The Ashburton Guardian. Magna est Veritas, et Prevalebit. MONDAY, JUNE 19, 1882. The Protection of Telegrams Bill.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume III, Issue 666, 19 June 1882, Page 2

The Ashburton Guardian. Magna est Veritas, et Prevalebit. MONDAY, JUNE 19, 1882. The Protection of Telegrams Bill.

TOWN EDITION. [lssued at 1.40 p.m. j

The Bill introduced into the House of Representatives by Mr Feldwick, the member for Invercargill, will be hailed by newspaper proprietors as a small instalment of a measure which should have passed into law long ago, and we hope the Bill will find a place on the Statute book. We say this isonlya “small instalment” of that justice which should be meted out to newspaper proprietors who are sufficiently enterprising to go to great expense in placing before the readers of their journals the latest news from all parts of the world, because the Bill before us makes no provision lor “ copyrighting ” New Zealand telegrams, but only those messages received from places outside the colony. We ourselves have suffered in the past from a journal whose proprietary either would not or could not go to the expense of purchasing interprovincial telegrams, and have frequently held over telegraphic items on the night immediately preceding the publication of the sheet referred to, in order to prevent the piracy of news which the proprietor of this journal had sufficient enterprise to procure. But we suppose we must be thankful for small mercies, and accept the measure now before the House, as an earnest desire on the part of the Legislature to protect the property of newspaper proprietors, as they would the property of any other class in the community, and we hope that next session will see an extension to the provisions of the Bill in the shape of making it unlawful for an unscrupulous newspaper to “crib” even interprovincial telegrams from journals which are able to go to the expense of procuring them at the earliest possible moment.