Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 14.djvu/180

168 apprehension the application of the word "monopoly" to persons who possess rights under the copyright law is an entire mistake; it is merely a contrivance, arising out of the peculiar nature of book property, to put that property upon the same footing as other kinds of property. I think that that is all I have to say upon the general part of the question.

Q. Are we to understand it to be your contention that, under the old common law of the country, there would have been a right in the author to sell or not to sell his book in any way he pleased, and that for the convenience of the public the statute law has intervened, and, by what is commonly called the law of copyright, has attached certain conditions, and even restrictions, to that common-law right, for the benefit of the author on the one hand and of the public on the other; is that generally your view?

A. I would not suggest for a moment that that is the actual historical origin of copyright law, but I think that that is the way in which it ought to be regarded as a matter of equity.

Those who have given evidence before us rather in opposition to than in support of the present law of copyright have sometimes done so on the plea that the law at present is favorable rather to booksellers than to authors, and they have based that plea on an idea that authors, as a rule, dispose of their copyrights to publishers, so that the property becomes not the property of the man who has worked with his brain, but merely of a speculator. As far as you are aware, do you think that authors do dispose of their copyrights entirely?

A. I cannot say. I certainly do not do so myself, and I do not think that I know among the men of science anybody who does; but it appears to me that, supposing such to be the case, it applies to all sorts of property, and to the relations of needy men to middle-men of all kinds.

Q. The second part of your answer is perhaps a sufficient answer to the next question which I was going to ask you. As far as you are aware it is not so; but, even if it were so, you do not think that that would be any argument against the present law of copyright?

A. No; I take it that that must inevitably happen wherever men want money, and there are persons who are willing to buy their property.

Q. It has been suggested to us, though I can hardly say that it has been absolutely recommended, that, in lieu of the present modes of disposing of literary property, an author should have a right to a continued royalty; that is to say, that any publisher should be enabled to bring out an author's work, paying him some proportion of the price, which should be fixed not at all by the author, but by the law. Do you imagine that such a scheme as that could work?

A. No. Who is to be the judge as to what is the value of the author's work but himself? Who is there in the Government who is