[Inclosure in No.
279.—Translation.]
Opinion of Argentine
attorney-general.
Mr. Minister: The United States of America,
developing an inventive power superior to that of other nations,
logically tends to insure the permanent property of its
extraordinary productions and inventions, and to restrict the
importation of similar foreign ones.
To this end responds its eminently protective legislation of the
national industry and commerce, and this same purpose has been kept
in view in the law referring to copyright, which his excellency the
minister of the United States presents to your excellency, inviting
the Argentine Government to avail itself of the privileges offered
in section 13.
In that section the benefits of the North American law are offered to
the citizens and subjects of all foreign nations in exchange for a
substantially equal concession by virtue of a special law or of
international treaties.
The law which is offered for your excellency’s acceptance recognizes
the author’s right to books, maps, drawings, plans, dramatic or
musical productions, engravings, illustrations, photography,
paintings, chromos, statues, models of works of art, etc., and
consequently declares that no person may reproduce, print, copy,
execute, finish, or sell such objects except their authors or
concessionaires, and this subject to the following prescriptions of
the same law:
- (1)
- Registration of the title of the work or of the
description of the guaranteed object.
- (2)
- Publication of such registration at the expense of the
interested party, during four weeks, in one or more
newspapers of the United States.
- (3)
- Deposit of copies or models in the Library of the U. S.
Congress, it being understood that in the publication of a
book, photograph, chromo, or lithograph, the copies that
shall be delivered or deposited are to be respectively
printed with the typographical compositions, plates,
negatives, or lithographic drawings made in the United
States.
- (4)
- That during the term of the author’s rights the
importation of objects equal to those guaranteed to their
authors will be prohibited, it being necessary that the
typographical composition, plates, negatives, etc., be made
in the territory of the United States.
- (5)
- Charges payable to the Treasury for the inscription,
declaration, concession, etc.
I have stated the principal prescriptions of the North American law
as a necessary condition for obtaining the recognition of authors’
rights, in order to prove, by its own terms, that if the law can be
beneficial to the progress of the United States and other nations of
great scientific, literary, or artistic growth, it is contrary to
that same growth in new countries where literature and industries
are in their infancy.
International free trade brings us all the productions of the most
progressive countries in science, industries, art, and literature,
and the national industry, formed in a great measure by foreigners,
copies engravings, prints, lithographs, and in fact reproduces
without restrictions, the great works that instruct, teach, and
prepare the public spirit for an original national production in a
probably not remote future.
Until that future arrives, our rising literature and arts,
notwithstanding their great growth, are not yet in a position to
overcome the obstacles of a legislation which, in exchange for the
rights of authorship, imposes such onerous conditions as the
publication, and composition with plates, negatives, and
typographical types made in the United States.
If our industrial, artistic, and literary productions can not yet
aspire to compete advantageously with the great nations of the old
continent and with the United States of America, a law, or a treaty
establishing and accepting the principal condition of the law
presented for your excellency’s consideration, would lack its
fundamental basis, which is reciprocity of benefits.
My opinion, therefore, is that it would be convenient for your
excellency to reserve your acceptance until the increasing growth of
our intellectual and material progress reaches the high level that
it needs to really make effective the benefits of reciprocity
offered in the North American law.