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
As in the English case of Donaldson _v._ Becket, the decision in the
American ruling case of Wheaton v. Peters came from a divided court. The
opinion was handed down by Justice McLean, three other judges agreeing,
Justices Thompson and Baldwin dissenting, a seventh judge being absent.
The opinions of the dissenting judges, given in Eaton S. Drone's "A
treatise on the law of property in intellectual productions," constitute
one of the strongest statements ever made of natural rights in literary
property, in opposition to the ruling that the right is solely the
creature of the statute. "An author's right," says Justice Thompson,
"ought to be esteemed an inviolable right established in sound reason
and abstract morality." There seems, indeed, to be a sense of natural
copyright among the American Indians; an Ojibwa brave will not sing the
song belonging to another tribe or singer, and a Chippewa youth may
learn his father's songs, on a customary gift of tobacco, but does not
inherit the right to sing them.
V
SCOPE OF COPYRIGHT: RIGHTS AND EXTENT
{Sidenote: General scope}
The scope of copyright, or the nature and extent of the right or
privilege, may be said to cover at common law identical rights with
those in any other property, to use the phrase which, in Siam, transfers
these rights to statutory law, but in statutory law must be taken to
depend upon the terms of the statute.
{Sidenote: American provisions}
The new American copyright code, passed March 4, 1909, and in force July
1, 1909, in its fundamental provision broadly sets forth and
specifically defines the scope of copyright, by providing (sec. 1):
"That any person entitled thereto, upon complying with the provisions of
this Act, shall have the exclusive right:
"(a) To print, reprint, publish, copy, and vend the copyrighted work;
"(b) To translate the copyrighted work into other languages or dialects,
or make any other version thereof, if it be a literary work; to
dramatize it if it be a non-dramatic work; to convert it into a novel or
other non-dramatic work if it be a drama; to arrange or adapt it if it
be a musical work; to complete, execute, and finish it if it be a model
or design for a work of art;
{Sidenote: Oral addresses}
"(c) To deliver or authorize the delivery of the copyrighted work in
public for profit if it be a lecture, sermon, address, or similar
production;
{Sidenote: Dramas}
"(d) To perform or represent the copyrighted work publicly if it be a
drama, or, if it be a dramatic work and not reproduced in copies for
sale, to vend any manuscript or any record whatsoever thereof; to make
or to procure the making of any transcription or record thereof by or
from which, in whole or in part, it may in any manner or by any method
be exhibited, performed, represented, produced, or reproduced; and to
exhibit, perform, represent, produce, or reproduce it in any manner or
by any method whatsoever;
{Sidenote: Music}
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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