eign legislation. Furthermore, at last year's hearings, the Department of State submitted, on request, a set brief on that offending suggestion. It was the department's declared judgment that these antiimportation provisions violated the favored-nation clause in our commercial treaties, as well as the convention of November 8, 1927, for the abolition of the import and export prohibitions and restrictions; ran counter to the spirit of the International Copyright Union and was "nothing more or less than a rider designed to give protection and legal assistance to the American manufacturing industry without necessary connection with copyright or with the statute governing copyright." In other words, a tariff interloper in a copyright statute.

* * *

The common reader has, from the foundation of our Government, like the common reader the world over, had the simple right to buy legitimate books as and when and where he pleased. He has not abused his right. The Constitution was written for him. Let him alone. There is bigger game elsewhere.

If Congress meets these four duties with three short bills, it can thumb its nose at general revision, devote its attention to other tasks, and win lasting fame.

TENTATIVE DRAFT FOR A BILL TO ENABLE THE UNITED STATES TO ENTER THE INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT UNION

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That copyright throughout the United States and its dependencies shall subsist in the work of alien authors not domiciled in the United States who are nationals of any country which is a member of the International Copyright Union, by virtue of the adherence of the United States to the Convention of Berne for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works of September 9, 1886, as revised at Berlin on November 13, 1908, and at Rome on June 2, 1928.

SEO. 2. From and after the date upon which the adherence of the United States to the said convention of 1928 becomes effective, copyright protection shall be accorded without formality for works by such alien authors thereafter created, as well as for all works which on such date are protected by copyright in any country which is a member of the International Copyright Union; Provided, That as to copyright in works not previously copyrighted in the United States, no right or remedy given pursuant to this act shall prejudice lawful acts done or rights in or in connection with copies lawfully made or the continuance of business undertakings or enterprises lawfully undertaken within the United States or any of its dependencies prior to the date on which the adherence of the United States to the said convention of 1928 became effective; and the author or other owner of such copyright or person claiming under him shall not be entitled to bring action against any person who has prior to such date taken any action in connection with the exploitation, production, reproduction, circulation, or performance (in a manner which at the time was not unlawful) of any such work whereby he has incurred any substantial expenditure or liability.

SEC. 3. Copyright is hereby granted and secured by this act to all authors entitled thereto from and after the creation of their work, whether published or unpublished, including works of architecture and choreographic works and pantomimes, and the duration and termination of such copyright shall be governed by the provisions of sections 23 and 24 of the act of March 4, 1909 (U. S. C., title 17): Provided, That the duration of copyright in the United States shall not in the case of the work of any alien author extend beyond the date upon which such work has fallen into the public domain in the country of its origin as defined in said convention of 1928.

SEO. 4. The rights granted in section 1 of the said act of 1909 (U. S. C., title 17) shall include the exclusive rights of the author to communicate his work for profit to the public by any system of broadcasting (including television); and the author of any copyrighted work, even after the assignment of the copyright in such work, shall at all times have the right to claim the authorship of his work, and the right to oppose every distortion, mutilation, or other modification of the said work which might be prejudicial to his honor or to his reputation, as well as the right to restrain the publication and/or the performance of the mutilated work.

SEC. 5. The Supreme Court of the United States shall prescribe such additional or modified rules and regulations as may be necessary for practice and procedure in any action, suit, or proceeding instituted for infringement under the provisions of this act.

SEC. 6. This act shall take effect from the date of its passage.

Just a few words will be spoken by representatives of two large national holding organizations, and the first will be Dr. W. G. Leland, who is director of the American Council of Learned Societies.

STATEMENT OF DR. W. G. LELAND, DIRECTOR AMERICAN COUNCIL OF LEARNED SOCIETIES

Doctor LELAND. It will only take me about three or four minutes. Let me say first of all, since this is the first time that the American Council of Learned Societies has ever appeared before any committee of Congress, that it was organized in 1920. It is a federation of 18 national societies, devoted to such fields of learning as history, literature, art, economics, political science, languages, and so forth, and I have a list of the constituent societies here which I will give you for the record, and ask that it be read into the record. The oldest of our societies is the American Philosophical Society, of Philadelphia, of which Benjamin Franklin was one of the founders and leaders.

The list of societies forming the American Council of Learned Societies is as follows:

American Philosophical Society.

American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

American Antiquarian Society.

American Oriental Society.

American Philological Association.

Archaeological Institute of America.

Society of Biblical Literature and Exegesis.

