AUTHORS & ARTISTS,

Evening Post, Volume LXXXI, Issue 90, 18 April 1911, Page 7

AUTHORS & ARTISTS,

THE NEW COPYRIGHT BILL. FROM A PUBLISHER'S VIEW-POINT^ BRITAIN AND THE DOMINIONS^ By Telegraph. — Press Association. — Copyright (Received April 18, 9 a.m.) LONDON, 17th April. Mr. C. J. Longman, M.A., editor of Longman's Magazine, and a member of the well-known firm of publishers, Longmans, Green and Co., in a letter to The? Times on the subject of the Copyright Bill, which was read a second time in the House of Commons on the 7th inst., and which seeks to effect the recommendations of the Berlin Conference of 13th November, 1908, says the measure gives the right to the Dominions to re.peal or amend its application within, their spheres, and raises the point as to how British authors and artists can obtain the beet terms from the Dominions. The latter may hamper copyright by compelling local manufacture. He urges that British people should enjoy benefits in the Dominions identical with those accorded them in England. [The provisions of the new Bill apply to dTamatised novels, translations, lectures, original adaptations, and artistic and architectural works which havo hitherto been excluded from copyright. Musical works ace also to be protected •against mechanical reproductions. Copyright in future under the Bill is to eubsist for the life of the author and for fifty years thereafter. Power. is given to the Comptroller of Patents to license I for publication books which are unduly withheld from the public. Mr. Sydney Buxton, President of the Board of Trade, in introducing the Bill, said he believed it would assist in the publication of cheap editions.]