But while the act of 1891, by statutory construction, extended to the foreign author's book legal protection in the United States, it was conditioned upon the printing of his book within the United States. That obligation has continued for the 40 years elapsed and is the law to-day, except that the copyright act of 1909 released from this obligation the foreign author's book when printed in a language ether than English.

The CHAIRMAN. But while it works to the inconvenience of the British author, it works a great inconvenience on the American printer who finds foreign printing coming in and competing with him to the extent of dislocating his economic condition. So it is a question whether you are going to help one author or put thousands of working people out of business.

Mr. SOLBERG. I have been 33 years the register of copyrights. I have yet failed to have brought to my attention any evidence of any existence of foreign printing in relation to copyrighted books. The CHAIRMAN. That was the protest of the American Federation of Labor at our last hearing.

Mr. SOLBERG. They came to my office and asked permission to make a detailed examination. They spent weeks. They had the Catalogues of Copyrights so that they could check every entry between any given dates. They had access to every copy deposited. In the end they thought they had discovered a book printed in Canada which bore the publication plate of Boston; but after correspondence it was explained that the book was actually printed in Boston.

When the act of 1891 went into effect it covered every book, foreign and American and English; but after a time the American printer discovered that he was not getting any foreign printing. He was not getting the opportunity to print the foreign book, the book in a foreign language, because they could not afford to make two editions. It was over the signature of the president of the Typographical Union that the change was made in the act of 1909, releasing these books. It was after many conversations between myself and Mr. Lynch that he agreed that the contention was correct that they were not getting business; but probably failing to ure business by this mandatory requirement of printing. This requirement is not based upon any copyright principle. It st be entirely eliminated from our copyright legislation if that legislation is to rest upon sound principles.

There is also a moral issue here. During all these years we have said to the English author, "Yes; we will give you legal protection for your book in the United States, but only upon the condition that you give to an American printer the job of printing it."

It has been estimated that something like 85 per cent of all British. books produced since 1891 have failed to secure copyright protection the United States and such failure has brought large losses upon British authors, especially, since the introduction of motion pictures. The CHAIRMAN. Was not that done for the benefit of American Labor?

Mr. SOLBERG. Certainly, but that is not copyright. This obligatory American printing must be abrogated so far as concerns the books of foreign authors

The CHAIRMAN. How do you think the American Federation of Labor would stand on that principle?

Mr. SOLBERG. They will speak for themselves..

Mr. DIES. How does it work great inconvenience on the British
author if we give him the right to come into the United States?
Does it work a great inconvenience on him under the present law?
Mr. SOLBERG. Undoubtedly.

The natural laws of trade take care of it. When the Encyclopaedia
Britannica, the new edition, was to be printed, the English pub-
lishers felt greatly distressed. They have taken for many years now
every opportunity to protect themselves in their rights. They sent
a man from England to my desk with copies for the registration of
the claim of ad interim copyright, pending the printing of the book
in America. His only errand to the United States was to be able to
testify that he had come to me and delivered those books to me and
received proper acknowledgment. They printed the book in Chi-
cago. After it was well under way the agent of the Britannica
company said to me:

Mr. Solberg, you know it involves a great expense, but it has been demon-
strated that we had to print the work in America. We could not supply the
demand from subscribers. The printing press in England was not sufficient.
That printing would not have needed any obligation. It was done
anyway.

The CHAIRMAN. Did it work a hardship on them?

Mr. SOLBERG. Of course it did. It upset their whole business.
The CHAIRMAN. But it put thousands of printers to work printing
their editions in Chicago, did it not?

Mr. SOLBERG. Very well, but my contention is that that would have
followed anyhow. It is the natural course of the publishing business.
The result of the operation of the law has been that thousands,
hundreds of thousands of authors have lost their literary property,
and when now they are offered large sums for the use of their books
for motion pictures if they can give a copyright title, they have to
say, "I was young when I wrote that book. I couldn't afford to
print two editions. I couldn't arrange for an American edition, and
simply have lost my rights."

That is where the moral question comes in. You do not ask an
American citizen, or compel him to have all his clothes made in

America. We do it.

