XII
Mechanical Music Provisions
"Canned
music"
contestAs the international copyright provision with the manufacturing clause was the central feature of the copyright campaign culminating in the law of 1 891, so the provision for the control of mechanical music with the compulsory license clause was the central feature of the contest culminating in the act of 1909. This came to be known as the "canned music" fight, and arguments pro and con consumed the greater part of the hearings before the Committees on Patents. The solution finally reached was in the provisos added to the musical subsection (e) of section i of the bill, which in full is as follows:
"(e) To perform the copyrighted work publicly for profit if it be a musical composition and for the purpose of public performance for profit; and for the purposes set forth in subsection (a) hereof, to make any arrangement or setting of it or of the melody of it in any system of notation or any form of record in which the thought of an author may be recorded and from which it may be read or reproduced: Mechanical
music
provisions Provided, That the provisions of this Act, so far as they secure copyright controlling the parts of instruments serving to reproduce mechanically the musical work, shall include only compositions published and copyrighted after this Act goes into effect, and shall not include the works of a foreign author or composer unless the foreign state or nation of which such author or composer is a citizen or subject grants, either by treaty, convention, agreement, or law, to citizens of the United States similar rights: And
