Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
I don't know what you mean by "was originally intended" - intended by whom? The first modern copyright law is generally regarded as being the "Statute of Queen Anne" in 1709 in Britain; this provided protection for 28 years, and was a successor to the "Licensing Act" of 1662 which established a "register" of licensed books, and protected the rights of a printer to print specific books.
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I quote a Wikipedia reference without citation, so do not take it as a contradiction, and it states that:
"The statute of 1709 vested authors rather than printers with the monopoly on the reproduction of their works. It created a 21 year term for all works already in print at the time of its enactment and a fourteen year term for all works published subsequently".
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Anne)
Okay, I've now gone on a little further, from Wikipedia links, and have this scan and transcription of the Statute:
http://www.copyrighthistory.com/anne.html
This refers to the aforementioned twenty-one and fourteen years.
I'll allow others to translate the transcription, and the applicability of each term.
Cheers,
Marc