Text 12

The 19th century .Development of copyright law. Copyright, too, underwent considerable development. By the end of the century, most countries had some provision, and various terms of protection were tried, running from publication or from the date of the author's death. The United States first enacted legislation in 1790, France in 1793, and Germany in 1839. Moves toward an international code began in 1828 in Denmark. They took the form of reciprocal treaty arrangements between individual countries by which foreign authors received the same protection as did native authors. Britain joined the movement in several arrangements between 1844 and 1886. In 1885 a uniform international system of copyright was initiated by the Berne Convention. The customary term of protection is the author's lifetime plus 50 years. Most countries subscribed to the Convention, but not the United States or Russia. The United States continued to protect its domestic printing industry up to 1955, when it joined the Universal Copyright Convention (Unesco 1952). While the Berne Convention prescribed a minimum level of protection, the Universal Convention was based on the concept of “national treatment”—each member country treating works by citizens of other member countries as it would those of its own citizens. Thus the United States was able to enter into an international agreement without the necessity of immediately revising its own copyright law. Since the Universal Convention contained a provision that the Convention would not be applicable between any two countries that belonged to the Berne Union, it served primarily as a treaty between the United States and the countries that recognized international copyright. The Soviet Union became a party to the Berne Convention in 1973.The early 20th century In the 20th century, the effects of state education in the more advanced countries became increasingly apparent. Standards of living rose, and, as in earlier times, these two conditions brought increased use and publication of books. During the late 1890s and early 1900s, many new publishing houses were founded. In the industrialized countries, though wages were rising, a small business could be staffed economically, and printing costs were such that it was economically feasible to print as few as 1,000 copies of a new book. It was thus comparatively easy to make a start, especially because the long-term credit that printers were prepared to grant made a minimum of capital necessary.Book publishing grew to a substantial industry, consisting mostly of small units in the Western world but also embracing a number of large concerns, many of which were public corporations employing staffs of 1,000 or more. Specialization became frequent, particularly in educational books, as the needs of the new school populations were realized. Some companies, such as Macmillan, in both its British and American houses, had begun to issue schoolbooks almost by chance; then, as their sales grew most profitably, they developed separate departments for school and college textbooks. Others, such as The American Book Company and Methuen in London, had begun specifically with educational books in mind. For more than one leading London firm, India, despite its high illiteracy rate, began to grow strongly as a market and to repay the care and expense involved in setting up separate Indian branches.