IMPERIAL COPYRIGHT.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1098, 10 April 1911, Page 5

IMPERIAL COPYRIGHT.

NEW BILL INTRODUCED. By Telegraph-Press Association-Copyrieht London, April 7. A Copyright Bill, by which it is intended to secure the utmost uniformity possible throughout the Empire, was read a second time in the House of Commons. IMPORTANT PROVISIONS. (Rec. April 9, 5.5 p.m.) London, April 8. The Copyright Bill seeks to effect the recommendations of the Berlin Convention of I'JOS.

Its provisions apply to dramatised novels, translations, lectures, original adaptations, and artistic and architectural works which havo hitherto been excluded from copyright. Musical works, arc also to bo protected against mechanical reproductions. Copyright in future under the Bill would subsist for tho life of the author and fifty years thereafter. Power is given to tho Comptroller of Patents to license for publication books which are unduly withheld from the public. Mr, Sydney Buxton, President of tho Board of Trade, in introducing tho Bill, said he believed it would assist towards the publication of cheap editions. The Bill is the outcome of tho Imperial Copyright Conference of last year, and is no doubt the fame measure as previously introduced by Mr. Buxton. The conference recommended that an Act bo passed applying to all British possessions. Its recommendations laid down that copyright should include the solo right to produce or reproduce a work or any substantial part thereof, in any material whatsoever, and any language; to perform, or in tho case of a lcctiivo to deliver in public, and if unpublished lo publish the work. It should include the solo right to dramatise novels, and vice versa, and lo make records by moans of which a work may bo mechanically performed.

An original work of art should not lose the protection of artistic copyright because it consists of or is embodied in a work of architecture or craftsmanship, but if should lie clearly understood that such protection is confined to its artislic form and does not extend to the processes or methods nf production. Provision should bo made to stop the importation of pirated copies of a copyright work. No registration should bo necessary lo secure copyright.