The idea of nationality or citizenship governed our copyright
legislation for more than a century, from the earliest American
copyright statute of 1783 to July 1, 1891, so that until the latter date
copyright protection in the United States was limited to the works of
authors who were citizens or residents. By the Act of March 3, 1891,
commonly called the international-copyright law, which went into effect
on July 1 of that year, the privileges of copyright in this country were
extended to the productions of authors who were citizens or subjects of
other countries which by their laws permitted American citizens to
obtain copyright upon substantially the same basis as their own
subjects. The existence of these conditions is made known by
presidential proclamation, and up to this time ten such proclamations
have been issued extending copyright in the United States to the citizen
authors of Belgium, Chile, Costa Rica, Denmark, France, Germany, Great
Britain and her possessions (including India, Canada, the Australias,
etc.), Italy, Mexico, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and Switzerland.
The privilege of copyright in the United States is extended only to
authors who are subjects of some country in whose behalf a presidential
proclamation as to copyright has been issued.
It is well to point out, perhaps, that these copyright proclamations are
not equivalent to copyright treaties, but are only notices that certain
conditions exist. Only in the case of one country, _viz._, Germany, has
anything been entered into approaching a convention or treaty. Under
date of Jan. 15, 1892, an "agreement" was signed with that country to
issue a proclamation extending copyright in the United States to German
subjects upon an assurance that "Citizens of the United States of
America shall enjoy, in the German Empire, the protection of copyright
as regards works of literature and art, as well as photographs, against
illegal reproduction, on the same basis on which such protection is
granted to subjects of the empire."
In order to obtain copyright abroad, therefore, an American citizen must
ascertain the requirements of the law of each country in which he
desires to protect his book or other production and comply explicitly
with such requirements. He can, of course, only avail himself of the
legal protection accorded, so far as it is within his power to thus
comply, and therein lies the difference between the privileges secured
under the present international-copyright arrangements, and such as
would be obtainable under copyright conventions or treaties. A citizen
of the United States may find himself unable to meet the obligations or
conditions of the statutes, just as a foreign author may find it
practically impossible to comply with the requirements of the United
States law, and in either case there would be a failure to secure the
protection desired. In the case of a photograph, for example, the
English law requires that the "author" of the photograph must be a
British subject or actually "resident within the Dominions of the
Crown," and the United States law requires that the two copies of the
photograph to be deposited in the Copyright Office "shall be printed
from _negatives made within the limits_ of the United States," two sets
of conditions difficult of fulfilment. By means of a copyright
convention exemption could be obtained in either case from these onerous
conditions.