Book People Archive

Re: Copyright Term Extensions (was Re: RIP Jim Baen) (fwd)

I'm going to reply to this message of Michael's first, because I had 
already prepared most of the evidence I'm going to provide below for 
the next installment of my reply to his very long August 3rd BP post.


On August 9, Michael Hart wrote:

> As a separate issue, I am addressing US vs foreign copyright
> expiration.


And once again, you didn't provide any evidence or references. :)


> International publishing is a quite different thing today than it 
> was in the days we are discussing.
> 
> Using a modern perspective to say how people would have thought 
> about an assortment of national vs international publications in 
> the same thought with the same tools, etc., simply would not
> apply.


There you go, making an unfounded assumption. Where did I say I was 
"using a modern perspective"? :)


> The publisher who specialized in American books simply would not 
> have an the fonts available to publish in French, German, Spanish, 
> etc.


Michael, I'm surprised at you. Hasn't PG put out a number of ebooks in 
all three of those languages, using only plain 7-bit ASCII text? ;)

Seriously, what special fonts would have been needed for French and 
Spanish books? Both languages contain some characters, mainly accented 
letters, that don't occur frequently in English, but they don't 
require entirely different fonts. Also, don't forget that many words 
in the English language came from other languages, and a number of 
those words included those accented letters. For an example, in this 
recent email which I sent to you, then forwarded to the BP List,

http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/bparchive?year=2006&post=2006-08-04,1

I asked, "Or did you just hold a seance to contact the inventor and 
ask him?" Now, in my original email, I spelled "seance" (which is a 
French word) with an acute accent over the first "e", which is how my 
trusty unabridged dictionary says it should be spelled. (Somehow, when 
our moderator posted that message to the List, he turned my accented 
"e" into an "i", making the word "siance.") :)

[Moderator: Posts go out on this list in plain ASCII, after 
 being copied-and-posted from my mail reader to a posting program.
 Usually I normalized accented latters if they don't get copied over
 correctly, but I guess I missed going over that part.  - JMO]

So I don't doubt that even publishers that focused on English language 
works had most if not all the characters they might have needed for 
French and Spanish works. And if they didn't have some of them, I 
doubt they would have had any great difficulty getting them. After 
all, haven't you ever seen old books written in English that had 
passages in other languages, even ancient Greek?

As for books in German, while a German publisher would have almost 
certainly used a Fraktur typeface, there was no law that I'm aware of 
that would have required an American publisher to do so. And there are 
(and were) standard transliterations for special German characters. 
For example, when umlauts occur over a vowel in German, they're 
usually transliterated into English by placing an "e" after the vowel, 
e.g. "Gothe" (with an umlaut over the "o") and "Goethe."

And what about the English language, Michael? I don't see it on your 
list. Have you forgotten a certain *foreign* country on the other side 
of the Atlantic that the United States fought in order to gain its 
independence? I've already listed several of its famous authors from 
that era during this discussion, e.g. Sir Walter Scott. I also cited 
this open letter from one of its most famous authors, Charles Dickens, 
complaining about "the unjust and iniquitous state of the law in that 
country [the U.S.], in reference to the wholesale piracy of British 
works."

http://www.ibiblio.org/ebooks/Dickens/Int_Copyright.htm

You also made another assumption. Who said there were any publishers 
"who specialized in American books" back then? And if there were, who 
said they represented a significant percentage of the trade?


> While I am sure that international publishing took place with or 
> without copyright royalties. . .Uncle Tom's Cabin is widely 
> regarded as the very first million seller. . .though a large number 
> were printed outside of a local American publisher. . .and vice 
> versa. . .I am not as sure that it was the mainstay of publishing 
> for the American printshops.
> 
> Perhaps it was, I am listening.


Well, why don't we examine some evidence that was written in the 19th 
century to see what publishing was like back then? Let's start with 
this very interesting book, published in 1875:

"First Century of National Existence: The United States as They Were 
and Are"

http://books.google.com/books?id=7K_zmbjPGl4C&pg=PP5


Before getting to the main excerpt that I want to quote, take a look 
at page 263:

http://books.google.com/books?id=7K_zmbjPGl4C&pg=RA2-PA263

About half-way down the right-hand column, you'll see this:


"There was then formed,
in 1801, the American company of booksellers,
and these generally subscribed together
in the publication of a work, to guarantee
the outlay. There was a sort of union, that
regulated the principles of publication, and
those who did not conform to these regulations
were repudiated."


