COPYRIGHT IN NEWS. T HE evidence which Mr. Moberly Bell gave
last week before the Lords' Committee on Copyright Bills raises a very interesting question. Nothing can be plainer than the justice of Mr. Moberly Bell's contention. As the law stands there may be copyright in a street directory, the compilation of which need cost no more than the wages of a man employed to take the names over the shop- doors, but there is practically no copyright in news which costs the newspaper which provides it thousands of pounds. The moral claim of the Times, which maintains an army of correspondents in various parts of the world, to have the exclusive use of the news furnished by their energy and promptitude is indisputable, yet, as a matter of fact, that exclusive use is subjected to a time limit of a very oppressive character. It begins with the publication of the paper and it is over by 10 a.m. The publication of the evening papers begins before the morning is half over, and a public with business instincts will not go on giving 3d. for a telegram when it can be had for a halfpenny. This is not so much the fault of the law of copyright as of the machinery by which its protection must be invoked. Mr. Moberly Bell gave an example of this which he says has actually hap- pened. The Times published on a certain Tuesday the announcement of a revolution in Argentina. Up to 10 a.m, the demand for copies is very great. The city is keenly interested in the news, and so long as it is only to be read in the Times the Times is freely bought. But when the same news is to be had in half a dozen papers, the customary preference for cheapness regains its hold. The Times finds that it has spent £1,200 for such profit as can be derived from an exclusive circulation some three hours long. The fault, we say, does not lie in the law, for there are judgments which declare that the Times has a copyright in its telegrams. But this can only be enforced by way of injunction. After a costly procedure extending over two days the Times in this instance got an injunction "forbidding the further sale of Tuesday's issue of the pirating paper." But this, however satis- factory as a triumph of principle, is quite worthless from the point of view of practice. The mischief was done by 2 p.m. on Tuesday, the injunction was not obtained perhaps till noon on Friday. Any remedy of the same nature must be open to the same objection. Injunctions are excellent things for preventing further mischief ; they are useless when applied to mischief already done. For this last purpose we want a penalty which shall serve at once as a compensation and as a deterrent. If in the case quoted the Judge had been empowered to inflict a fine commensurate in some degree with the injury sustained by the Times, the "pirating paper" would have had an adequate motive for not repeating its fault.
Unfortunately the establishment of a moral claim does not always justify the creation of a legal means of giving effect to it. Before going this length the Legislature has to consider what are the probabilities that the law, when made, can be enforced with reasonable certainty and without serious inconvenience to the public. By the Bills now before the Select Committee it is proposed to extend the protection of copyright to "such news and information as have been specially arid independently obtained." Mr. Moberly Bell was subjected to a stringent cross-examina- tion as to the working of this provision. He has no wish to interfere with the publication of the same news in any number of papers, provided that each gets it independently. Supposing that there were six English correspondents at Pekin, they would, of course, get what- ever information they could from the Chinese Government, and telegraph it to their several journals. What he objects to is the system under which there is one English correspondent at Pekin, and five evening journals, over and above the morning journal by which the corre- spondent is paid, which use and profit by the news he sends. The extension of copyright to information "specially and independently obtained" would, in his opinion, put an end to this system. The newspaper which paid the cor- respondent would have an exclusive right, say for twenty- four hours, to publish the news sent by him. And though in this way the public would be compelled to . buy the journal which alone contained the intelligence they wanted, they would receive an equivalent in another form. As it is, newspapers other than the Times will not go to the expense of keeping correspondents at Pekin. But if they knew that news appearing in their columns could not be appropriated by other journals, they would be encouraged to spend more money on their correspondence. Supposing, however, that this happened, we greatly doubt whether Mr. Moberly Bell would find the results as satis- factory as he expects. He admits that "when four or five papers have the same piece of news it can practically be regarded as public property." When the Times' correspondent at Pekin telegraphs that a treaty has been concluded or a concession granted, we can see how the Times would gain by being secured in the possession of this news for twenty-four hours. But if half a dozen correspondents were to telegraph the same piece of news to their respective journals it can—it is Mr. Moberly Bell himself who says it—" practically be regarded as public property." The form in which the announcement appeared would not be identical, and a piratically dis- posed evening paper would be quite able, by taking a phrase from one telegram and hitching it on to a phrase from another to compose a mosaic which would make the proof of the offence a work of some difficulty.
In point of fact, the application of the twenty-four hours' limit would encounter unexpected obstacles at every turn. The owner of the copyright would have the ingenuity of a portion of the Press arrayed against him. The proposed law would be a direct challenge to clever evasion. Lord Monkwell put the case of an excitement on the Stock Exchange, following upon a telegram in the Times of the morning. How are the evening papers to deal with this ? Are they to treat cause and effect as parts of the same process, and to omit all reference to what took place on the Stock Exchange because the sensational rise or fall had its origin in the news published by the Times ? or are they to say : Such and such securities rose or fell, and for a time the " House " was greatly excited ? The cause of this movement was the publication of news the terms of which we are not allowed to quote.' But they cannot be prevented from commenting on this news in connection with the changes in the market, and, assuming their conductors to be animated by the not very exalted view of their calling which is natural to men in- tending to go as near piracy as they safely can, we do not see how they can be prevented from introducing all that is most essential in the telegram into their narrative of the effect produced by it. If, indeed, Mr. Moberly Bell would be content with some additions for the protection of literary form the prospect would be more hopeful. Take the case, for example, of the recent Ministerial crisis in France. We do not see how any extension of the law of copyright could prevent the evening papers from copying the lists of Ministers given in the morning papers. They are statements of fact which any newspaper could obtain for itself at no very extravagant outlay. But the comments of the Times' correspondent, which have made the real interests of the Times' Paris telegrams for the last two or three weeks, can and ought to be protected. This is not a case in which the form is nothing and the substance everything. The chances are that any scissors-and-paste operator who tried to give the general sense of one of those columns of political speculation which we all read with so much pleasure whenever France is yielding her customary harvest of political interest, would conspicuously fail in his task. If he touched the telegram at all he must give it as it stands. This is just what ought to be forbidden, and what the law ought to be able to forbid. News—the bare and unadorned raw material of newspaper enterprise —must, so far as we can see, remain public property. But this necessity, born as it is of the practical impossibility of making bare news anything else, ought not to be extended to news on which a literary value has been impressed. That should be protected, say, for at least twelve hours.
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