Arguments before the Committee on Patents of the House of Representatives, conjointly with the Senate Committee on Patents, on H.R. 19853, to amend and consolidate the acts respecting copyright: June 6, 7, 8, and 9, 1906.United States. Congress. House. Committee on Patents
History
Arguments before the Committee on Patents of the House of Representatives, conjointly with the Senate Committee on Patents, on H.R. 19853, to amend and consolidate the acts respecting copyright: June 6, 7, 8, and 9, 1906.
United States. Congress. House. Committee on Patents
Copyright -- United States
_Section 18, page 14._--This section relates to the term of
copyright. In fixing the term I think due consideration has never
been given to the fact that a vast majority of copyrights become
commercially worthless after a very few years. Thus the records of
the copyright office show that last year but 2.7 per cent of the
copyrights completing their original term of twenty-eight years
were thought by the authors of sufficient value to renew them for
the additional fourteen years under the comparatively simple
provisions of the present law.
It is safe to say that not more than 5 per cent of all the
copyrights have any commercial value after twenty-eight years. It
would seem feasible to provide for the extension of the property
rights in these valuable literary or artistic properties without
conferring undeserved or undesired extensions of term in hundreds
of thousands of copyrights of no pecuniary value to the owners. On
the other hand, there is some intrinsic value to the public in a
portion of the copyrighted material after it has lost all
pecuniary value to the author or his assignee.
I believe that the great majority of copyrights should fall into
the public domain at a definite and easily ascertainable time. I
hold, therefore, that the ordinary copyright term should be no
longer than the twenty-eight years as fixed at present. But the
few valuable copyrights could be secured for a much longer term by
a simple and easy arrangement for renewal, as by requiring merely
the filing of a notice of the desire to extend and allowing the
author or his heirs to file such notice; or, in case there has
been an outright assignment, permitting the author and assignee or
licensee under royalty to join as provided in section 32 of the
present draft.
Some provision should also be made for the renewal of valuable
proprietary copyrights of the sort enumerated in subsection _(b)_
of section 18.
_Sections 32-33, pages 26-27._--My most serious and strenuous
objections are to this section 32, regarding actions arising under
the copyright law, and especially the second paragraph, providing
that actions may be brought and jurisdiction secured in any
district of the United States where violation of any provision of
this act has occurred. This means that any copyright proprietor or
any publisher may be brought into any district in the United
States or every district simultaneously in the case of many
articles sold generally throughout the country. And it therefore
concerns very nearly every person interested in the copyright law.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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