The international copyright act of 1844 contained the provision "that neither the author of any book, nor the author or composer of any dramatic piece or musical composition ... which shall ... be first published out of her Majesty's dominions, shall have any copyright therein respectively, or any exclusive right to the public representation or performance thereof, otherwise than such, if any, as he may become entitled to under this act,"--a provision inserted probably for advantage in negotiating reciprocal conventions with other countries. This provision was applied in 1863, in the case of Boucicault _v._ Delafield, to a British author whose play had been first printed and published as well as performed in America. In Boucicault _v._ Chatterton in 1876, the Chancery Division held that the prior performance of "The Shaughraun" in New York was publication and deprived the author of playright in England,--which again seems incompatible with the doctrine upheld in the later case of Chappell _v._ Boosey, above cited. Great Britain is the only country in the International Copyright Union which has declined to accept the declarative interpretation made in Paris in 1896 of the Berne convention of 1886, declaring that performance does not constitute publication. Thus if a dramatic or musical work is first publicly performed outside the British dominions, the performing right is extinguished therein, unless protected under the international copyright acts, though first publication outside the British dominions of a work first publicly performed within them, may not extinguish the performing right. {Sidenote: Statutory ambiguity} The confusion of judicial interpretations, as to the relations between performance and publication, in international as well as domestic copyright, was invited by the unfortunate draftsmanship in the copyright act of 1842, in which the clause making first performance "equivalent in the construction of this act to the first publication of any book" may be taken either in a comprehensive sense or merely as defining the starting-point for performing right as well as for copyright in the specific sense. {Sidenote: What is public performance}