The Proprietors of CIRCULATING LIBRARIES in all parts of the country are compelled by the new Copyright Act to discontinue purchasing and lending out a single copy of a foreign edition of an English work. The mere having it in their possession ticketed and marked as a library book, exposes them to A PENALTY OF TEN POUNds. Several clauses of the new Copyright Act award severe punishments for introducing and exposing for sale or hire pirated editions of English works, both in Great Britain and in the Colonies. The Government absolutely prohibits the introduction of these nefarious reprints through the Custom-houses on any pretence whatever. The public should be made fully and perfectly aware that, in consequence of a Treasury Order to that effect, even single copies of works so pirated, brought in a traveller's baggage, which were formerly admissible, are so no longer, unless they be cut, the name written in them, and, moreover, so WORN and used as to render them unfit for sale; and that if afterwards they are found in a Circulating Library, the Proprietor is subject to a severe penalty. Two clauses of the new Customs' Act, moreover, exclude them altogether after the commencement of the next financial year. These measures will, no doubt, be rigorously enforced both at home and in the colonies. |