Page:The copyright act, 1911, annotated.djvu/7



Copyright Act, 1911, consolidates and amends the whole law of copyright. When it is supplemented by legislation in the self-governing dominions, and by Orders in Council and Regulations of the Board of Trade, there will be a complete code of copyright law for the whole of the British dominions.

Such a code has long been desired by all those interested in the legal rights of authors, artists and publishers. So long ago as 1878 a consolidation of the law was recommended by a Royal Commission, which carefully considered the whole subject, and reported that they found the existing law "wholly destitute of any sort of arrangement, incomplete, often obscure, and, even when intelligible upon long study, so ill-expressed that no one who did not give such study to it could expect to understand it."

The great obstacle in the way of consolidation and amendment has been the difficulty in coming to a satisfactory settlement with the self-governing dominions. Canada, in particular, has long demanded complete autonomy in the matter of copyright legislation, and it became increasingly obvious that if a consolidating Copyright Act was to be passed, the self-governing dominions would insist on having complete liberty to cut themselves adrift from Imperial legislation if they so desired. Authors and publishers in this country were not unnaturally extremely nervous of the possible consequences of Colonial autonomy. Each self-governing dominion might, by a manufacturing clause, exclude English and American authors from the enjoyment of copyright except upon condition that the book should be reprinted from type set within the dominion. This alone would be sufficiently serious, but there was the further possibility that if Canada adopted a manufacturing clause as against the United States, the latter might retaliate against Great Britain by excluding British subjects from copyright in the United States upon any condition. Unless the publishers in this country could have reasonable assurance that these things would not follow upon the passing of a consolidating Act they were content to abide by