not slip, the matter on this thing would be something like this: I write a book. It is serialized first in a magazine, then is published as a book. It might conceivably have a play based upon it, whereupon I have the dramatic rights in it. Then the book is sold for motion-picture rights to a motion-picture company. Then there would be second serial rights, and still later foreign rights on the book or serial publication.

The CHAIRMAN. Then stock rights and radio rights and television rights and countless other rights. In other words, if you give the publisher the right to copyright

Mr. CROWELL. My book.

The CHAIRMAN. Your book, he becomes practically the owner of all these rights.

Mr. CROWELL. Not practically, but just as absolutely as fee simple to land.

The CHAIRMAN. Of all the by-products that come from it.

Mr. CROWELL. With no qualifications whatever.

Mr. DIES. Couldn't you protect yourself by agreement at the time?

Mr. CROWELL. That is the point of the thing. This is so outrageous that we have from time to time, and slowly and laboriously, and through a maze of theft and cheating of all sorts, worked out an arrangement which was merely a matter of decency between men. Take the one I write for the Post-the Saturday Evening Post. They don't want all that. They are a prosperous, decent publication. They want the first American serial rights. But they must have the whole copyright under our present law or they have nothing. Then they say, "We will give you back all these." Mr. DIES. Do they say that generally?

Mr. CROWELL. Yes. But if I were to say to some, "You give me back that," they wouldn't do it.

Mr. RICH. Aren't you protected in that?

Mr. CROWELL. Not at all, except by their courtesy.

Mr. RICH. If they want to return all the rights, outside of the publishing rights, you have the right to sell that to whomever you please?

Mr. CROWELL. If they give it back to me.

Mr. DIES. Can't you require them to?

Mr. RICH. Let me ask this: On the other hand, if you have written a play or a book and you sell it to a publisher, then is the time for you to make your terms for what you shall receive for the printing of the book, and all the other rights?

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Rich, why put the cart before the horse?

Mr. CROWELL. I will tell you where the weak point in that is, because it is very important right there. You are shooting at the target-here is what happens: It is exactly as though I were running a livery stable and I have a horse in there, and I am going to rent you my horse to go from here to there, but the law being such, I can't rent you my horse, I have to give you a bill of sale to my horse. That is all I can do, so legally it becomes your horse while it goes from here to there. Now, if anything happens to you, you drop dead on your way, then that horse I never get back. If you go into bankruptcy, the receiver takes that. It is part of your estate. I have

given up all title to it. Anything that happens to you on that journey, I am out. It is all yours.

And those things have happened many times, so that we feel that it is wrong for an author, the creator of the goods, to begin with, to be placed in a position of utterly parting with his title at any time and risking bankruptcy or civil suits or death or other disasters of corporations.

Mr. RICH. If you would subdivide your authority, when you get this, to only give them the publishing privilege, or the radio privilege, the threatrical privilege, or things of that kind, would not that be satisfactory? You have to make a contract with the publishers otherwise. Why don't you go ahead and publish your own book? They must have some protection.

Mr. CROWELL. We want to give them protection in this way, and they are agreed to it, and it looks as though it would be the most simple arrangement in the world-that we license this thing for that particular use. That is all he wants, and he has agreed to it. He is not angry about it. He says, "Give me a license for first American serial rights." There is no dispute about the terms, no dispute about what that means-that is all he wants. And then when we give him that license, he is in the clear. But if he drops dead on the way, we don't lose all the rights-I don't lose all the rights I have in that I still have my basic copyright. Is that clear?

Mr. DIES. These agreements are in general use as it is. It is just a roundabout, cumbersome way of achieving the end.

Mr. CROWELL. Where we are on this thing is that it is pretty largely a courtesy arrangement. I must make that clear, otherwise there is no point to the argument.

Mr. DIES. You have no rights; it is just a question of courtesy. Mr. CROWELL. All this has been worked out by courtesy between gentlemen. But there are a great many people in this field who are not gentlemen.

Mr. DIES. But do the majority of reputable concerns work with the authors under that basis?

