Page:Copyright, Its History And Its Law (1912).djvu/482

 450 COPYRIGHT

with reference to the mechanical reproduction of mu- sic, though with the saving clause that the author has complete right to forbid mechanical reproduction of his musical composition so long as he does not license any manufacturer. This American precedent has been followed as to mechanical music in recent legis- lation by Germany and other continental countries and in the modified British measure. The Italian copyright law has, however, a compulsory license provision for the second forty years of copyright, under which any publisher can issue a book on pay- ment to the author of five per cent royalty; and the new British measure contains a like provision ap- plicable twenty-five or thirty years after the author's death, on a basis of ten per cent royalty. License The American provision is for two cents for each

pa;ments j-oU, under elaborate regulations, as set forth in the chapter on mechanical music provisions. It is doubt- ful whether those regulations can be effectively applied, and indeed the whole provision may prove unconstitutional because of its interference with the right of sale or license involved in private property. The several substitutes for these regulations proposed and discussed, were rejected as even less desirable — as the proposal that the Copyright Office itself should un- dertake an elaborate system of accounting and guaran- tee to the author as practically a ward of the state, and another proposal for a system of stamps to be affixed to each copy published, supplied by the Copy- right Office or the author and sold to the publisher, a system actually in practice in shoe manufacture under the royalty system of the McKay Shoe Manu- facturing Company. The answer to all these schemes is that the author should be at liberty to make such arrangements, by contract with one publisher or with many, as he may please, and that a law to compel him