The Copyright Bill, as amended by the Standing Com- mittee,
came up for consideration in the House of Commons yesterday week. Mr. Booth moved that the Bill should be recommitted to a Select Committee on the ground that it had been insufficiently discussed on its second reading, and that its main result would be to make literature dear and infringe public rights and interests. Mr. Buxton demurred strongly to this view, maintaining that the Bill had received exceptionally careful attention in Grand Committee and had been immensely improved. Of the subsequent amendments proposed the most important was that of Mr. Joynson Hicks, who moved to omit "the construction of an architectural work of art" from the operation of the copyright laws. The Solicitor-General recapitulated the arguments in favour of including architecture within the terms of the Bill, and ultimately the amendment was rejected by 154 to 42. An amendment exempting from the operation of the law the inclusion of a. limited number of short copyright pieces in bond fide educational collections was agreed to, but the proposal to shorten the term of copyright from 50 to 25 years after the author's death was rejected by 153 to 35.
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