The Dominon. THURSDAY, MAY 25, 1911. COPYRIGHT.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1136, 25 May 1911, Page 6

The Dominon. THURSDAY, MAY 25, 1911. COPYRIGHT.

Copyright is not a matter of actual and urgent concern to New Zealandcrs, because they are very few who in this country write anything that is worth copyrighting. We wish wc' could think of a single NewZealand author of this time to whom it could matter whether any long protection were given to his right to publish his work. In Britain,, however, the whole question has long been a most important one, and the Government has made an attempt in a single comprehensive Bill to settle all the problems, and to 'allay the great grievances, that inhere in the existing law. The groat difficulty is to find a rule that will sufficiently protect the author without doing the public ah injury, the public interest requiring the freest possible circulation of great books. The Bill proposes to give copyright to all original literary, musical, dramatic, or artistic work, including translations, lectures, original adaptations and arrangements, works of artistic craftsmanship, . and architectural works of art. The two most important provisions of the measure arc the extension of copyright to 50, years aftar the death of the author and a proposal that after 25 years from the date of publication of any work a license to publish freely might be granted to any outside person on its being shown that the work in question was being unduly withheld from the. public. The House of Commons is peculiarly fitted for the discussion of a measure of this kind, since it includes a great many very distinguished authors, and the debate upon tho second reading of the Bill is a perfect storehouse of valuable facts concerning the situation of great authors in their capacity as bread-earners as well as their other capacity of mental forces. For example, it was urged in defence of the greatly extended term of copyright that it would prevent the repetition of the cases .of In Memoriam and tho Origin of Species. Both of these were greatly revised by their authors years after their first-publi-cation, and when the copyright of the first edition in each case fell in, there was a wide free publication of _ versions that did the author an injustice, and, in the case of Darwin, did the public an injury also. It was not until late in ■ life that Wagner, Herbert . Spencer, and Meredith began to be appreciated, and they had accordingly reaped only a _ comparatively small pecuniary gain from their earlier works owing to the existing restriction of copyright, to 42 years from publication. Mr. Birrell quoted the very telling case of Carlyle. "He lived to be a.n old man, but suppose he had died in 1842. He had then written all his best books; he had delivered his lectures on 'Heroes and Hero-Worship'; he had written his great history, or poem, on tho French Revolution; and he had compiled or composed his book on Cromwell. Supposing he had died then, his copyright would have run only seven srear35 r ear 3 after his death, or 42 years after publication. He would have had a very small chance of making any.provision for (.hone who came after him."

■ The_ case for a very long term of copyright is" obviously very strong. The opponents of the Bill on this point arc, a3 one would expect, the .Radicals. They say that under the Bill copyright upon Tennyson, Ruskin, Darwin, Dickens, Browning— in fact,'upon all the later Victorian giants—would have, in many cases, years and years' to run, and they insist that "literature is a social product in which the rights of society should be recognised." One naturexpects tho Radical to stand out against the rights of property every-where,-and especially where, as in this case, the idea of property is not of age-long establishment. The idea of property in ideas or artistic creation is a comparatively modem one, and it is a sound one. Logically, it may be argued, that view requires that there shall be perpetual I copyright, just as there can be perpetual right in property that is solid and material. To this we [should be perfectly willing to reply by agreeing to the consequences of

logic. But nobody is likely to press that point, becaase to do so would be to insist on the other alternative, no copyright at all. Tho practical question involved is tho striking of some balance between the author's rights and the public interest, and the right attitude was very well stated by Me. Balfour, who had no objection to the extension of the period of copyright:

Copyright did not monopolise ideas. The only thing that copyright monopolised for a certain length of time was tho form giveu to certain ideas by a particular genius. These were, quite different things. They could not have a better illustration than tho works of

Darwin—exactly ono of those raro examples of great novelty, brilliancy of idea, originality of conception, and, above all, of literary form embodying tuoso

ideas. It was because Darwin was great in literature and not merely because ho

was tho inventor of a great theory of development that his books wero read with so. much interest and attention.

There was no monopoly in Darwin's ideas. On the.contrary, in tho very year that "The. Origin of Species" was published it was possible for a man to give u full abstract of Darwin's ideas without any infringement of copyright, because ho himself had made his ideas

public property.- Darwin's property layin tho admirablo ombodiment of his ideas, not in one book, but in all his books from "The Voyage of the Beagle" onwards. They were, and they remained, delightful literature, though his theory of evolution had enabled his successors to deal with the great scientific

structure of which he laid the foundation. It had been said that distinguished men of genius derived much from tho society of the day in which they lived. That might bo so. But what had society got from them? If due regard wero paid to what many of them had done for posterity no recognition of their merits could be in excess of their deserts. What-

ever might bo said about other branches of industry or of work no man would say that genius was overpaid. They might think that the successful financier, the inventor, the shareholders in some great and successful firm, tho landlords who suddenly found their land increased in valuo were fortunate men beyond their deserts, but would anyone in tho House of Commons say that the man of genius got mbro than he deserved? The whole history of literature showed that if there was an error in our social relations with respect to tho reward of this particular class of the community it was that they wero underpaid and not overpaid. Thero might bo n few conspicuous exceptions, but everybody acquainted with the elements of literary history knew how numerous wero the men of genius who in Iheir lives had suffered poverty and neglect and yet whose names were now household words throughout the world and whoso books wero read by

generation after generation. If in this or any other Bill something could bo done to give such men their fair share of the good things of this life surely it did not lie in th« mouth of anyone to grudge' it,