View source for 17. What is the original of copyright?

Authors, patrons, and owners of works throughout the ages have tried to direct and control how copies of such works could be used once disseminated to others. Mozart's patron, Baroness von Waldstätten, allowed his compositions to be freely performed, while Handel's patron (George I, the first of the Hanoverian kings) jealously guarded "Water Music."

Two major developments in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries seem to have provoked the development of modern copyright. First, the expansion of mercantilist trade in major European cities and the appearance of the secular university helped produce an educated bourgeois class interested in the information of the day. This helped spur the emergence of a “public sphere,” which was increasingly served by entrepreneurial “stationers” who would produce copies of books on demand. Second, Gutenberg's development of movable type and the development and spread of the printing press made mass reproduction of printed works quick and cheap. Before these two developments, the process of copying a work could be nearly as labor intensive and expensive as creating the original, and was largely relegated to monastic scribes. It appears publishers, rather than authors, were the first to seek restrictions on copying printed works. Given that publishers now obtain the copyright from the authors as a condition of mass reproduction of a work, one of the criticisms of the current system is that it benefits publishers more than it does authors. This is a chief argument of the proponents of peer-to-peer file sharing systems.

An interesting attempt at copyright in the early modern period was the notice attached to the ha- Shirim asher li-Shelomo by the composer Salomone Rossi, a setting of the Psalms which was in fact the first music to be printed with a Hebrew type-face text (1623). It set out a rabbinical curse on anyone who copied the contents.

While governments had previously granted monopoly rights to publishers to sell printed works, the modern concept of copyright originated in 1710 with the British Statute of Anne. This statute first accorded exclusive rights to authors rather than publishers, and it included protections for consumers of printed work ensuring that publishers could not control their use after sale. It also limited the duration of such exclusive rights to 28 years, after which all works would pass into the public domain.

There were territorial loopholes in the 1710 Act. It did not extend to all British territories, but only covered England, Scotland, and Wales. Many reprints of British copyright works were consequently issued both in Ireland and in North American colonies, without any form of commission required. These works were frequently issued without any payment to British copyright holders, so they were cheaper than London editions. This made them popular with book-buyers. These reprints were not piracies in the formal sense of the word, although the term has been applied. It is however important to note that in Ireland and North America there were reprint publishers who sought out formal arrangements with and made payments to British copyright holders (here ethics and legalities are at play). Irish reprints became a great matter of concern to London publishers. These reprints undermined direct sales to Ireland. They also crossed the borders into England, and were especially sold in English provincial markets (these markets were also becoming increasingly important to London publishers at the time). Booksellers who sold these reprints in England, Scotland, and Wales were subject to prosecution. This illicit reprint trade was also engaged in by some Scottish publishers, and Scottish reprints constituted formal piracies, so those publishers were prosecuted.

There was, between 1710-1774, legal debate about what the lengths of time of copyright meant in 1710 act.

Publishers in Scotland, in the 1730's, began to reprint titles that they no longer considered to be protected by copyright. They sold these titles in Scotland, and in the English provinces. English publishers objected to this, on the basis of what they saw as common-law rights and property (under the concept of common-law rights in the English system), which predated the Copyright Act. Under common-law rights, rights were held to published works in perpetuity. The Scottish proceeded to continue to print what they perceived as formerly English copyright works.

The case of Donaldson vs Beckett, in 1774, brought disagreements on the length of copyright to an end. The outcome of the case resulted in the decision that a limit can be put on copyright. This decision reflected a shift in English ideas of copyright. The English lords who made the decision in 1774, decided that it was not in the public's best interest to have London publishers control books in perpetuity, particularly because London publishers kept prices unusually high. There were some notions that this was a cultural issue, in that works in perpetual copyright were seen to limit access that people had to cultural histories of their own land.

The concepts of the role of the author, copyright law, and general notions of the Enlightenment, all had bearing on one another. Authors were previously seen to be divinely inspired. Patronage was a legitimate way to support authors, because of this. Authors who were paid, rather than entering into patron-relationships, were seen to be hacks, and were looked down upon. The notion of individual genius however was becoming more prevalent during the 1770's (the time when English lords were making decisions about copyright law), and the concept of being a paid author therefore became more accepted.

In Great Britain's North American colonies, reprinting of British copyright works without permission had precedence (it happened episodically), but only became a major feature of colonial trade after 1760. It became more commonplace to reprint British works in colonies (mostly in the 13 colonies that became the USA). The impetus for this shift came about from Irish and Scottish master printers and booksellers in the North American coloinies after 1760. These printers and sellers were already well-versed in the practice of reprinting and selling British copyright works, and thus began to adopt the practice in North America. This practice became a major part of the North American printing and publishing trade. Robert Bell was one example of this activity. He was Scottish-born, and spent almost a decade in Dublin, before he moved to the USA in 1768. Robert Bell's activities, and those of other colonial printers and booksellers, ensured that the practice of reprinting was well-established by the time of the American Declaration of Independence in 1776. The USA's weakened ties to England were congruent with the increase of this practice.

The Irish also made a flourishing business of shipping reprints to the USA in the 18th century. Ireland's ability to reprint freely ended in 1801 when Ireland's Parliament merged with Great Britain, and the Irish became subject to copyright of Great Britain.

The printing of uncopyrighted English works in the English-language market began to flourish in other European countries. This undermined sales of domestic authors, et al. The British government responded to this problem in two ways: 1. It amended its own copyright in 1842. In this amendment, it explicitly forbade the import of any foreign reprint of British copyright work in the UK or its colonies (this did not affect the USA, because it was after 1776). 2. It began the process of reciprocal agreements with other countries (for example, in Britain, Prussian copyright would be respected; in Prussia, vice versa) – the first being Prussia, in 1846.

The Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works of 1886 first established the recognition of copyrights between sovereign nations. Under the Berne convention, copyrights for creative works do not have to be asserted or declared, as they are automatically assigned: an author does not have to "register" or "apply for" a copyright. As soon as a work is "fixed", that is, written or recorded on some physical medium, its author is automatically entitled to all exclusive rights to the work and any derivative works unless and until the author explicitly disclaims them, or until the copyright expires. The Berne Convention also resulted in foreign authors being under the same terms as domestic authors, in any country signed onto the Convention.

The USA did not initially sign the Berne Convention and would not do so until 1989, however many European countries did. The UK signed on in 1887, on behalf of itself and its colonies, but did not implement large parts of it in British law until 100 years later, with the introduction of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.