COPYRIGHT.

[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR.")

Sra,—Mr. Oswald St. Clair's letter (Spectator, August 18th) leads me to believe that some of your readers will be interested to learn what provisions the new Bill, which passed the House of Lords and was introduced in the House of Commons last Session, proposes to make for lectures. I therefore append the clauses referring to this subject. The need of a new Act is more urgently felt every year, but, un- fortunately, such a Bill has but little chance of becoming law unless Government gives it active support in the House of Commons, and because the question of copyright influences (or is supposed to influence) a comparatively small number of votes, it suffers from undue neglect. I am surprised that Mr. St. Clair introduces the familiar illustration of Milton and "Paradise Lost." There is no analogy whatsoever, so far as the law is concerned, between the private employment of an amanuensis and the reporting of a publicly delivered 50 Albemarle Street, W.

" [63 and 64 VICT.]

Lecturing Bight.

6.—(1.) Lecturing right means the exclusive right of the owner of such right to deliver, or authorise the delivery of, a lecture in public throughout the dominions of Her Majesty.

(2.) Lecturing right shall subsist in respect of any lecture, whether the author is or is not a British subject, which has, after the commencement of this Act, been first delivered in Her Majesty's dominions before or simultaneously with its publica- tion out of such dominions.

(8.) The author of the lecture shall be the first owner of the lecturing right in a lecture.

(4.) The lecturing right shall begin with the first delivery of the lecture in public, and shall, subject as in this Act mentioned, subsist for the term of the author's life, and thirty years after the end of the year in which he dies, and no longer.

(5.) The lecturing right, and the right to publish the lecture as a book, may be held by the same or different persons, and shall be deemed to be distinct rights for the purpose of assign meat or otherwise.

(6.) If the lecture is published as a book with the consent in writing of the owner of the lecturing right, the lecturing right shall cease.

(7.) The lecturing right shall not subsist in any lecture con- taining profane, indecent, seditious, or libellous matter.

(8.) The lecturing right shall not be infringed by a report made of a lecture in a newspaper or periodical, unless such report is prohibited by such notice as in this section mentioned.

(9.) The report of a lecture in a newspaper or periodical may not, without the consent in writing of the owner of the lecturing right, be published in any other shape, and such report shall not authorise any other person without such consent to deliver the lecture in public.

(10.) The notice prohibiting such report must be given in some one of the following methods :— (a.) Orally at the beginning of the lecture to be protected; or

(b.) By a written or printed notice affixed, before the lecture is given, on the entrance doors of the building in which the lecture is given, or in a conspicuous place near the lecturer in letters not less than an inch in height.

(11.) When a series of lectures is intended to be given by the same lecturer on the same subject, one notice may be applied to the whole series."