COPYRIGHT IN NEWSPAPER TELEGRAMS.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 52, 20 January 1872, Page 3

COPYRIGHT IN NEWSPAPER TELEGRAMS.

[From the Melbourne ARGUS.] While the tribunal of public opinion in Victoria was engaged in the investi gation of one form of literary piracy, and in visiting the culprit who was found guilty with a severe but appropriate punishment, the Northern District Court of Queensland has been occupied with a case of literary piracy of another kind. For the sake of public morality, and in the interests of honest journalism, we are glad to be able to add that the wrongdoer in this instance also has been very properly convicted, and has been suitably amerced. An action was brought by Mr Buzacott, the proprietor of the “ Rockhampton Bulletin,” against Mr Bourcicault, the proprietor of the “ Northern Argus,” for the unlawful appropriation of certain telegrams procured by and published in the former newspaper. Persons who are fond of tracing coincidences will probably be struck by the fact that the plagiarising journalist bears the same, or nearly the same, name as the most plagiaristic of living dramatists. Be this as it may, Mr Bourcicault was charged with having, on three separate occasions, published telegrams in the “Northern Argus,” obtained at the expense of and originally published in the “ Rockhampton Bulletin.” Five material pleas were filed to the plaintiff’s declaration by the defendant. These were:—

“ 1. That the alleged matter was public property, and not the exclusive property or copyright of the plaintiff, but was equally the property of the defendant, with other persons in the community, to publish or otherwise use. 2. The aileged publication of the plaintiff was not a book or other publication in which copyright could be had. 3. It was not registered or entered at Stationers’ Hall. 4. No copyright property in public news can be established or maintained. 5. A newspaper is incapable of copyright under the Statute, section 16 of 5 and 6 Viet., c 45.” There was a sixth plea, wholly irrelevant to the main points at issue, which the judge ordered to be sti'uck out. The five material pleas were argued with some ingenuity by the counsel for the defence, and with an equal ability by tlie learned gentleman on the other side. But the real strength of the plaintiff’s case—putting aside for awhile its equities, and looking at it merely in its legal aspect —lay in a decision given by Vice-Chancellor Malins, on the 21st December, 1869, and published in tlie Equity series of the Imperial “ Law Reports,” on the Ist of ApriMast. In giving this decision, Sir R. Malins declared that the point raised was “ of vast importance to newspaper proprietors and to the public at large.” In the judgment, however, of ViceChancellor Malins, he disposes of Mr Bourcicault’s first plea with remorseless severity. To assume that anything published in a newspaper is public property,” and that the law recognises it as such, would be simply monstrous, he says, “ and repugnant to common sense and common honesty, because that there is a property in those articles {■i e ., articles of information paid for by the proprietors) there can be no shadow of doubt.” And that his words bear the comprehensive meaning we have attributed to them is demonstrated by some later passages of his judgment, in which he explicitly says;—“ Though it is seldom worth the while of proprietors to assert the copyright in articles in a newspaper, I am of opinion that, whether it be the letters of a correspondent abroad, or tlie publication of a tale or a treatise or the review of a book, or whatever else, he acquired—l will not say as

copyright, but as property —such a, property in every article, for which he pays, under the 18th section of the act, or by the general rules of property, as will entitle him, if he thinks it worth while, to prohibit any other person from publishing the same thing in any other newspaper, or in any other form.” The act to which reference is made in the foregoing extract is the Imperial statute 5 and 6 Victoria cap 45. By the second or interpretation clause of this act it is doubtful whether a newspaper is included in the various forms of publication therein specified ; but by the 18th clause of the same statute, it is expressely stated that any periodical publication comes within the scope of its provisions ; irrespective of which it is protected from piracy and appropriation, as Vice-Chancellor Malins pointed out. by “ the general rules of property.” To most persons of average intelligence and common honesty, it is almost necessary to offer an apology for insisting upon the same protection being afforded to telegrams as is extended to any other form of property, but we have actually met with people, and even with newspapers, in this community incapable of perceiving the difference between a freetrader and a freebooter, and who have gone so far as to assert that the newspaper proprietor who objected to be robbed was an enemy to liberty of commerce. But the distinction between the two things was pretty clearly discerned by a Queensland jury, which, after deliberating for five minutes only, returned a verdict for tlie plaintiff, in the case of Buzacott v. Bourcicault, and awarded the former damages representing the cost to him of the pirated telegrams.