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Legislation
THE MORAL PROTECTION OF COPYRIGHT-EXPIRED WORKS
At the meeting held on June 4 last in Paris, by the representatives of the institutions which concern themselves with intellectual rights and juridical problems connected therewith, the question of authors cinematograph rights was debated fully, and among the motions voted and transmitted to the International Commission of Intellectual Cooperation was the following : —
The Committee
after having examined particularly the question of the cinematographic marketing of works no longer copyright and therefore belonging to the public,
considers it desirable that a system of international regulations or laws should prevent serious offences being committed against the integrity of such works ;
agrees that the I.I.E.C. should examine, in connection with the International Bureau of Berne the possibility of including this desideratum in article 6 bis of the Rome convention.
The I.I.E.C. is glad to note that a meeting of copyright specialists has considered a problem which the Institute itself, always concerned with the educational and cultural importance of the cinema, has considered should be debated by the Paris congress. This also because the problem was raised directly by the I.I.E.C. at the meeting of the Executive Committee last April, and was laid before the meeting held at Paris at the request of the organizers of the meeting themselves.
The I.I.E.C. has published in its review the various aspects of the report.
A problem of particular interest, recently raised by the Permanent Executive Committee of the Rome Institute for Educational Cinematography refers to the protection of literary works suitable for the cinema that no longer enjoy copyright.
The desperate search on the part of the film-producing houses for subjects to interest the public, the introduction of sound, the need of obtaining with the great mass of the public an approval, as it were, in advance by using the names of universally known writers : all these various elements have caused a regular sacking of the vast treasure store of literary works which have fallen out of copyright and become public property. In this, there is nothing wrong. Indeed it is generally considered desirable that the great masterpieces of literature,
like the choice pages of music should be brought to the knowledge of the big public. Such a spread of literature is a work of education.
In several countries we have recently seen polemics turning round one side of the question, which is, whether a literary or musical work which has become public property is to be deformed, mutilated, and whether substantial alterations may be introduced into it, not merely for simple cinematographic exigencies, but at the will and fantasy of the adapter. It may further be admitted that such persons are not always men of such culture and intelligence as to be able to safeguard the best portions of a masterpiece or modernize it with artistic criteria. Does there then exist any way of protecting such works ? Who has