Page:Copyright, Its History And Its Law (1912).djvu/154

 the longer. The copyright in other articles has varied according to specific laws. The Copyright Commission of 1876 proposed, for all copyright articles as well as books, a term of life and thirty years after the author's death, according to the German precedent, or in case of anonymous and posthumous books and encyclopaedias, thirty years from the date of deposit in the British Museum, an anonymous author to have the right during the thirty years to obtain the full term by publishing an edition with his name. The English law contained a specific provision that in the case of articles in periodicals (but not in an encyclopaedia) the right to publish in separate form should revert to an author after twenty-eight years; the Commission proposed a term of three years, during which time also the author as well as the general owner may bring suit against piracy. The English committee appointed to make recommendations in respect to the adoption of the Berlin provisions of 1908 through domestic legislation, however, reported strongly in favor of a general term of life and fifty years; and this term has been adopted in the new code.

This general term of "the life of the author and a code period of fifty years after his death" holds "unless previously determined by first publication elsewhere." In joint authorship, copyright shall subsist during the life of the author who first dies and fifty years after or during the life of the author who dies last, whichever the longer. In posthumous works, copyright subsists for fifty years from first publication or performance, whichever the earlier. Anonymous and pseudonymous, and corporate works are not named in the act, and the term is presumably fifty years, unless in the former cases identity is disclosed. For photographs and mechanical music reproductions as such, the term is fifty years from the making of the original