Quote:
Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward
From the beginning of civilization until the time of Gutenberg, the above concept was true, as there was no way to make (unlimited) cheap copies of anything. Gutenberg created the first mass-production technology - printing.
This was so different from anything before, it several hundred years before it started to reach legal definition (Statue of Anne (ca. 1710)). You can look in Roman law, Greek philosophy, Chinese and Indian philosophy, ect. and not find it. Nor in injuctions from sacred texts, either (stealing was always defined as property transfer - not unathorized (sic) property creation).
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I will put in a small addendum here.
Despite what most of us were taught in school, Gutenberg wasn't the first to invent movable type printing. The oldest known occurrence was in China and predates it by a few hundred years. Note that I'm not splitting hair here, it is relevant: until a very recent time (less then twenty years), there was no concept of copyright in China (and most of SouthEast Asia). As a matter of fact, although laws exist, they seem to be mostly ignored.
So we have to remember that copyright came about because of easiness of reproduction, but only in Europe (and its former colonies after a while) which then strong-armed the rest of the world into adopting it.
That doesn't mean it's necessary to have intellectual work produced.
I'll give one example. A while back I chanced upon a Chinese TV series that I found somewhat interesting (big production in the same genre that of 'Crouching Tiger, Hiding Dragon'). But the most interesting thing was that you could completely download a dvd-rip version of it although it'd only begun to be shown on TV.
Discussing about this way of doing things(strange for me, used to the way tv series producers work in the western world), I found out it a completely standard practice:
- A TV company decides to produce a new serie.
- They first completely film and post-produce it.
- On the day the fist episode is shown on TV, they release the complete serie on dvd: that way, they get first mover advantage to the market and will catch the greater portion of the people who are likely to buy the dvds.
Of course, afterward the copyrights infringers (real ones here) will release cheaper versions, but it seems being first on the market is enough to keep doing business.