Copyright: Its History and Its LawBowker, R. R. (Richard Rogers)
History
Copyright: Its History and Its Law
Bowker, R. R. (Richard Rogers)
Copyright -- History; Copyright -- United States -- History
The question of what is public performance is of some importance,
especially in Great Britain, where playright is not infringed except by
representation in a place of dramatic entertainment and where it has
been held that any place in which a dramatic piece is publicly performed
is for the time a place of dramatic entertainment. A public performance
is probably one to which the public in general is admitted either by
sale of tickets or by invitation; and this would probably include a
performance given before a society to membership in which the public
might be admitted, although a performance limited to a certain class of
the public might not be construed as a public representation. Where "Our
boys" was performed at Guy's Hospital, London, by an amateur company,
for nurses and others connected with the hospital specially invited, it
was held in 1884, in Duck _v._ Bates, that though a performance may be
public where the public are present, although no money is taken, yet the
production in question was not a public representation. In this leading
case, important as a precedent for America as well as in England, the
decision was made by Justices Brett, M. R., and Bowen, L. J., Justice
Fry dissenting, and the Master of the Rolls, in an elaborate opinion,
discussed the relations of private and public performance, as a question
of fact: "In order to entitle the author to penalties there must be a
representation which will injure the author's right to money; such, for
instance, as a representation which, although it is not for profit,
would attract persons who are willing to pay money, and would induce
them not to go and see a performance licensed by the author.... The
representation must be other than domestic or private. There must be
present a sufficient part of the public who would go also to a
performance licensed by the author as a commercial transaction.... I
wish to say, by way of warning, that those who go beyond the facts of
the present case may incur the penalties of the statute."
{Sidenote: Manuscript rights}
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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