Modern Language Association of America.
American Historical Association.

American Economic Association.

American Philosophical Association.

American Anthropological Association.

American Political Science Association.
Bibliographical Society of America.
American Sociological Society.
History of Science Society.
Linguistic Society of America.
Mediaeval Academy of America.

The point I wish to speak about is the last one brought up by Mr. Raney and the one Mr. Solbert spoke of, namely, the threatened limitation of the right of the individual to purchase authorized editions for his own use. Under the present copyright law, with which we are satisfied so far as that provision is concerned, scholars are allowed to purchase such books as they may need for their own use and to bring them in subject to the payment of duty. This provision in the new bill would seriously limit that privilege which we have at present. In other words, if an edition has been published in the United States as well as abroad, and we wish to purchase a copy of that original English edition, we are obliged to go through the performance which Mr. Raney has described, or we would be obliged to do so in order to be sure of not running counter to the proposed legislation. That is simply a nuisance. I have never been

able to explain to myself why the publishers are willing to waive that provision when the books go to libraries, allowing them to purchase as they do at present, but when they go to individual scholars, they insist on retaining that provision. Now, the individual scholar, or scholars as such, I think, owe the publishers in this country very little indeed. We pay thousands of dollars per year to American publishers to publish learned works, and they never do it for nothing, and if we were allowed to purchase directly the original editions, the loss to them would be very slight. I should not suppose it would be more than $100 a year; nothing compared with the inconvenience and with the nuisance that it is to us to be obliged to go through all this procedure in order to be sure we can import an original edition of an English book.

Mr. RICH. You are perfectly willing to have a tariff placed on the book?

Doctor LELAND. Quite willing.

Mr. RICH. But you want the privilege of securing the book in the original?

Doctor LELAND. We are not asking for importation free of duty. We are ready to pay whatever duty there may be placed on such books. We feel that the tariff and the copyright are two separate matters and that they should be kept entirely separate. There is a most unfortunate mingling of the two things, however. We feel that any importation that is desirable should be effected by means of a tariff, and not by any provision of this sort in the copyright legislation. That is one matter.

The other matter is the one that Mr. Solberg spoke of, freedom in bringing in books that one has purchased and used abroad and that one desires to retain for his own use. If the proposed law should go into effect, limiting that freedom of importation to five works, it should be absurd. Suppose that I had been abroad for a year at a time, working there, doing research work, and during the course of that work I had purchased a considerable number of books which I used right along and which I found necessary for my research work, and so forth. There may be 25 books that I so purchased and used, and say, I can only bring in five of those volumes; which ones do I throw away and which ones shall I bring in? The thing is such a complete nuisance that it seems almost incredible that it should be thought of.

Mr. DIES. What is your suggestion as to the proper provision?
Doctor LELAND. Let him bring them in as his baggage.

Mr. RICH. And pay duty on them?
Doctor LELAND. And pay duty on them.

of his personal luggage.

Mr. SOLBERG. Under the law as it stands?

Bring them in as a part

Doctor LELAND. Exactly; leaving the privilege as it stands now. Mr. RANEY. As a matter of fact, under the tariff law, the United States Government relieved the immigrant of the payment of duty in bringing his books into this country before it gave American institutions freedom from duty in importing.

Mr. RICH. As I understand the situation, if the gentleman should be a student and he desired to bring in 50 books, he is allowed 5 without duty as his personal belongings. Other than that, he is willing to pay the tariff?

Mr. RANEY. No; he pays duty on them all.

Mr. DIES. But he can not bring more than five?

Doctor LELAND. Under the proposed provision, that is so.
Mr. RANEY. In the Vestal measure, that thing is there.

Mr. RICH. If he is willing to pay duty on those books, there is no reason why he should not bring them all?

Doctor LELAND. No.

Mr. RICH. We can take care of our people in that respect, it seems to me?

Doctor LELAND. Precisely, and for the most part these are books that are obtainable in the United States. Among them may be American editions, but I may want them over there at the moment, and I purchase them in England, and so naturally I want to bring them back with me as part of my personal library.

I am speaking not about the laws that now exist. I want the same privilege to be retained in any legislation to be enacted that we now have, but I am speaking particularly because our fears have been aroused, and we are very much concerned by the very narrow escape we had at the last session from having these nuisance clauses inserted. That is the thing we protest against, as American scholars, and it may be a flight between us and the publishers, but, as I have said, we do not owe the publishers anything.

