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AN EXPOSITION OF

LORD MONKSWELL'S COPYRIGHT BILL

NOW BEFORE PARLIAMENT;

WITH

Extracts from the Report of the Commission of 1878,

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PREFACE.

In the following pages I have endeavoured to describe in popular, but, it is hoped, not inexact language, the scope and object of Lord Monkswell's Bill" to amend and con"solidate the law relating to copyright," which now awaits a second reading in the House of Lords.

With this view I have briefly stated the leading heads of the existing law, pointed out its more harmful defects, and summarised the remedies proposed by the Bill. I have also printed the material parts of the all-important Report of the Commission of 1878, on which the Bill is mainly founded, not omitting Sir Louis Mallet's dissentient Report; and have briefly touched on the "Manners Bill" and other measures which were submitted to Parliament though not discussed by it, between 1878 and the present time.

As one of the members of the Copyright Committee of the Author's Society, I had some little share in directing the progress of the present Bill before it was entrusted to Lord Monkswell. May I be permitted to state that the utmost care was taken by that Committee to represent and give effect, so far as was reasonably practicable, to the views of all whose interest was likely to be involved? J. M. LELY.

The Temple,

February 9th, 1891.

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