Literary Copyright | Page 6

with the manufacture of books, rests upon an unintelligible protective
tariff basis. It should rest primarily upon an acknowledgment of the
author's right of property in his own work, the same universal right that
he has in any other personal property. The author's international
copyright should be no more hampered by restrictions and
encumbrances than his national copyright. Whatever regulations the
government may make for the protection of manufactures, or trade
industries, or for purposes of revenue on importations, they should not
be confounded with the author's right of property. They have no
business in an international copyright act, agreement, or treaty. The
United States copyright for native authors contains no manufacturing
restrictions. All we ask is that foreign authors shall enjoy the same
privileges we have under our law, and that foreign nations shall give

our authors the privileges of their local copyright laws. I do not know
any American author of any standing who has ever asked or desired
protection against foreign authors.
This subject is so important that I may be permitted to enlarge upon it,
in order to make clear suggestions already made, and to array again
arguments more or less familiar. I do this in the view of bringing before
the institute work worthy of its best efforts, which if successful will
entitle this body to the gratitude and respect of the country. I refer to
the speedy revision of our confused and wholly inadequate American
copyright laws, and later on to a readjustment of our international
relations.
In the first place let me bring to your attention what is, to the vast body
of authors, a subject of vital interest, which it is not too much to say has
never received that treatment from authors themselves which its
importance demands. I refer to the property of authors in their
productions. In this brief space and time I cannot enter fully upon this
great subject, but must be content to offer certain suggestions for your
consideration.
The property of an author in the product of his mental labor ought to be
as absolute and unlimited as his property in the product of his physical
labor. It seems to me idle to say that the two kinds of labor products are
so dissimilar that the ownership cannot be protected by like laws. In
this age of enlightenment such a proposition is absurd. The history of
copyright law seems to show that the treatment of property in brain
product has been based on this erroneous idea. To steal the paper on
which an author has put his brain work into visible, tangible form is in
all lands a crime, larceny, but to steal the brain work is not a crime. The
utmost extent to which our enlightened American legislators, at almost
the end of the nineteenth century, have gone in protecting products of
the brain has been to give the author power to sue in civil courts, at
large expense, the offender who has taken and sold his property.
And what gross absurdity is the copyright law which limits even this
poor defense of author's property to a brief term of years, after the
expiration of which he or his children and heirs have no defense, no
recognized property whatever in his products.
And for some inexplicable reason this term of years in which he may be
said to own his property is divided into two terms, so that at the end of

the first he is compelled to re-assert his ownership by renewing his
copyright, or he must lose all ownership at the end of the short term.
It is manifest to all honest minds that if an author is entitled to own his
work for a term of years, it is equally the duty of his government to
make that ownership perpetual. He can own and protect and leave to his
children and his children's children by will the manuscript paper on
which he has written, and he should have equal right to leave to them
that mental product which constitutes the true money value of his labor.
It is unnecessary to say that the mental product is always as easy to be
identified as the physical product. Its identification is absolutely certain
to the intelligence of judges and juries. And it is apparent that the
interests of assignees, who are commonly publishers, are equal with
those of authors, in making absolute and perpetual this property in
which both are dealers.
Another consideration follows here. Why should the ownership of a
bushel of wheat, a piece of silk goods, a watch, or a handkerchief in the
possession of an American carried or sent to England, or brought
thence to this country, be absolute and unlimited, while the ownership
of his own products as an author or as