December 6, and after concurrence by the House of Commons in minor amendments, mostly verbal, became law by Crown approval, December 16, 1911, as noted on p. 374. The text of the act in the appendix follows the official text as it now stands on the English statute books; the summary (pp. 374-80) describes the act as it became law – and the earlier references are in accordance therewith, with a few exceptions. These exceptions mostly concern immaterial changes, made in the House of Lords. Within January, 1912, Brazil has adopted a new measure for international copyright, and a treaty has been signed between the United States and Hungary, the twenty-fifth nation in reciprocal relations with this country.

      CONSPECTUS OF COPYRIGHT BY COUNTRIES

      Under the names of countries are given dates of the basic and latest amendatory laws. International relations are shown by the name in small caps of the convention city when a country is a party to the International Copyright Union or the Pan American conventions, and by the names of countries with which there are specific treaties, excepting those within the union or conventions. The general term of duration is entered, without specification of special terms for specific classes. Places of registration and deposit are indicated by R and D when these are not the same. The number of copies required and in some cases period after publication within which deposit is required are given in parentheses. Notice of copyright or of reservation is indicated. Special exceptions or conditions are noted so far as practicable under remarks. An asterisk indicates that specific exceptions exist.

      The International Copyright Union includes (A) under the Berlin convention, 1908 (a) without reservation Germany, Belgium, Luxemburg, Switzerland, Spain, Monaco, Liberia, Haiti, Portugal, and (b) with reservation France, Norway, Tunis, Japan; (B) under the Berne convention, 1886, and the Paris additional act and interpretative declaration, 1896, Denmark, Italy; (C) under the Berne convention, 1886, and the Paris additional act, 1896, Great Britain; (D) under the Berne convention, 1886, and the Paris interpretative declaration, 1896, Sweden. The Pan American conventions agreed on at Mexico City, 1902, Rio de Janeiro, 1906, and Buenos Aires, 1910, have not been ratified except that of Mexico by the United States and by Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Salvador, and doubtfully by Cuba and Dominican Republic; that of Rio by a few states insufficient to make it anywhere operative; and that of Buenos Aires by the United States. The South American convention of Montevideo, 1889, has been accepted by Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay, Peru and Bolivia, and has the adherence (in relation with Argentina and Paraguay only) of Belgium, France, Italy and Spain. The five Central American states have a mutual convention through their Washington treaty of peace of 1907.

      COPYRIGHT

      ITS HISTORY AND ITS LAW

      I

      THE NATURE AND ORIGIN OF COPYRIGHT

      Copyright, meaning

      Copyright (from the Latin copia, plenty) means, in general, the right to copy, to make plenty. In its specific application it means the right to multiply copies of those products of the human brain known as literature and art.

      There is another legal sense of the word "copyright" much emphasized by several English justices. Through the low Latin use of the word copia, our word "copy" has a secondary and reversed meaning, as the pattern to be copied or made plenty, in which sense the schoolboy copies from the "copy" set in his copy-book, and the modern printer calls for the author's "copy."

      Its two senses

      Copyright, accordingly, may also mean the right in copy made (whether the original work or a duplication of it), as well as the right to make copies, which by no means goes with the work or any duplicate of it. Said Lord St. Leonards in the case of Jefferys v. Boosey in 1854: "When we are talking of the right of an author we must distinguish between the mere right to his manuscript, and to any copy which he may choose to make of it, as his property, just like any other personal chattel, and the right to multiply copies to the exclusion of every other person. Nothing can be more distinct than these two things. The common law does give a man who has composed a work a right to that composition, just as he has a right to any other part of his personal property; but the question of the right of excluding all the world from copying, and of himself claiming the exclusive right of forever copying his own composition after he has published it to the world, is a totally different thing." Baron Parke, in the same case, pointed out expressly these two different legal senses of the word copyright, the right in copy, a right of possession, always fully protected by the common law, and the right to copy, a right of multiplication, which alone has been the subject of special statutory protection.

      Blackstone

      Blackstone in his Commentaries of 1767, in which the word copyright seems to have been first used, lays down the fundamental principles of copyright as follows: "When a man, by the exertion of his rational powers, has produced an original work, he seems to have clearly a right to dispose of that identical work as he pleases, and any attempt to vary the disposition he has made of it appears to be an invasion of that right. Now the identity of a literary composition consists entirely in the sentiment and the language; the same conceptions, clothed in the same words, must necessarily be the same composition; and whatever method be taken of exhibiting that composition to the ear or the eye of another, by recital, by writing, or by printing, in any number of copies, or at any period of time, it is always the identical work of the author which is so exhibited; and no other man (it hath been thought) can have a right to exhibit it, especially for profit, without the author's consent. This consent may, perhaps, be tacitly given to all mankind, when an author suffers his work to be published by another hand, without any claim or reserve of right, and without stamping on it any marks of ownership; it being then a present to the public, like building a church or bridge, or laying out a new highway."

      Property by creation

      There is nothing which may more rightfully be called property than the creation of the individual brain. For property (from the Latin proprius, own) means a man's very own, and there is nothing more his own than the thought, created, made out of no material thing (unless the nerve-food which the brain consumes in the act of thinking be so counted), which uses material things only for its record or manifestation. The best proof of own-ership is that if this individual man or woman had not thought this individual thought, realized in writing or in music or in marble, it would not exist. Or if the individual thinking it had put it aside without such record, it would not, in any practical sense, exist. We cannot know what "might have beens" of untold value have been lost to the world where thinkers, such as inventors, have had no inducement or opportunity thus to materialize their thoughts.

      Are thoughts created?

      It is sometimes said, as a bar to this idea of property,