owner except for public purposes and then only by condemnation proceedings at law and with fair remuneration to the proprietor. No right of eminent domain in respect to copyrights is asserted by the United States, and the provision means only that material, otherwise copyrightable, furnished by a public officer or otherwise to the Government, becoming the property of the Government, is put freely at the service of the people.
"Author"
and "writ-
ing" defini-
tionsThe constitutional provision is thus given the broadest interpretation in the act. In the narrow sense the dictionaries define "author" as "one who composes or writes a book" (Webster), and "writing" variously as "a record made by hand," "a production of the pen," "any expression of thought in visible words" (Century); "anything expressed in letters" (Webster, Stormonth, Standard) ; "a written paper," "a legal instrument" (Johnson); "a literary production" (Chambers); "forming by the hand letters or characters on paper or other suitable substance" (Bouvier's Law Dictionary) ; "words made legible by any device," "a document, whether manuscript or printed, as opposed to mere spoken words" (Rapalje and Lawrence, Law Diet.); "expression of ideas by visible letters" (Anderson's Diet, of Law). For years Massachusetts voters cast a handwriting ballot, until the courts held that a printed ballot fulfilled the "written ballot" requirement of the Massachusetts constitution. But in the wider sense an author is "a creator, an originator" (Webster, Standard), and a writing is the record or expression of a thought or idea.
Interpreta-
tion by Con-
gress and
courtsCongress, upheld by the courts, had specifically included (law of 1870) under "writings" in the Constitution a "statue," "statuary," "model," without requiring the artist to make a preliminary sketch (if that be specifically a writing) — otherwise, as sculp-