I say later on, and I will repeat it here, publishers have their own
presses and they use them. The normal thing is for the American
author to print his book in the United States. He doesn't go to
Mexico, nor even to Canada, and he certainly doesn't go to Europe.
There may be special exceptions.

I had a case brought to my notice this summer by one of the
eastern universities. They are preparing a very valuable and ex-
pensive work. It is to be illustrated by reproductions of certain art
things that they have at the university. They are so concerned about
this that they are sending an individual to Germany to have this
work done. He is to wait until it is done and bring it back. They
forfeit their legal rights for taking a perfectly natural action. Why?
I am hoping to bring out here rather abruptly, rather concisely, the
thought that when we go outside of the principle of the protection
of the author's product we are entrapped into this kind of thing.
May I continue?

The CHAIRMAN. Yes.

Mr. SOLBERG. This obligatory American printing must be abrogated
so far as concerns the books of foreign authors, who are nationals
of countries within the International Copyright Union, in order to
permit the United States to adhere to the Berne copyright conven-
tion. The copyright_bill, H. R. 12459, which passed the House of
Representatives on January 13, 1931, so provided. The present
copyright bills, H. R. 139 and S. 176, also provide for this. If
copyright protection in the United States can hereafter be assured
to British authors from the time of the creation of their books, then,
in the natural course of business, it is reasonable to believe that a
considerable percentage of such books produced in England here-
after may voluntarily be printed or reprinted in the United States.
The crux of the situation is that the British author has no protec-
tion until his work is printed. The legislation we ought to have
should protect him from the time his book is created. Then he
may have time, with protection, to comply with any formality that
Congress in its wisdom shall finally prescribe. But first of all, he
should be assured that protection.

Mr. DIES. Is there any provision in the laws of any other country
such as that?

Mr. SOLBERG. You mean for compulsory printing?

Mr. DIES. Yes.

Mr. SOLBERG. None except Canada and New Zealand.

The CHAIRMAN. Copyright is granted without any formality.
Mr. DIES. In other countries?

The CHAIRMAN. Yes.

Mr. SOLBERG. The articles of convention, including those of Rome,
require, and they are in force in all these countries, even in Canada
and New Zealand, that the author shall be protected without any
formality. It is automatic protection.

The CHAIRMAN. That is in the Roman convention; is that right,
Mr. McClure?

Mr. McCLURE. That there shall be automatic protection?

The CHAIRMAN. Yes, without any formality.

Mr. McCLURE. Yes.

Mr. DIES. The question of printing in that particular country has
nothing to do with it at all?

Mr. SOLBERG. Nothing.

So far as the American author's book is concerned, the natural
and usual thing is to print in the United States, and that is what is
being done. Most American publishers have their own printing
establishments, and it is indefensible to impose on all book pub-
lishers the irritating formality of executing an affidavit in the case
of every book issued by them that they have used their own presses.
The new bills submitted place this burden also upon all newspapers-
as if publishers of newspapers would propose going out of the
country to print their daily issues. The absurdity of such provisions
is manifest upon a bare statement.

But these bills go from absurdity to the possibility of gross in-
justice when they provide that the author's copyright in his book
shall be forfeited simply upon failure to file within sixty days such
an affidavit of compliance with the requirement of American manu-
facture. This loss of the author's entire literary property may

happen even though he has complied as to the actual printing of his book at home, if he has simply failed to file this superfluous affidavit. If it is not possible to secure the entire elimination of the manufacturing requirements, then at least, in lieu of requiring the filing of an affidavit in the Copyright Office with every article depositeda collection which in 10 years would exceed a million-the sensible requirement would be to provide for the filing of such affidavit of American manufacture with the court to support a suit for infringement, when instituted?

The CHAIRMAN. In other words, you would grant a copyright without any copy deposited whatever?

Mr. SOLBERG. Yes.

The CHAIRMAN. Such as a dramatic composition?

Mr. SOLBERG. If I make a chair, it is mine without registration. Why have a book?

Mr. DIES. Isn't that merely evidence of some sort?

Mr. SOLBERG. That is merely another end. I think I have expressed myself very forcibly upon the question of evidence, but I could enlarge very much upon it.

