The provisions of the law regarding the subject-matter of copyright are completed by the negative provision:
"(Sec. 7.) That no copyright shall subsist in the original text of any work which is in the public domain, or in any work which was published in this country or any foreign country prior to the going into effect of this Act and has not been already copyrighted in the United States, or in any publication of the United States Government, or any reprint, in whole or in part, thereof: _Provided, however_, That the publication or republication by the Government, either separately or in a public document, of any material in which copyright is subsisting shall not be taken to cause any abridgment or annulment of the copyright or to authorize any use or appropriation of such copyright material without the consent of the copyright proprietor."
It is not to be inferred from the provision as to Government publications, that the United States has itself a right to use copyright material without consent of the copyright proprietor. The sovereignty of the nation is not to transgress the rights of private property, unless in the necessary exercise of war or police powers, as the sovereign state cannot take land over which it is theoretically sovereign from a private 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.
{ Sidenote: "Author" and "writing" definitions}
The 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 Dict.); "expression of ideas by visible letters" (Anderson's Dict. 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.