Technique of the photoplay (1916)

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346 COPYRIGHT AND COPYRIGHTED STORY may be able to sell a few stolen stories but you'll soon become known for a thief and have that reputation precede you into studios you never visited. ]More than one promising career has been wrecked by taking too much inspiration. 9. If the foregoing paragraphs do not apply to you they are not meant for you, hut so many take up photoplay without previous lit- erary experience that it seems to be necessary to lay down these facts with seemingly undue emphasis for the benefit of a few. 10. Now for copyright itself. If you have produced a play, a book, a lecture, a painting, a song, a statue, a drawing, a map, or a design and fear to publish the same lest others copy your idea, the govern- ment sa>^ in effect: "Go ahead and dedicate your work to the pub- lic, then give a copy to the Register of Copyrights. If John Smith reproduces your work he wnll have to stop it and give you all the money he has made, because we have enacted a set of laws to that effect. All you have to do is to register your work to give notice that this is what you claim protection for." 11. Now you can give your work to the world through publication, and if anyone infringes your rights you have a clean-cut set of laws exactly defining your rights, but first you must publish that work or "dedicate it to the public" as the law reads, and next you must give to the copyright office one or more copies, according to the classifi- cation of the article, and say in effect "This is what I claim protec- tion for." 12. If you claim the copyright protection without registering the article then you not only have no protection, since you cannot prove in law that you wanted to protect it, but you are liable to a fine for having claimed copyright without having actually copyrighted the article. 13. You can copyright a book, because you have printed that in copies for sale, ,but you cannot copyright the manuscript of a book because that is not offered to the public, but is offered to a publisher in the hope that he will print it and offer it to the public for you. 14. Your status is precisely that of the author of a book. If you print your photoplay and offer copies for sale, you can claim copy- right on the book as a book and the book copyright protects yo" from any sort of infringement. No one but you or a person authorized by you can make a photoplay production of the published book. If you photograph your story, you can copyright it as a photoplay either as "reproduced in copies for sale" or "not reproduced in copies for sale," and no one can make a photoplay from your script or turn it into a .book or a dramatic play. But until you have published that photoplay either as a printed book or a photographic film, you are not entitled to the protection that is offered published works. 15. IVIr. Thorvald Solberg, the Register of Copyrights, is one of the most efficient servants in Government employ in that he is constantly striving to give the fullest and most complete service his department can be made to afford. Twice he has urged upon the Congressional