Artificial Wasteland · Empty Cells · law and music history
A Halfpenny a Side
Section 19 of the Copyright Act 1911 put a royalty on records, rolls and other contrivances: a percentage of the ordinary retail price, never less than a halfpenny per separate musical work, with fractions of a farthing reckoned up. Run that rule on the collectors’ own examples, then read a stamp backwards and watch UK and Australia split after 1928.
Read section 19 of the 1911 Copyright Act as a live record royalty rule. Choose a date, territory, price and songs to compute the exact farthing amount, then read a stamp backwards as a price interval. It refuses to call the result a licence or a payment made by any manufacturer.
Worked example
At 1s 3d in 1925, two current works make 1d under the section 19 reading; remove one and the disc makes 3/4d, while the collectors’ per-side reading makes 1/2d.
operable base · under ten seconds
Put two works on one disc.
The opening record is UK, sold in 1925 at 1s 3d, with a current song on each side. The amount below is not a stored answer. It is read from the frozen section 19 clauses in farthings.
Click side 2. It becomes a non-copyright march, so the same price now has one protected work. Watch the amount move, then open the choice apparatus and make the collectors’ per-side gloss disagree with the Act reading.
The labels are drawn by the page. No stamp image, issuer, catalogue number or manufacturer payment is claimed.
The local engine is loading.
Side 2 mode: copyright work. These buttons alter the frozen work record.
layer one · the instrument
What the contrivance owes
Territory, sale date, ordinary retail price and work flags are inputs. Regulation 5 means the single-copy public selling price, not a wholesale price. The initial record uses 1/3d, which is 1s 3d in the old notation.
total royalty
waitingprice waitingrate
waitingselected or effective date branchminimum floor
waitingper protected workeffective percentage
waitingclause waitingLive numeric readouts are waiting for the local engine.
open the full choice apparatus
A is the reading section 19(4) supports. B and C are comparison conventions printed by Surrey and Miller. Every selector is a live engine input in the scope named by the check panel; a choice can be inactive for the current record.
The amount is waiting for the local engine.
the checkCHECKING
These are recomputed checks, not decorative claims. The page names the uncertainty instead of laundering it into a number. A failed input prints REFUSED with its reason.
anchor suite
| record | engine | expected | status |
|---|
owner shares
The amount is one sum. Section 19(4) says owners agree the proportions or arbitration decides. The current assumption and payee labels are visible here.
eligibility, not a licence
These conditions gate the words compulsory licence, not the sum. Even a complete checklist is not proof of a licence.
uncertainties and free choices
- waiting for the engine
Raw percentage: waiting. After the chosen farthing rule: waiting.
every declared choice
| choice | what it moves | declared probe | current input |
|---|
refusal paths
The engine refuses missing context, dates outside this record and post-repeal branches. It never fills a gap with a modern rate.
| case | reason printed by engine | status |
|---|
layer two · answer the dismissal
The stamp is not the price
The headline effect is already printed by Surrey and Copinger. This page does not present adding a second tune as a discovery. Its further result is a claims ledger, an inverse stamp reader, and a price atlas. The printed claim stays on one side of the table. The engine's reconstruction stays on the other.
second layer · every claim gets a date
Claims ledger
Each row keeps a short source quotation, the input record and the published figure. A, B and C are run on that same record. REPRODUCED means a convention matches the printed figure, not that a maker paid it. The ledger contains a deliberate negative control, a printed arithmetic slip, and a court's refusal to settle a point.
The frozen ledger is loading.
| source and row | input record | published | same engine, A · B · C | verdict | what the source actually says |
|---|
Surrey's decimal values such as 7.5% are retained as published glosses. Old money is computed in farthings. The G-39 1912 claim saying 5% must fail against the dated 2.5% branch.
further result · operate the dismissal
Read a stamp backwards
A surviving stamp gives an amount, not a unique price. Choose a stamp in farthings, date, territory, work classification and number of protected works. The reader uses equal owner shares for the A comparison, one work per side for B when possible, and the full-rate per song comparison for C. Whole-farthing prices are returned as unions of intervals. Inputs are bounded and a request that would exceed the finite inspection cap is refused.
