International Copyright

Sources

The Question of Copyright. Among the originai powers granted to Congress by the U.S. Constitution was the power “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.” In the century following ratification of the Constitution, hundreds of state and federal statutes defined and revised the terms and scope of copyright protection. By the late nineteenth century literary copyright ranked among the most hotly debated of legal issues. The question of international copyright—the rights of “alien” authors in America and American authors abroad—sparked controversy.

Legalized Piracy. Throughout the better part of the nineteenth century, no copyright provisions existed to protect foreign material. The legai loophole allowed American publishers to republish foreign fiction without paying royalties, so it was cheaper for American houses to publish works by foreign authors than to publish Americans’ works. In the 1880s a book by a popular American writer—Cooper or Hawthorne, Longfellow or Whitman, for example—cost a dollar or more, while popular British writers such as Dickens and Scott were available in pirated editions for a quarter. A similar condition in England worked to the disadvantage of Americans published there. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow complained that though he had twenty-two publishers in England and Scotland, only four even took the trouble to send him a copy of their editions of the works, and he received almost no royalties on foreign sales. Such piracy flourished in the magazine industry: eager to control production costs, editors gleefully raided British periodicals. When Americans discussed the issue of international copyright, they frequently framed the debate in terms of the common good. In 1868 one commentator reminded authors “that they have a nobler calling than the professional man or the mechanic; that their aim should not merely be to make money.” In opposing the free flow of literary goods, “they also oppose the progress of popular knowledge” Foremost among the American periodical pirates was Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, founded in 1850 as a digest of prepublished material. Harper’s Monthly declared its mission was to expose American readers to “an immense amount of useful and entertaining reading matter, to which, on account of the great number and expense of the books and periodicals in which it originally appears, they have hitherto had no access.” The editor of another American literary digest (first called The Pirate, later The Corsair) celebrated “the privilege assured us by our piratical law of copyright,” to “‘convey’ to our columns, for the amusement of our readers, the cream and spirit of everything that ventures to light in England, France, and Germany.”

A National Disgrace. Not ali members of the literary community, however, smiled on the practice of piracy. As the nineteenth century progressed, prominent American literati noted that other nations had successfully negotiated copyright agreements. Why not the United States and its foreign partners, most notably Great Britain? “It is a disgrace,” fumed the publisher George Haven Putnam, the American Champion of international copyright “that the two great English-speaking people, claiming to stand among the most enlightened of the community of nations, should be practically the only members of such community which have failed to arrive at an agreement in this all-important issue.” In an age of imperialism, the issue of international copyright became a matter of national pride. Yet American public opinion, Putnam noted with dismay, lagged behind “the standard of international justice already attained by Tunis, Liberia, and Hayti.”

A New Law. A series of bills designed to amend international copyright law languished in congressional committee during the 1860s, 1870s, and 1880s. By the end of this period, however, the tide had begun to turn. In 1888 Brander Matthews, professor of literature at Columbia University, remarked, “We now enjoy the privilege of piracy, as the dwellers on a rocky islet used to enjoy the privilege of wrecking—and we avail ourselves of this privilege only to the perdition of our own souls.” On 4 March 1891, the Senate voted its approval of the International Copyright Bill passed by the House of Representatives the previous December. Signed into law by President Benjamin Harrison, international copyright went into effect on 1 July of 1891. At long last, foreign authors were granted the protection of American copyright law—as, under reciprocal agreement, American authors gained the protection of foreign law.

Sources

Frederick Gerhard, Will the People of the United States Be Benefited by an International Copyright Law, or Will Such a Law Be an Injury to Them? (New York: Privately printed, 1868);

George Haven Putnam, ed., The Question of Copyright (New York: Putnam, 1891);

Philip Wittenberg, The Protection and Marketing of Literary Property (New York: Julian Messner, 1937);

James Playsted Wood, Magazines in the United States, second edition (New York: Ronald Press Co., 1956).