Mr. RANEY. At the hearing last year, when this was brought out. Mr. Vestal said that there was a blunder somewhere, that they did not mean to do that and it would be corrected; but the thing has been introduced in this session of Congress in exactly the same phraseology.

Mr. DIES. By whom?

Mr. RANEY. Mr. Vestal.

Mr. SOLBERG. And Senator Hebert.

Mr. DIES. We will make a note of that.

Mr. SOLBERG. It provides that "no one person shall so import more than five such works at any one time." There is no limitation to the character of the work.

Mr. RANEY. And the official representative of the publishers arose in the room and said that it was a blunder.

Doctor LELAND. That is all that I had to say. I wanted to present the view of the American scholars. These societies have an aggregate membership of 20,000, and they have asked us to do everything in our power to call the attention of Congress to the difficulties that will confront us if the present freedom that we have should be hampered in the way proposed here.

Mr. RANEY. The last speaker, who will speak briefly in the absence of Doctor McCracken, is Dr. Charles D. Mann, director of the American Council of Education.

STATEMENT OF DR. CHARLES R. MANN, DIRECTOR AMERICAN COUNCIL OF EDUCATION

Doctor MANN. The American Council of Education, like the Council of Learned Societies, is a center of cooperation for the higher educational institutions of the country, and consists of 23 national associations that deal with higher education and about 250 of the leading colleges and universities of the country.

We are interested in this copyright bill as it effects the preservation of the rights of the authors in their works of art and literature, and also as it effects the procurement of such works from abroad. There is no necessity of my going into the specific points, because we are entirely in sympathy with what Mr. Raney, Doctor Leland, and Mr. Solberg have said, and the same points that they have mentioned are the ones that we are interested in, namely, the use of the copyright law for purposes of copyright and not mixing it with the tariff and other things. We are behind the remarks of the Library Association and others on these various points.

Mr. DIES. The committee is very grateful to you gentlemen for giving us the benefit of your views. Dr. Sirovich has conducted a very thorough and a careful investigation of this matter to determine what legislation is needed to protect, if possible, everyone equally, and we will bear in mind what you have said, especially in reference to this apparent blunder that was in the previous bill. It will be called to the chairman's attention, and I want to thank you gentlemen very much.

Hon. WILLIAM I. SIROVICH,

WESTMINSTER THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY,
Philadelphia, March 3, 1932.

Chairman Committee on Patents and Copyrights,

House of Representatives, Washington, D. C. DEAR SIR: Being prevented by imperative reasons from being present at the hearing before the Committee on Patents and Copyrights on Monday, March 7, 1932, at which time I understand that the matter in which I am particularly interested will be considered, I respectfully request that this letter be received by the committee and be included in the printed record of the hearing.

My opposition to the copyright bill H. R. 12549 which so nearly became a law in the last Congress was due to the provision in section 28 prohibiting importation by individuals even of single copies of the original (British) edition of a book of which there is an American publisher, except through the American publisher or after refusal or neglect on the part of the American publisher to furnish the book. I now respectfully urge that this prohibition be omitted from any bill to be presented to the present Congress, and that importation of single copies of the original (British) edition be permitted when the imported book is not for sale or hire-in other words that the liberty of importation which H. R. 12549 allows to libraries be extended also to individuals as is the case under the law now in force.

The section to which I object practically forbids the importation of the original editions of British books, since the regulations and delays under which importation is permitted are prohibitive.

According to this section, if a man desires to own one of the original editions of a current British book, or of any of the English classics up to a time 50 years after the death of the author, he must first institute researches to see whether there is an American edition of the book; then he must make a formal application to the American publisher; then he must wait 10 days to see whether the American publisher will furnish the book; and finally he will risk having his book confiscated at the customhouse, since there will be no conceivable way of making customs officials aware of the fact that the neces sary formalities have been complied with in any particular case, and that the American publisher has neglected to agree to import the book. If, on the other hand, the American publisher does agree, there is no guarantee whatever that the agreement will be carried out in any reasonable time, or indeed at any time whatever. The upshot of the whole matter is really quite clear— the importation of the original (British) edition of a book that has an American publisher will be rendered to all intents and purposes impossible.

Such a provision will, if adopted, result in obscurantism of the most oppressive kind.

1. It will, if adopted, prevent American readers during long periods of time from obtaining the books of the day in any edition, either British or American. The importation of the British edition is forbidden not merely during the period when the American edition is actually being published and when