Quote:
Originally Posted by ekbell
Copyright started as a means to reduce competition for publishers, the first to claim a manuscript in the local area(hopefully by buying it from the author) had dibs, which was attached to the author when it was realized that author's rights would gain more support then publisher's rights.
Or so I gathered from Piracy: The Intellectual Property Wars from Gutenburg to Gates
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There are a couple books on IP and copyright that I find interesting. One is "Moral Panics and the Copyright Wars" by William Patry, another is "Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind by James Boyle. Boyle is a law professor specializing in IP at Duke and one of the founders of the Creative Commons. Patry is also a copyright lawyer and at one time was the senior copyright lawyer at Google. Both well written books and worth reading.