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COPYRIGHT

President Roosevelt's message, 1905

Meantime President JRoosevelt, in his annual mes- sage of December 5, 1905, to the Fifty-ninth Congress, had made strong recommendations in favor of copy- right reform: "Our copyright laws urgently need revision. They are imperfect in definition, confused and inconsistent in expression; they omit provision for many articles which, under modern reproductive processes, are entitled to protection; they impose hardships upon the copyright proprietor which are not essential to the fair protection of the pubUc; they are difficult for the courts to interpret and impossible for the Copyright Office to administer with satisfaction to the public. Attempts to improve them by amendment have been frequent, no less than twelve acts for the purpose having been passed since the Revised Statutes. To perfect them by fur- ther amendmient seems impracticable. A complete revision of them is essential. Such a revision, to meet modern conditions, has been found necessary in Ger- many, Austria, Sweden and other foreign countries, and bills embodying it, are pending in England and the Australian colonies. It has been urged here, and proposals for a commission to undertake it have, from time to time, been pressed upon the Congress. The inconveniences of the present conditions being so great, an attempt to frame appropriate legislation has been made by the Copyright Office, which has called conferences of the various interests especially and practically concerned with the operation of the copyright laws. It has secured from them suggestions as to the changes necessary ; it has added from its own experience and investigations, and it has drafted a bill which embodies such of these changes and addi- tions as, after full discussion and expert criticism, appeared to be sound and safe. In form this bill would replace the existing insufficient and inconsistent laws