INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT.
A NEW smuggling-trade seems springing up in North America. To the book-pirates of the United States, the prohibition to import reprints of English publications into the British dominions was a heavy blow and great discouragement. The proprietors of two publications called, The New World and Brother Jonathan, carry on their piratical operations on a magnificent scale. In the number of the Baltimore Patriot of 25th March, we find an editorial notice to this effect—" We acknowledge from Mr. Taylor, North Street, Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine for March, contained in the New World, and No. 3 of Master Chuzzlewit, in an extra of the same journal." A private correspondent informs us that the publishers of The New World and Brother Jonathan "have gone to a great expense and trouble to increase their subscriptions in the Canadas particularly. Several thousand copies of each publication were also transmitted to England by the steamers ; and they had the prospect of a great business in this line, when the prohibition (which they attribute to Mr. Josarn Huns) stopped their career." These worthies must no doubt forego their increasing sale in this coun- try; but how it can be stopped in the Canadas does not appear. Bales of their paper can easily be smuggled over so extended a frontier, and cannot be easily detected when distributed among a population not concentrated under the eye of the law. The wrong done both to the British publisher and the author is obvious. They cannot undersell competitors who pay nothing for literary labour. This is an evil which can only be arrested by a con- vention establishing one common law of copyright guarding the rights of authors and publishers both in England and America. But it is not easy to see how such a convention is to be brought about. The traders in New Worlds and Brother Jonathans- the newspaper press—are too powerful in their respective electoral districts for legislators to brave them with impunity. And the dishonesty is not confined to that class. Some time ago, the pub- lishers of the Penny Cyclopmdia felt themselves compelled to make a public remonstrance against a learned Pundit in New York who rejoices in the designation cf "Jay Professor "—with his peacock's plumes, flaw Professor would be more appropriate— for transferring by wholesale and without acknowledgment all the Cyclopodia's articles on classical topics to a classical dictionary he was publishing. The Professor made no public defence; but a report is current that he remonstrated by letter with his accusers for charging him with appropriating their articles without acknow-.
ledgement. It was true, he admitted, that the words "Penny Cyclopmdia " were nowhere to be found in his lists of authorities appended to each article ; but that was only because his refined taste could not reconcile itself to so vulgar a name—he had uni- formly quoted it under the title " Encyclopaedia of Useful Know- ledge " ! When the morale of professional men of letters is at this low ebb, what is to be expected from the mass, who have no direct interest in the pecuniary rights of authors and publishers ? What hope is there of any honourable arrangement for the protection of copyright ?
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