The Tamworth Examiner and Working Men's Journal. — 1875-08-28 (Tamworth, Staffordshire, England)

PROTECTION FOR COPYRIGIIT.  The London Telegraph says: "An undeniable justifi• able and sternly equitable concession has at length been made to France by Great Britain, in the matter of dramatic copyright. On the 11th of August Lord Derby, on the part of this country, and the Marquis d'Harcourt, representing-the French Republic, attached their signatures to a declaration cancelling the 3rd Section of the 4th Article of the Copyright Convention of 1851, by which it was stipulated that the protection enjoyed by dramatic authors was not to extend to ' fair imitations or adaptations to the stage in England and France respectively.' Piratical —that is to say. verbatim et literatim—translatiom were alone prohibited; but the effect of the cancelling of the paragraph in question will relieve the courts of law from the unpleasant task of deciding what is or what is not a fair imitation or adaptation, and will make any imitation or adaptation of any dramatic piece whatsoever a piracy. There can be no doubt that in consenting to this alteration in a vague and unsatisfactory convention strict justice, and no more than justice, has been done to the dramatic authors of France. We may somewhat ruefully contemplate the fact that the new provision cuts only one way; but fiat justitia and the wrong must be remedied, even if the nature of the case affords no scope for reciprocity. We do not produce any dramatic literature which the French would think worth stealing, or which, under the modified convention, they would care about paying us for with a view to performance on their own stage. Many of our most popular dramas and farces are of French extraction. But now that we have consented to become honest, the terrible question arises as to whence we are to procure fresh dramas and fresh ' farces without paying for them. For the French, In matters of 'business, are a hard people to deal with. They will make John Bull pay heavily for the right of adapting their frequently untranslatable pieces to the British stage and that stage must be fed somehow, for it seems clear that we cannot live entirely on indigenous five-act tragedies, or on operas bouffes. Meanwhile, we may expect experts in copyvrrightto tell us whether under the amended convention, a French author's plot, as well as his characters and his dialogue, must be held sacred. The plots of many of the most favourite of modern French pieces are impudently 'lifted' from the works of the elder French dramatists—from Regular, from Marivaux, from Crebillon, and even from the earlier productions of Scribe. French plots by the hundred have been plundered from the Spaniards Cervantes, Calderon, Lope do Vega, Gongoza, and Luis del Paso, from the Italians Goldoni and Metastasio, and from the Germans Kotzebue and Lessing. If an English dramatic author happen to be a ripe Spanish, Italian, and German scholar, and chance to stumble on a story which is two or three hundred years old, but which kas just been used as the basis of a drama at the Vaudeville or a farce at the Patois Royal, is he to be deemed a ' pirate ' within the meaning of the amended Copyright Convention?'  The return of animals affected with the foot and mouth disease in East Suffolk shows an increase of several hundreds over last week.  A gigantic figure of Christ is being erected on the heights of Oberammergau, near Munich, and will be selemnly unveiled on the 28th, the anniversary of King Louis' accession to the throne of Bavaria. The statue weighs 25,000 kilogs., and a wall had to be demolished in order to carry it from the workshop.  Joseph Drinkwater and Joseph Stonestreet were charged at Brentfortl on Monday with the wilful murder of a woman, name unknown, at Southall, on the 18th instant. Prisoners, who admitted having been with the woman in a public-house, and afterwards in the North road, where her body was found, were both remanded.