Copyright Act 1911
The Copyright Act of 1911 is a parliamentary act of the United Kingdom. The act obsoleted copyright law previously established in the UK and its territories. It was later superseded by the Copyright Act of 1956.
Enactment
The act was instated as follows:
| Region | Date of enactment |
|---|---|
| United Kingdom | 1 July 1912 |
| Channel Islands* | 1 July 1912 |
| Isle of Man | 5 July 1912 |
| India | 30 October 1912 |
| Jersey | 8 March 1913 |
| Papua | 1 February 1931 |
| (remaining territories) | 1 July 1912 |
*sans Jersey
(cf. Partridge, 154f.)
Content
The Copyright Act of 1911 repealed the previous act from 1842. It consists of three separate sections:
Part 1: Imperial Copyright
Part 2: International Copyright
Part 3: Supplemental Provisions
The Imperial Copyright is reserved to works published in the UK or other parts of the Empire's territories and to unpublished works created by British citizens or residents. All original literary, dramatic, musical and artistic work that these criteria apply to is in the scope of this act - however other works are exempt from this right. The term "copyright" in itself refers to the right to not only (re-)produce, perform or publish a translation of a work but also the right to create adaptations (in form of novels or performances) and, interestingly, "to make any record, perforated roll, cinematograph film, or other contrivance by means of which the work may be mechanically performed or delivered" (Copyright Act 1911, 1(2d)). Generally speaking, copyright is an innate property of any work that falls under the aforementioned descriptions and applies the moment these works have manifested in physical form (e.g. as soon as an author has written his novel). Copyright is not eternal - as such it runs out after 50 years following the author's death and extends to both published and unpublished works.
The various laws in this act were, of course, not as plain as this summary may suggest and included several more sophisticated nuances. An example of that may be that if a copyright holder other than the a work's author is in place, they will retain their right to the work for only the first 25 of the 50 years after the author's death while for the latter 25 years the author retains the default copyright (cf. D'Agostino, 116).
In cases of collective works (such as magazines or journals) the publishing body may retain only partial copyright i.e. a contribution by a different author may only be published in the context of the collective work (cf. ibid 59). In other words, the original author of an article would retain the full copyright to publish their work as they wish while a magazine publisher may not separately (re)publish the original author's work outside of the publisher's journal unless given permission to do so.
Perhaps surprisingly to some, copyright also extends to deliveries of lectures and speeches as part of this act. As such copyrighted work does not exclusively include tangible material objects or contents bound to such (e.g. audio tapes) but also oral performances. More modern media such as broadcasts, which were invented after 1911, did naturally not get protected by this Copyright Act and were instead covered by the following act in 1956. As a consequence, broadcasts from before 1957 are not copyright-protected as the Copyright Act of 1956 does not cover them.
Evidently, the Copyright Act 1911 contains a sleugh of details that are elementary for the copyright that is so commonplace in the protection of intellectual property today. The full Copyright Act from 1911 can be found by clicking here or in the link under "Works cited".
Works cited
- Copyright Act 1911. UK Public General Acts. URL: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Geo5/1-2/46/contents/enacted. Last Access: 22 July 2021.
- Copyright Act 1956. UK Public General Acts. URL: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1956/74/contents/enacted. Last Access: 22 July 2021.
- D'Agostino, Giuseppina. Copyright, Contracts, Creators: New Media, New Rules. 2010. Edward Elgar.
- Partridge, R. C. Barrington. The History of the Legal Deposit of Books. 2008. Read Books.