The CHAIRMAN. Doesn't that prevent plagiarism to some extent, the fact that you make an affidavit that this book is the product of your own mind, and you swear to it? Does that prevent some unscrupulous author, who might steal somebody else's work knowing he makes an affidavit, from doing it? Wouldn't that prevent plagiarism?

Mr. SOLBERG. You are thinking of an affidavit of another character. The affidavit now filed has nothing to do with authorship. It is only with regard to American manufacture. But suppose there was required an affidavit to that effect; wouldn't the practical result be that that is buried in the records of the Copyright Office? Millions of them would be there. The affidavits already filed since 1891 have never been taken from the shelves. Nobody is interested in them. They accept the thing. Harper & Bros. on the title page. printed there or on back of the title is sufficient, whether they swear to printing or not. Harpers might very well say, "Well, hang it all, why have a printing establishment? Do you expect me to go around the corner, or out of the State, or out of the country and have it done when I have gone to the expense of setting up a printing plant of my own "?

And the newspapers; some of the daily newspapers have registered from 10,000 to 15,000 registrations annually, and they have to swear 15,000 times that they printed their papers in their own offices.

The incorporation of this obligatory American manufacture brought into our legislation for the first time the restrictions upon the importation of copies of the foreign author's own edition of his book which are contained in the copyright statutes now in force. The new copyright bills propose further unjust restrictions upon the reasonable right of every American book lover, and every student and teacher and university professor to import a copy for use of a foreign author's own authorized edition of his book, when the book is in English.

The purpose of international copyright protection is to secure to all authors, automatically, legal protection for their works everywhere. The product of an author's mind is property of a kind that

lends itself to such world protection. Under modern conditions an author can send his book to all parts of the world, but he should be assured that his legal right in it will be respected wherever it goes, and, as a corollary, that authorized copies of his book will be permitted to go unchallenged to any part of the world.

Fifty years or so ago Professor Shaler, of Harvard, printed these wise words in his little book entitled "Thoughts on the Nature of Intellectual Property":

When we come to weigh the rights of the several sorts of property which can be held by man, and in this judgment take into consideration only the absolute question of justice, leaving out the limitations of expediency and of prejudice, it will be clearly seen that intellectual property is, after all, the only absolute possession in the world. The man who brings out of

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nothingness some child of his thought has rights therein which can not belong to any other sort of property. The inventor of a book or other contrivance of thought holds his property, as a god holds it, by right of creation. So the restrictions which we may cast around the property of intellect must be made with the confession of the rightfulness of that property. They must be made with the acceptance of the proposition that it has the same sancities as other human interests, and that society is as much interested in maintaining its bounds as it is in protecting ancestral acres, or the other well accepted forms of property. Whatever tends to lower the protection given to intellectual property is so much taken from the forces which have been active in securing the advances of society during the last centuries.

For more than a hundred years we have-to repeat Professor Shaler's words" cast restrictions around the property of intellect," and for 40 years our copyright legislation has failed to take sufficiently into consideration "only the absolute question of justice," and has persistently applied the "limitations of expediency and of prejudice with the result that as regards international copyright the United States occupies an undignified and criticized position.

Copyright advancement: One of the most fruitful agencies for bringing about friendly relations between different peoples is found in their printed literature. There can be no question of the distinct advantages of a free and full exchange of books and magazines between the United States and European countries. One great hindrance to this is the present lack of adequate and truly reciprocal copyright protection.

A great and persistent effort has been made to perfect such international protection for authors. It has resulted in the formation of the International Copyright Union which came into existence in 1887. That union now includes some 36 leading countries, minus the United States, Russia, and China, besides the Free City of Danzig, and a long list of colonies and dependencies.

As this committee is well aware, the entry of the United States into this union has been much discussed and proposals of law to enable the United States to enter have been several times introduced to the attention of Congress. The bill (H. R. 12549) contained such proposal as also do the two present bills for the general revision of the copyright legislation, H. R. 139 and S. 176, namely, provision for the adherence of the United States to the Berne convention for the protection of literary and artistic works as revised at Rome and signed there on June 2, 1928.

The Berne convention was sent by the President to the Senate last session, and in his annual message to Congress he expresses his hope that necessary legislation will be enacted during this Congress