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39 Pace L. Rev. 361 (2018-2019)
How the United States Stopped Being a Pirate Nation and Learned to Love International Copyright

handle is hein.journals/pace39 and id is 371 raw text is: How the United States Stopped Being a Pirate Nation and Learned to Love International Copyright John A. Rothchild* Abstract From the time of the first federal copyright law in 1790 until enactment of the International Copyright Act in 1891, U.S. copyright law did not apply to works by authors who were not citizens or residents of the United States. U.S. publishers took advantage of this lacuna in the law, and the demand among American readers for books by popular British authors, by reprinting the books of these authors without their authorization and without paying a negotiated royalty to them. This Article tells the story of how proponents of extending copyright protections to foreign authors-called international copyright-finally succeeded after more than fifty years of failed efforts. Beginning in the 1830s, the principal opponents of international copyright were U.S. book publishers, who were unwilling to support a change in the law that would require them to pay negotiated copyright royalties to British authors and, even worse from their perspective, would open up the American market to competition from British publishers. U.S. publishers were quite content with the status quo-a system of quasi-copyright called trade courtesy. That system came crashing down in the 1870s, when non-establishment publishers who did not benefit from trade courtesy decided to ignore its norms, publishing their own cheap, low-quality editions of books by British authors in competition with the editions published by the establishment publishers. As a result, most U.S. publishers came to support extending copyright to foreign authors as a means of preventing competition from publishers of the cheap editions. Once the publishers withdrew their opposition, another powerful interest group came to the fore: typesetters, * Associate Professor, Wayne State University Law School. 02018 John A. Rothchild. 361

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