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 new British measure provides the usual civil remedies of injunction,
damages, account and costs in the discretion of the court. The author,
or if no author the publisher whose name is indicated on the work, is
_prima facie_ recognized as owner unless the contrary is proved.
Infringing copies or plates become the property of the copyright owner.
If the infringer proves ignorance, only an injunction will hold. In
architectural works, after construction has been commenced, damages and
not an injunction are provided for. Actions must be commenced within
three years. Summary conviction is provided for in the case of any
person knowingly and for profit or trade making, offering, distributing,
exhibiting or importing infringing copies or making or having in
possession infringing plates with penalty of a fine not exceeding fifty
pounds, or in case of a second offense, imprisonment not exceeding two
months, as also destruction or delivery up to owner of the copyright.
The summary provisions of the musical copyright acts of 1902 and 1906
remain unrepealed.
Under previous law there had been two notable cases of criminal
punishment for conspiracy. In 1906, _Re_ Willets against a combination
among cheap music publishers, where the Common Serjeant sentenced the
vendors to nine months' imprisonment, and in 1910, _Re_ Bokenham, where
pirates who had conspired to print surreptitiously obtained copies of
Oscar Wilde's poem "De Profundis," were also sentenced to six months and
lesser periods.
XVI
IMPORTATION OF COPYRIGHTED WORKS
{Sidenote: Copyright and importation}
The right to import a copyrighted book and, conversely, the right to
exclude importation are rights incident to the general "exclusive right"
of an author or copyright proprietor. This is recognized, in terms or
inferentially, in the copyright law of most countries; and the American
copyright code is exceptional and almost without precedent, save that of
the preceding American law of 1891, in specifically permitting the
importation of copyrighted books in stated cases, without the consent or
authority of the copyright proprietor.
{Sidenote: Fundamental right of exclusion}
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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