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11 Rev. Econ. Rsch. on Copyright Issues 1 (2014)

handle is hein.journals/rvwoecrh11 and id is 1 raw text is: Review of Economic Research on Copyright Issues, 2014, vol. 11(1), pp. 1-8 THE EFFECTS OF THE BERNE CONVENTION ON TRANSLATIONS IN THE NETHERLANDS LEO FANKHANEL ABSTRACT. The Berne Convention was the first attempt to recognise the copy- right of foreign authors and their translations. I create a unique dataset to analyse the long run effects of the Berne Convention in 1912 in the Nether- lands. Using pre-post statistical analysis and regression discontinuity design I find a significant decrease in the number of books translated per capita and an increase in translations per author. 1. INTRODUCTION The world's first copyright legislation was enacted by the British parliament in 1662 through the Licensing Of The Press Act to prevent the unregulated copying of books. In 1710, Queen Anne extended the act and gave the right of ownership of books for 28 years to authors rather than publishers. Since then numerous countries have followed suit in protecting authors. The Netherlands passed copyright legisla- tion in 1817 which also recognised the ownership of foreign authors. The copyright act, or Auteurswet, was revised in 1881 to protect Dutch authors only. This gave rise to a thriving translation industry since foreign authors had no such copyright protection. While other countries signed the Berne Convention in 1886 which would also give foreign authors the same rights to their translated works, the Netherlands deliberately abstained and did not sign the convention despite participating in its drafting. In 1908 a revised version of the convention was available that gave authors the right of ownership to translations for only 10 years instead of the 50 years granted for the original.' This version was designed to accommodate the Dutch, but yet again the country refused to join and the Luxembourg delegate said Adieu, pays de contrefacteurs! (Grosheide, 2012). The Dutch claimed that the revised convention was not in full compliance with its existing Auteurswet and therefore could not sign it. Likely, the strong publishing industry supported that decision. It was only after much international pressure that the Netherlands joined in 1912 after revising its Auteurswet to accommodate translations of foreign works. The Netherlands was not I want to especially thank Nancy Gallini for her useful suggestions and support. I thank an anonymous referee for helpful comments. 'For original convention text see https://archive.org/details/internationalco00offigoog I

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