Mr. CROWELL. The reputable firms work that way, but in this field there are many firms that are not reputable, and they still operate otherwise and get away with it most beautifully. There have been fortunes piled up in this country within the last 20 years on the basis of buying short stories at very small sums for the 15-cent magazines, taking all the rights, and then promptly selling the motion-picture rights for 5, 6, and up to 10 times the amount paid to the author for the story. We feel there is no point to that. It does not do anybody any good.

Mr. RICH. If you had the various rights, you could control, so far as sale is concerned, those rights. For instance, you sell a writing to a publisher. You make a contract with the publisher for the printing and sale of that book. You are to receive a certain royalty. It is naturally supposed you would live up to the contract which you made with the publisher, or if you made a contract with someone to use that writing for broadcasting, you would be expected to live up to the contract you made with the broadcasting people for the length of time for which you made this contract.

Mr. CROWELL. When you mention broadcasting you would be surprised to find how each one of them, when it comes under the copy

right law, calls attention to the fact that it is not mentioned, and takes it; and not until we worked out gentlemen's agreements, after having lawsuits and getting court decisions and holding committee meetings-in other words, we protected ourselves very much like the western cowmen protected themselves against horse thieves. There was lots of stealing in the motion-picture game, but after a while they discovered that if one firm could steal my book and make a picture of it, then the other firm down the road might be stealing it and making it at the same time, so they quit.

The CHAIRMAN. Just a minute, Mr. Crowell; we will be running away from our hearing. I think we may solve the problem if I again call upon you, Mr. Bickerton, as the spokesman of your organization. When you began the hearings this morning you presented three fundamental concepts. Do you agree with Mr. Bickerton on the others?

Mr. CROWELL. I have heard them and agree with them.

The CHAIRMAN. On the third, would you be willing to accept this amendment, which is bothering some of the members of this committee. You want, first, copyright under the author's name; second, the right of the author to assign his copyright to whomever he wants and register it in Washington; third, the right of the author to sell any part of his copyrighted product through a license, in any part or whole, to anyone he pleases. Is that right as far as we have gone? Mr. BICKERTON. Correct.

The CHAIRMAN. And register it and copyright it here. Now, the thing that seems to be worrying Mr. Rich and Mr. Dies over here is this: We have been talking about the publisher who is a crook and who has been stealing things. I have seen bad men in every profession and every line of endeavor, even in public life. Suppose you find an author who is corrupt and who gives a license for the same product to two or three people at the same time, are you in favor of incorporating in the third section, that gives the right to license any part of a copyrighted product of an author, that, if such author sells to two or three people the same product at the same time, he shall be guilty of a felony or misdemeanor punishable by imprisonment and a fine.

Mr. BICKERTON. If it is willful.

Mr. CROWELL. I don't think there would be any doubt that that would be plainly wrong.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Dies wants to know how it could be any other way but willful if a man sells or licenses the same book to more than one person.

Mr. BICKERTON. It wouldn't be specifically, but frequently, Mr. Dies, our contracts that deal with rights in futuro, undiscovered arts, sometimes they refer to an art that has not grown to the point where it can be named.

The CHAIRMAN. Commercialized?

Mr. DIES. Can't you give priority of license some way?

Mr. BICKERTON. There might be a possibility of the overlapping of some undiscovered art, which was entirely unseen on the part of the author.

Mr. DIES. For instance, if television should develop.

Mr. BICKERTON. Exactly. I don't know just what television may

mean.

Mr. DIES. What I meant was, can't you work out a plan where there would be priority of claims, where a man who takes out the first license would have the rights, and the second man's right would be invalid?

Mr. BICKERTON. Recordation would be the first thing, and then it would be up to the purchaser to find out what he got. In fulfillment of the idea Mr. Crowell is trying to express to you, you see to-day that a copyright has no means of passing except in toto. If an author wishes to convey an interest in a copyright there is no recognition to-day of that interest under the copyright act. It therefore opens the door to this situation: It may be true that by contract, and usually is true, that the equitable interest, the reserved equitable right, remains in the author with the legal title vested in this individual, and then when you go to try to dispose of any other right the owner of the legal title says: "Well, it seems to me I ought to get some money for this mere assignment. It opens the door for slight extortion."

