Page:Copyright, Its History And Its Law (1912).djvu/416

This page needs to be proofread.

384 COPYRIGHT

passed, which was followed in the same year by an act continuing the customs duty of 123^ per cent on, foreign reprints of British copyright works, and an Imperial Order in Council was passed July 7, 1868, continuing Canada within the provisions of the foreign reprints act of 1847. The returns to British authors from this duty proved so small — -only £1084 in ten years — that there was much dissatisfaction, and this impost was finally discontinued in 1895, whereupon the suspension under the Imperial act of 1847 of the prohibition of importation ceased to be in force in Canada and foreign reprints of British copy- right works were again under the Imperial law pro- hibited. Acts of 1875 In 1872 a new Canadian copyright act was passed, but it was disallowed by the Imperial authorities, whereupon, in 1875, the Parliament of Canada passed a new act, carefully drawn to avoid conflict with Im- perial legislation. To remove any doubts as to its validity, the " Canada copyright act" of 1875 was passed by the British Parliament to authorize the royal assent. This Imperial act forbiade the importa- tion into the United Kingdom of colonial reprints, though authorized for the Canadian market by Brit- ish authors (and therefore not piracies), of any work which might be copyrighted in Canada, and in which copyright subsisted in the United Kingdom. The Canadian act of 1875 then received the approval of the Crown, and as replaced and substantially re-en- acted by the Revised Statutes of Canada, 1886 (c. 62), — which also included (as c. 37) the amendatory act of 1886, prohibiting the importation of "reprints of Canadian copyright works and reprints of British copyrighted works which have been also copyrighted in Canada," — is still in force, being now Revised Stat- utes, 1906, c. 70, pt. I, as the fundamental Canadian