George N. Morang

“ Under the British Copyright Laws, which extend to Canada, a British or Canadian author of a literary work has the undisputed right to his manuscript; he may withhold, or he may communicate it, and in communicating it he may limit the number of persons to whom it is imparted, and impose such restrictions as he pleases upon the use and printing of the work. ”

“ Prominent in the agitation which terminated in the Chace Bill was the American Copyright League, which included among its members the authors of the United States, and was presided over by such men as James Russell Lowell, Stedman, and Eggleston. The League in a noble letter published in 1887 appealed to all good citizens for justice to foreign authors, upon the ground that they were entitled to receive from those who read and benefitted by their books, the same fair payment one would expect to make on any other article, such as clothes or pictures bought from foreign producers. ”

“ Those who at present comprise a majority of the Booksellers' Section of the Board of Trade desire to have a Canadian copyright law of their own, to secure authority which will enable the Canadian Parliament to pass an Act which would separate Canadians from the rule of British copyright legislation, and necessarily, too, from its benefits. It goes without saying that if this is effectuated Canada will be excluded from the Copyright Union and also from protection in the vast market of the United States ”

“ Nothing but the right for Canadian publishers to print in Canada the majority of British or foreign books in any cheap form they please, and to compile such works as School Readers made up of extracts culled from copyright works, subject only to such safeguards as will secure to the owners of the copyrights infringed upon a reasonable royalty, in the imposition of which they can have no effective voice. ”

“ The Fisher Bill was passed with the full approval of the Imperial authorities, and is another great concession to the Canadian trade. Now, if a Canadian publisher buys the British copyright of a work so far as Canada is concerned, he may protect himself not only against the introduction of United States and foreign prints, but even as against the introduction of reprints produced in Great Britain itself. ”

“ Every lover of books will remember that during the continuance of the arrangement, a Canadian Publishing Trade hardly existed, and that the reading public who bought books were compelled in a great measure to satisfy themselves with American reprints, of so little value that specimens of them are now regarded almost as curiosities. ”

“ The Canadian rights in any American book which is likely to have a considerable sale in Canada are quickly purchased by some Canadian publisher, and the book is published simultaneously with the publication in England and the United States. ”

“ I believe that the rights of publishers are inseparably bound up with those of authors, and I regard any attempt to deprive authors of any rights in the property which is the product of their intellectual exertions as "nothing short of a crime equal to that of a highwayman," nor can I submit to remain a member of the Board of Trade without recording my warm dissent from the action of the Council and the Executive. ”

“ A Canadian publisher might have purchased from an English author the right to reproduce a Canadian edition; he might have gone to large expense in advertising and popularizing his purchase, yet, before his books could be placed on the counters of Canadian retail dealers, he as a rule found in the market the cheap Colonial Edition imported to compete with and undersell his own, even although he had contracted as effectually as he could with the English author and publisher for the Canadian market. ”

“ The League appealed for the widening of the circulation of the best new literature, home and international, on the ground of the lessening of the price which would ensue, in the case of original American books, from distributing the first cost among the greater number of copies for which sale would be secured among American readers, if the market were not flooded by pirated reprints of poor English novels ”

“ Her Majesty's Government is advised that under existing English law an alien by first publication in any part of Her Majesty's Dominions can obtain the benefit of English copyright, and that contemporaneous publication in a foreign country does not prevent the author from obtaining English copyright. ”