If the bill reveals some selfishness, it is perhaps condonable. It is the selfishness of men trying to protect their own property; for of course, as I have emphasized, the interests that were especially invited to the conferences were those that are concerned in an affirmative way with the protection of the right. The conferences were not generally representative--completely representative--in other respects. The bill has that purpose--that is, for the protection particularly of the property. It comes before you for consideration on the ground that it goes too far. It does not create, of course, a new species of property; it merely recognizes a species of property created by the Constitution and already recognized by statute. Its purpose is simply to secure to the man who has created it a species of property which peculiarly requires the protection of law, because the very act which makes it remunerative to him lays it open to expropriation--that is, the act of publication--and seems peculiarly entitled to the protection of the law, because it is that act, and that alone, which makes it of any use to the public; and of course it secures this protection--not permanently, but only against untimely expropriation.
It may be said that the public was not represented at the conferences. The public in this matter would, I suppose, belong to one of four classes: In the first place, the producer, the creator, with his publisher and manufacturer; or, second, one who is to enjoy the work as a consumer; or, third, one who wishes to utilize the work in some other work, or to reproduce and market it for his own benefit, when this can be done innocently; or, fourth, the student and critic of the rights and obligations of property, and of the regulation of this by law. There may be a fifth class, the mere pirate. He was not invited to the conferences, and I suppose he would not be to your hearings. But the innocent reproducer was not unrepresented at the conferences or in the discussions. In fact, most of the producers were also reproducers, and quite insistent upon their convenience as such. The original producers, publishers, and manufacturers were there as of right, and the student and critic through their interest and public spirit. As for the consumers, two considerable groups were actually represented, and more would have been if organizations could have been found to represent them. Others also there spoke for them.