THE COPYRIGHT ACT.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1527, 24 August 1912, Page 9

THE COPYRIGHT ACT.

On July 1 the English Copyright Act of 1911 caine into force. Within the comprehensive sweep of its thirty-seven clauses the Act simplifies (said the'"Manchester Guardian", in an explanatory leader), codifies, and extends tile whole law upon thu Eubject, and'consigns to oblivionj a vast agglomeration of obscure statutes', and • obsolete case-law that has grown up during the course of nearly two dentures. The Act, further, lays the foundation for a common system of copyright throughout the Empire, and makes provision for international reciprocity with foreign countries. Henceforth the old complicated formalities of our law will no longer exist. Registration with its technicalities is abolished, and publication loses its terrors. Copyright will attach to "every original literary, dramatic, and musical work," whether published or unpublished, from the moment of its "making"—that is to say, as soon as the original ideas of the.author have become embodied in some material form, such as a manuscript, a painting, a perforance, or a lecture. With some minor exceptions, the actual author or creator of the work is to be. regarded as tho first owner of the copyright, und such ownership carries with it the sole right of publication, reproduction, or performance. Tho duration of this monopoly is, in tho case of works published in the lifetime' of tho author, lo extend for the term of the author's life and fifty years beyond; in the case- of postluiuion;i works.the copy-right will subsist for fifty years from tho date of publication. In iuturo, therefore, the date of publicatiou will bo material only in the caso of posthumous works; in all other cases the copyright will depend simply upon the e-asfly ascerfainable date -of the author's death. But during the fifty years after, the author's death the monopoly is subject to serious restrictions; at any time during that period the Privy Council is empowered—upon complaint that a copyright work is Taping withheld from the public—to order the then owner to grant compulsory licenses; and furthermore, during tho last twenty-five years of a subsisting copyright any person may reproduce tlie work for sale without (he owner's consent, simply by giving a prescribed notice and paying royalties of 10 per cent. But these royalties will go to none but the next of kin or the legatees of the author, for the Act contains stringent provisions whereby, notwithstanding any assignment or agreement to the contrary, the ownership in tho copyright reverts to tho author's personal estate at tho expiration of twenty-five years from his death. Tho rights protected by the Act includo lectures," translations, performing rights, tlib' conversion o! dramas into novots and of novels into dramas; they extend to mechanical reproductions by records and kinematograph films; there aro special provisions dealing with journalistic articles and contributions tn encyclopaedias— in which casps tho copyright will in general lie not in the author but in tho purchaser c-r publisher—and architectural wovks of nrt are for the first time protected. What, T>y the way. is "an architectural work of art"? The phrase, suggests one of the dangers of the Act. Its very simplicity and brevity are likely to cause disadvantages. Some of the terms used aro undeniably vague and uncertain. What Ls an "original" work, and at what stage is a work "made" so that copyright may attach? Such vagueness, however, was perhaps deliberate. In dealing with [an expansive, over-changing subject such

as .copyright, Hie terms and expressions used must either be wide and all-embrac-ing until they become vague, or else the legislator must embark upon lengthy MJHcmaratipns which may not, after all, be exhaustive and easily»becomo obsolete. Upon such a subject precise definitions aro apt to lead to an inelasticity which, above all, should bo avoided. In tho present Act tlio wiser course has been adopted of using wide, undefined, and even indefinite tonus.