The Cannock Chase Examiner. — 1875-08-28 (Cannock, Staffordshire, England)

PROTECTION FOR COPYRIGHT. The London Telegraph says: "An undeniable ju.stifi. able and sternly equitable concession has at length been made to France by Great Britain, in the matter ol dramatic copyright. On the 11th of August Lord Derby, on the part of this country, and the Marquis d'llareourt, representing the French Republic, attached their signatures to a declaration cancelling the srB 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—translations wore alone prohibited; but the effect of the cancelling of the paragraph in question will relieve the courts ol 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 un satisfactory convention strict justice, and 110 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 juatitia! 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 ierius clear that we cannot live entirely on indigenous five-act tragedies, 0” on operas bouffes. Meanwhile, we may expect experts in copywright to 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—fromßegnier, front 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 de Vega, Gongoza, and Luis del Paso, Irian the Italians Goldoni and Metastasio, and from the Germans Kotzebue and Leming. 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 has just been used as the basis of a drama at the Vaudeville or a farce at the Palais Royal, is he to be deemed a ' pirate ' within Big meaning of the amended Copyright Convention?"  no return of animals affected with the foot and =loth disease in East Suffolk shows an increase of seierd 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 BovariaP 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 Brentford on Mondaywiththe wilful murder of a woman, name unknown, at Southall, on the inth 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.  Tire O'Costirbb