The selected source preset will appear here.
The inverse reader is loading.
| convention | whole-farthing price set | boundary |
|---|
“Any positive price up to X” is the exact low-price interval when the minimum hides the percentage. A named catalogue price is refused here, so all axis values are illustrative.
further result · where the floor lets go
The price atlas
Under A, at whole pence, this is the first price at which the reckoned percentage exceeds the minimum. It is an atlas of the rule, not a catalogue of what any named record sold for. The 1912 branch is 2.5%, the 1914 branch is 5%, the UK post-1928 branch is 6 1/4%, and the pre-Act post-1928 branch is 3 1/8%.
| regime | rate and floor | one protected work | two protected works |
|---|
The price points are illustrative. The engine does not infer a catalogue price from them.
The record and its edges
Section 19(3) of the Copyright Act 1911 is the primary rule. It says 2.5% for contrivances sold within two years after commencement, then 5%, with a halfpenny for each separate work. Its farthing clause says fractions are reckoned up. The 1912 Regulations, printed in Copinger Appendix E, define ordinary retail selling price and the label apparatus.
The page reads section 19(4)'s apportionment as one sum per contrivance, then an owner split. That is a reading, not a court holding adopted here. If shares fail, the instrument says UNDETERMINED BY THE TEXT and names arbitration under section 19(4). A pre-Act work also changes the payee label to author or legal personal representatives under 19(7)(c).
The Board of Trade's 1928 order is distinct from the local and private Act that confirmed it. In 100 CLR 597, at 608, the Australian majority keeps 5% and 1/2d after 3 November 1928, while Menzies J's dissent uses 6 1/4% and 3/4d. At 619 the judgment quotes the committee saying the pre-Act minimum was unsettled. The controller displays that doubt rather than choosing silently.
Date basis: 3 November 1928 is Miller's printed switch date. The order's own date-specified clause was not read, so this boundary remains an explicit lead, not a claim that the page has reconstructed every later commencement rule.
Australia's section 9 changes institutional references for arbitration and the Board of Trade, not the rate text. The Australian majority and Menzies J readings stay separate because the judgment gives them separately.
The farthing ceiling is applied to the disc sum before owner shares. A shared sum can therefore show eighths, while a failed agreement remains UNDETERMINED.
Attribution correction: Regulation 4(f), not the Act, supplies the square, circle, 3/4 inch and no-effigy label constraints. Surrey's Albion wording is not used as a legal citation.
One source also prints “two per cent” in the history. The statute's transcribed 19(7)(b) says two and one-half per cent. The printed slip is visible in the ledger as a caveat and is not allowed to steer the engine.
The fixed source figures kept on the surface include section 19(3), 1d in all on Bell, the 1 July 1913 and 1 July 1910 pre-Act cutoffs, Copinger's 2/6d stamp inference, Edison's 1 3/4d per side, Miller's 1 1/8d and 1 7/8d values, and the 4/- and 10/- collector examples.
Static source figures: section 19(3), 1s 3d in 1925, 1/3d, 3/4d, 1/2d, 1d in all, 2.5%, 5%, 6 1/4%, 3 1/8%, 1 July 1912, 1 July 1913, 1 July 1910, 3 November 1928, 100 CLR 597 at 608 and 619, 2/6d, 3/4 inch, 1 3/4d, 1 1/8d, 1 7/8d, 4/- and 10/-, plus the printed two per cent slip.
What this cannot say
- It cannot prove that a manufacturer paid a computed amount.
- It cannot turn an amount into a licence. Notice, payment and consent remain a separate checklist.
- It cannot settle mixed pre-Act and current rates on one disc after 1928.
- It cannot recover a named disc's catalogue price from a stamp. Its inverse answer is an interval.
- It stops at unverified UK 1957 and Australian 1969 scope boundaries, does not apply either later Act, and refuses a sale before 1 July 1912.