Quote:
Originally Posted by HansTWN
We discussed this previously in other threads, the first Western example of copyright I know of was granted by the king of Spain to Antonio Pigafetta in 1523 (Pigafetta was the chronicler for Magellan's expedition and the king did not want to pay him, so he gave Pigafetta 20 years copyright on the published expedition record. This agreement even stipulated large fines for any offending printers). There were earlier cases, but I don't remember the details. Chinese copyright (they had printing presses much earlier than Gutenberg) dates back to 1068. The earlier Western cases were all expressly to protect the rights of the authors and their publishers. Before printing presses copyright was pretty much useless, you had to thank the heavens if someone took the time to copy your book by hand.
The act in 1790 you mentioned was the first general copyright act. As you can imagine they didn't sit down and decided out of the blue "now we will introduce" copyright. At that time they already had 100s of years of experience to look back onto and just went from case by case to general copyright. But the 1790 was the first to mention anything about "the public". The origins of copyright were not concerned with the public good. And lest we forget who "the public" in 1790 really stood for. White, male property owners.
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1. "Public" was not limited to white male property owners, even if the franchise was limited to them.
2. Comparing the laws from an absolutist monarchy with those in a democracy on an issue of copyright can lead to dangerous even wrong conclusions. Lets keep in mind that the role of literature plays a much more important role in a republic or a democracy than it does in a monarchy. Thus while the framers of the Constitution may have been inspired by outside examples, it doesn't mean that they were establishing copyright for the same reasons. Therefore, their notion of public good must be taken as seriously as other motives they had.
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Bill