Authors’ rights :
remembering the past to build the future

In these times of disputes and questioning of copyright and authors’ rights, it is useful to look back on the history and foundations through two essential books by Jacques Boncompain.

The better to understand tomorrow’s stakes for copyright and authors’ rights, it is instructive to look back on the long process leading to its advent, especially to update the methods and arguments which enabled the authors of these different periods to conquer, then preserve their rights and independence. After a book already dedicated to the subject (Révolu- tion des auteurs (1773-1815), the historian and legal expert Jacques Boncompain (see box) has taken up his pen again to offer us today two new books* (with support from SACD, SACEM and the Gilles Vercken law firm) : De Scribe à Hugo. La condition de l’auteur (1815-1870) and De Dumas à Mar- cel Pagnol. Les auteurs aux temps mo- dernes (1871-1996).

In his view, this is indeed a topical issue : “Authors’ rights are a natural right that is not that natural. Like Dutch polders, this is territory gained from an ocean of igno- rance which requires a tireless educatio- nal approach to avoid being rapidly ove- rwhelmed.”

In his first book, Jacques Boncompain showed how Beaumarchais legitimised the pecuniary claims of authors reduced until then to finding patrons : “Beaumar- chais, who wished to emulate Voltaire, put his boots on and convinced legislators to enable authors to stand on their two feet : moral rights and economic rights (droit pécuniaire). This was not without difficulty, since the users, already disguised as phi- lanthropists, proclaimed that Culture, like the air we breathe, belongs to everyone and that giving authors a monopoly for ex- ploitation is antisocial. This is something we still hear today at every street corner,” he explains.

In these two new works which have just come out, he describes the struggle to conquer and assert authors’ rights, then to preserve them, caught in the torment of the two World Wars and confronted with the emergence of new means of commu- nication.

With prefaces by Jean-Claude Carrière (former president of the SACD Theatre

Commission), Laurent Petitgirard (pres- ident of SACEM) and Jean-Claude Bologne (president de la SGDL), these two new books will be essential references for all those interested in this issue which is as topical as ever.

*Editions Honoré Champion, publisher