Page:Copyright, Its History And Its Law (1912).djvu/216

 theatre, in which actors walk and talk through the drama and the public is invited to pay a shilling at the box office — and sometimes given half a crown apiece for the purpose; which performance, though probably not necessary to fulfill any legal requirement, permits registration of first performance at Stationers' Hall and gives useful public notice to possible infringers.

This uncertain and confused situation will be remedied under the new British measure by the inclusion under "copyright" of the right "to perform . . . to deliver, in public" and the making of the copyright term the "life of the author and fifty years after his death," which together afford the simplest and most complete protection of playright as incident to copyright.

The international copyright act of 1844 contained the provision "that neither the author of any book, nor the author or composer of any dramatic piece or musical composition . . . which shall . . . be first published out of her Majesty's dominions, shall have any copyright therein respectively, or any exclusive right to the public representation or performance thereof, otherwise than such, if any, as he may become entitled to under this act,"—a provision inserted probably for advantage in negotiating reciprocal conventions with other countries. This provision was applied in 1863, in the case of Boucicault v. Delafield, to a British author whose play had been first printed and published as well as performed in America. In Boucicault v. Chatterton in 1876, the Chancery Division held that the prior performance of "The Shaughraun" in New York was publication and deprived the author of playright in England,—which again seems incompatible with the doctrine upheld in the later case of Chappell v. Boosey, above cited. Great Britain