Le Nord : revue internationale des Pays de Nord - 01.06.1940, Side 131

125
LA COOPÉRATION NORDIQUE
1931 and the Danish from 1933) a series of new questions requiring a
legal solution have come up in the past years. As the problems are com-
mon to all the Northern countries it is natural to try to solve them in
common. In all the Norlhern countries the interest in questions of in-
tellectual property has been clearly disclosed in a number of ways.
Brief reference is made in the following to some of the most urgent
problems which a Northern Copyright Commission would have to deal
with to-day.
One of the questions to which authors attach the greatest importance
is that of the lending and letting of books. By far the greatest consumption
of literature to-day is by readers who borrow or hire books, whilst the
sale of books, from which the authors are to draw their income, is in-
significant in comparison. The book societies organised by the book-
sellers favour the interests of authors in so far as they create a sale of
books, but the regular commercial lending-libraries injure the authors
economically, and neither copyright law nor other remedies provide them
with any means of securing a share in the proceeds. The lending of books
through public libraries, for which the authors receive no remuneration,
has assumed enormous dimensions in recent years. Thus, the number of
books borrowed from the public libraries in Denmark was 1.173.000 in
1916, but in 1938 it was ten times as great.
Moreover, the question has been raised of securing in some way the
authors and artists after the expiry of the normal copyright, both by a
licence payable to the profession and by rules to prevent mutilation and
to secure the preservation of the author’s name.
The technical developments of recent years have led to artists’ per-
formances being partly broadcast to an unforeseen extent to an unlimited
public, partly preserved for later use. This has affected them seriously,
and they now demand copyright protection.
Plastic artists have demanded rules to secure a share in the increase
in value which their works frequently obtain.
These and a long series of other problems were taken up by the Northern
Copyright Commission which held its first meeting in Stockholm in May
1939. The war has caused a temporary postponement of the negotiations,
but they are not finally broken off.