Mr. DIES. You have no way to record that equitable title you have? Mr. BICKERTON. No; it is contested as to whether or not we have any standing as the equitable owner as against the legal owner.

Mr. CROWELL. We want to make that point, that this copyright should cover not only just the written work, but all forms of expression, so that if somebody invents something else next week, it will be covered under some such phrase as "all forms of expression," and we are perfectly clear on that point. We feel that the first sale will be the first license, and the author's copyright on that license will go in at the same time; and, first of all, he should not be able to sell that again, because it would be recorded simultaneously with the author's copyright, and the two should go together. We feel that there is a very keen need for our straightening out our copyright situation in this country so that we may join in these international agreements about copyright, and simplify the thing rather than be driving in the direction of retaliation. Our whole hope is for cooperation, is for working in every way against any battles on the point. We want to make it as fair as possible for them and as fair as possible for us, and while I mentioned these crooked deals we have had to contend with all the way through, then you say: "The majority don't do that." That is true, the majority will not do that; but still, we ought to simplify the thing, just as I would not try to steal the title to your house. Land titles should be so simple that we ought not to have 17 lawyers to protect that title.

There are new writers coming in all the time. There is a constant influx year by year of people who are not schooled and experienced, and we want this law so simplified that a man will walk through it without fear of difficulties.

The CHAIRMAN. We will now call upon Miss Fannie Hurst.

STATEMENT OF MISS FANNIE HURST

Miss HURST. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, I am presenting my angle to you from a rather narrow viewpoint. I represent the literary creative angle. It is rather a bombastic phrase, but since we are sort of departmentalized in this discussion, I find it necessary to specify quite concretely what I want to dwell upon.

The copyright law, Mr. Chairman, as it operates at the moment, is particularly unfavorable to the great majority of creative writers. I mean the unknown writer, that vast element which lies in the literary hinterland, so to speak. Many of the authors who are here to-day represent what is, unfortunately, and they are the first to feel that, a sort of automatic aristocracy in the writing world. I mean by that men like Rupert Hughes and Mr. Guiterman and Mr. Carpenter; and women like Mrs. Winslow and Mrs. Irwin and Will Irwin, and many people who are in a position to buy expensive and skillful advice in this subtle and difficult copyright situation.

But the beginning writer, the men and women outside the sophisticated pale, so to speak, and I mean by sophistication outside those circles which are in a position to buy information from the best legal minds on this copyright matter, are impotent.

The beginning writer to-day, since so much that has to do with copyright is a gentleman's agreement, finds himself completely at the mercy of his editor, his publisher, or his producer. The author who is in a position to have his material published through competent and recognized sources is automatically protected because of these gentlemen's agreements, but the small author who comes in—and it seems to me to-day that the small author, the unknown writer, the unprotected writer, legally, is the object of our consideration-that individual is at the mercy of the entire situation.

It seems ironical and indeed paradoxical that authors, allegedly the most articulate of human beings, should be in what I am sure you will agree, is the present morass. As I look at our legal picture, and as I hear it to-day for practically the first time discussed, it seems incredible that we could have gone on through the years without some skillful and more water-tight protection, and the fact that a few are protected I think is the greatest indictment of all of the situation.

There is an aristocracy in letters to-day, an involuntary one, that is true, but an aristocracy nevertheless, and I do urge upon this committee to draft a bill or a law for the consideration of the House of Representatives that will give the beginning author an opportunity not only to be heard, but to be automatically protected.

We seem in our writing world to have none of the kinds of consideration offered us that are given to the industrial field, and perhaps it is best that we should not have. Our complete lack of organization, if it is true, does rule out that vast large element of creative minds that need to be heard in our country.

I think that is all I have to say.

The CHAIRMAN. In other words, you would like to see a law perfected that would be instrumental not alone in bringing justice to the strong but in bringing it to the weak?

Miss HURST. Precisely.

The CHAIRMAN. Are you in favor of or do you indorse the three contentions of Mr. Carpenter and Mr. Bickerton and all the others who have preceded you?

Miss HURST. I do.

Mr. RICH. You made the statement that you thought this committee should draft a bill that would be satisfactory to the various groups. Don't you believe it would be more appropriate if the