It Is Known By All Who Are
Concerned In The Matter On Either Side Of The Water That As Far As
Great Britain Is Concerned Such A Law Would Meet With No Impediment.
Therefore it is to be presumed that the legislators of the States
think it expedient and just to dispense with any such law.
I have
said that there can be no doubt as to the importance of the
question, seeing that the price of English literature in the States
must be most materially affected by it. Without such law the
Americans are enabled to import English literature without paying
for it. It is open to any American publisher to reprint any work
from an English copy, and to sell his reprints without any
permission obtained from the English author or from the English
publisher. The absolute material which the American publisher
sells, he takes, or can take, for nothing. The paper, ink, and
composition he supplies in the ordinary way of business; but the
very matter which he professes to sell - of the book which is the
object of his trade - he is enabled to possess himself of for
nothing. If you, my reader, be a popular author, an American
publisher will take the choicest work of your brain, and make
dollars out of it, selling thousands of copies of it in his country,
whereas you can perhaps only sell hundreds of it in your own; and
will either give you nothing for that he takes, or else will explain
to you that he need give you nothing, and that in paying you he
subjects himself to the danger of seeing the property which he has
bought taken again from him by other persons.
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