It then goes on to talk about school-books and the enormous sales of 
Noah Webster's "Spelling-Book." (Small wonder that old Noah wanted 
copyright terms extended.) Then after mentioning the numerous 
religious societies that were printing Bibles and Testaments, the 
following excerpt begins at the bottom of the left-hand column of page 
264:

http://books.google.com/books?id=7K_zmbjPGl4C&pg=RA2-PA264


    "These societies were not a portion of the
regular book trade, which continued to be
mostly under the association, until the
appearance of the Waverly Novels in 1820 to
1830. The competition to which the large
demand for these works gave rise, broke
down old arrangements of the trade. The
publishers thenceforth acted independently.
At the same time, the supply of desirable
books from abroad, upon which there was no
charge for copyright, was much increased;
and as all the publishers were upon the same
footing in respect to those books, the
competition extended only to the mechanical
process, reducing its cost to the lowest rates.
The capitals of the publishing houses gradually
increased, but there was still great difficulty
in getting an American book printed.
Cooper tells us, in the preface to his Pilot,
that so great was the difficulty he encountered
in getting a printer to undertake it, that
he was obliged to write the last page of the
story first, and have it set up and paged, to
insure the extent to which the matter would
run.

    "The publication of books is a business
which has undergone many changes within
the past hundred years. There has at all
times been a limited amount of publishing
of works by American authors, partly
because it was so much more profitable to
reprint foreign works on which there was no
copyright, and which had already some
reputation; and partly because in the early
struggle for national existence among a new
and not homogeneous people there was not
the opportunity for that profound culture
and leisurely study which could alone make
American works popular and successful to
the publisher. There were, of course,
exceptions to this general rule; but for a long
period, publishers were shy of undertaking
a work whose author had not already attained
a reputation abroad. The great bulk
of publishing was therefore limited to the
reprinting of foreign works, sometimes with
introductions, appendices or notes added here,
but the reputation of the foreign author was
the inducement to the publication. Matters
have changed in this respect, and American
copyright works now largely predominate
among the publishers' issues. The reprints
in 1871 were nominally less than one-fifth,
though really probably about one-fourth of
the whole number of books published that
year."


Just in case you missed some of the more salient points, I'll repeat them:

"The competition to which the large
demand for these works gave rise, broke
down old arrangements of the trade. The
publishers thenceforth acted independently."

[So much for the mighty "American publisher lobby" that you said 
mounted "such an intense effort" to get that 1831 copyright extension.]

"... there was still great difficulty
in getting an American book printed."

"There has at all
times been a limited amount of publishing
of works by American authors, partly
because it was so much more profitable to
reprint foreign works on which there was no
copyright, and which had already some
reputation ..."

"The great bulk
of publishing was therefore limited to the
reprinting of foreign works, sometimes with
introductions, appendices or notes added here,
but the reputation of the foreign author was
the inducement to the publication."

---------------------------------------------

To see just how quick American publishers were to reprint British 
books, let's look at a very interesting footnote on pages 263 and 264 
of this book published in 1823:

"Travels Through Part of the United States and Canada in 1818 and 1819"

http://books.google.com/books?id=xSKgCv18VDEC&pg=PA263


"Rapidity of publication is as well understood in America as any
where. I copy the following from a New York newspaper which
has recently reached me (May, 1823):--

    "'Despatch in printing.--The new novel, Peveril of the Peak,
was received from England in New York on Monday at Ten A. M.
and was printed, published, and sold on Tuesday, within 28 hours
after the same was received. Another English copy of the same
work was received per the Custom House, New York, at Twelve
o'clock on Wednesday--at One o'clock forwarded to Philadelphia
by the mail. In Philadelphia it was printed on Thursday, and on
Friday 2000 copies were put in boards by Six o'clock in the morning.
The English copy of Moore's Loves of the Angels was taken out
of the Custom House in New York on a Monday in February last,
at Eleven o'clock A. M.; was immediately sent to Philadelphia,
and 250 copies of the work printed were received at New York on
Thursday following at Eight o'clock A. M. and the same copies
were sold and circulated that afternoon.'"


---------------------------------------------

Convinced now, Michael? :)


Jose Menendez


P.S. Here's another point regarding non-English books from other 
countries back then. Since they weren't protected by copyright in the 
U.S., there was no legal obstacle to stop anyone from publishing 
translations of them into English (or any other language for that 
matter). In fact, U.S. copyright law didn't even protect U.S. works 
from unauthorized translation until 1870. Harriet Beecher Stowe lost 
an infringement lawsuit in 1853 against someone who'd made an 
unauthorized German translation of "Uncle Tom's Cabin. (Stowe v. Thomas.)