international conference at Berlin in 1908, July 1910
being the latest date at which ratification by the states concerned
might take place, but it cannot here be stated to what extent
legislation may give effect to the decisions arrived at. So far as these
decisions affect Great Britain, the greatest alterations of existing law
would be in establishing throughout the Union protection of musical
copyright, especially with regard to singing and talking machines, and
also in the matter of newspaper copyright. The conference adopted a
threefold division of newspaper matter: (1) serial stories, tales and
all other work, literary, scientific and artistic, which is to have
absolute protection; (2) all newspaper matter, except the foregoing and
mere items of general news (_faits divers_), of which reproduction is to
be permitted on acknowledgment of the source, unless such reproduction
is expressly forbidden; (3) news of the day and simple facts, to which
no protection is given. An endeavour was also made to have a uniform
period throughout the Union for copyright of the author's life and 50
years.

15. _Colonial Copyright._--Under English copyright, books of the United
Kingdom were formerly protected in the colonies by the Colonial
Copyright Act of 1847, and copies of them printed or reprinted elsewhere
could not be imported into the colonies. In 1876 a royal commission was
appointed to consider the whole question of home, colonial and
international copyright; and various recommendations were made. But the
matter now rests on the English International Copyright Act 1886, which
contains provisions designed to extend the benefit of the British
copyright acts to works first produced in the colonies, while allowing
each colony to legislate separately for works first produced within its
own limits. The colonies at present are all included in the system of
international copyright established by the Bern convention.

In 1875 an act was passed (re-enacted in 1886 in the revised Canadian
statutes) to give effect to an act of the parliament of the Dominion of
Canada respecting copyright. An order in council in 1868 had suspended
the prohibition against the importation of foreign reprints of English
books into Canada, and the parliament had passed a bill on the subject
of copyright as to which doubts had arisen whether it was not repugnant
to the Order in Council. It was also enacted that, after the bill came
into operation, if an Engl