by the person
so selling or disposing of the same, or by his agent duly authorized,
shall have been made to that effect.

That is to say, after promising the author copyright in his work for
life and seven years, the act stipulates that in order to get it the
author must, at the time of the first sale or disposition of his
picture, obtain a document in writing from the purchaser of the picture,
reserving the copyright to the author, and the act goes on to say that
if he does not take this step the copyright becomes the property of the
purchaser of the picture, but with the proviso, in order to secure it to
him, he must have a document signed by the artist assigning the
copyright to him; but if neither of these things is done, and no
document is signed, the copyright does not belong to either the artist
who sells or the client who buys, and the act is silent as to whom it
does belong to. It has disappeared and belongs to no one. There is no
copyright existing in the work for any one. It has passed into the
public domain, and any one who can get access to the work may reproduce
it. Now, as most purchases are made from the walls of exhibitions, in
ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the copyright is absolutely lost. And
where the sale is arranged directly between the artist and his client,
the difficulty experienced by the artist in raising the question as to
whom the copyright shall belong to is so great, owing to the dread lest
the mere mention of the signing of a document should cause the selling
of the picture to fall through, that in numerous such cases the
copyright lapses and becomes public property. Photographers are not
affected by this clause, because they do not as a rule sell the
negatives they produce, and with them the copyright lies in the
negative. They carry on their trade in prints without the question of
the negative arising. The picture-dealer, also, who buys a picture and
copyright is not subjected to the same disability as the painter. The
picture-dealer can sell a picture without saying a word to his client as
to the copyright, which he, nevertheless, retains intact; the provision
is applicable only to the _first_ sale of the work, which, therefore,
throws the whole of the disability upon the painter.

The act gives the copyright of every work executed on commission to the
person by whom it is commissioned. It makes it compulsory upon every
owner of a copyright that he should register it at Stati