LEVY ON BOOKS.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVII, 22 August 1927, Page 8

LEVY ON BOOKS.

ENCOURAGEMENT OF CULTURE. FRENCH GOVKENMENT’S PROPOSAL. PARIS, Aug. S. M. Harriot, the Education Minister, in the name of tlie Government, has introduced a Bill for the creation of a State fund for flic support and encouragement of letters, science, and the arts. This aid will take various forms—monetary grants for research or any special work, travelling scholarships, subventions to municipal or other theatres and galleries, particular laboratories or to similar private institutions, the publication of books too expcnsi\'o or by their nature too nnremunerative for private publishers to 'undertake, and so on. Still more remarkable is the way in which this fund will be replenished. Not a penny of it will come from the regular taxes. Apart from gifts and legacies, the whole amount will be drawn from a G per cent, levy upon “works that have fallen into the public domain”; in other words, upon all publications of which the copyright has expired, including, of course, reprints of the classics. A small portion of the yield, which will be collected through the publishers and the booksellers, will be earmarked for the heirs and successors of the author. Thus a principle of which Victor Hugo and many other distinguished writers in all countries have long fought the assimilation of literary and scientific to other properties—is in some degree at last recognised by a Government. Two rather extraordinary objections are raised to the Government’s proposal. The first is that it will check tins sale, and therefore tlie continued reprint of, non-copyright works :11 1 .1 so incidentally injure, the spread of French culture. To this M. Herriot replies that “common experiences shotv that tlie expiry of a book’s copyright has no effect upon its selling, so that a small levy should make no difference. ’ ’

Tlie other objection is that such a levy upon the sale of uncopyright works is simply the thin edge of the wedge, and that in principle it is State confiscation of property. “Gi\ r e the heirs of an author tlie same rights as the heirs to an estate or a factory,” argues the “Temps,” for example, “but if the State begins by taking six per cent, now, it Avill be tempted later to take more and will end by taking the whole of uncopyrighted property. It is the first step on the detestable path of State collectivism,”