As promised, the second part translated…

Same rules apply as on the first part, it is not perfect, certain words (marked with ????) need to be checked and corrected and there might be other errors as well. However, enjoy! Use as you please.

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Yesterday i posted the first part of the nasty tale about how copyright came to be – the story about how Queen Mary I ruthlessly hunted down protestants and introduced copyright as a repressive censoring mechanism, where a book printing guild was granted a monopoly and in exchange for this they censored every piece of printed material as a service to the crown. I concluded the first part with the Glorious Revolution in the year 1688.

This second part will cover the time between 1640 and 1900.

During the middle of the seventeenth century the parliment tried to gradually capture the control over the censoring mechanism from the crown. One of the actions aimed towards this goal was that the ?????”chamber of stars”?????, the court which had decided copyright cases, was dissolved in 1641. This led to a practical explosion of new printing shops since the censoring was in effect taken away.

This was however not the parliments purpose – they only wanted to gain control over the censoring themselves. The ?????”chamber of stars”???? had been an inquisition-like supreme court for matters too important for the local village courts, and parliment did not want it to control printing. Instead, in the year 1643 they introduced a ????licensing order???? which basically reinstated the censoring just as it previously had been, including:

* requirement on publishing license before release
* registering of authors, printers and publishers at London Company of Stationers
* searching of private property, capturing and burning of unlicensed pieces of printing
* arresting and severe punishments for unlawful authors, printers and publishers

As earlier the London Company of Stationers was appointed to administer the censoring (including the burning of books and take away printing presses from the possession of others), in exchange for a complete monopoly.
Now a quick reminder – this is copyright we are talking about. This is what it was all about. This is its origin. Keep that in mind.

In 1662 the censoring was strengthened further with another law, (licensing of the press act).

But then in 1688 came the Glorious Revolution and turned the balance of power completely on end. The composition of the parliment was changed so that those who earlier was the victims of censorship and repression became an important element of power. So therefor parliment simply let the Stationers Company know that their monopoly would be revoked (technically it would not be renewed), and so it was in the year 1695. This meant the end of a 140 year long repressive monopoly situation where the ????monopolist???? posessed far reaching rights for censoring and impounding, and it marked the reinstatement of complete ????freedom of press???? in Great Brittain.

It is worth noting that from 1695 and fifteen years on there was no such thing as copyright in existance. Culture and knowledge were spread like never before, not only in England, but also in the colonies, including America. ???Historians??? agree that the documents and printed works that eventually led to the american ????war of independence???? began to get printed during this time. So ironically, as seen by us today, the beginning of USA as a nation was ????catalyzed??? by the absense of copyright.

During those years the Stationers Company saw their former monopoly in ruins and their guaranteed source of income had vanished. Suddenly the writers could print books on their own, even if it was performed by an order to a printing shop. Earlier the monopoly had bought the script and then proceeded to print his work without giving him another thought.

What the former monopolists did then was to start lobbying against the parliment and pointing out a number of negative effects of the ????freedom of press???? One of those effects was that the integrity of the work was in danger – it was one thing to print a number of books using previously created ????tryckplåtar???? but it was another thing to create new ones from a paper copy. At the very creation of the ????plåtar???? one was pratically back at the time when texts were copied by hand, the copies were seldom perfect. Images took the largest hit along with mathematical formulas and illustrations, which could be seen in bad copies of for example Gallileis work.

It was argued that because it’s so expensive to create a perfect copy, and so cheap to create a bad one, those who create secondary copies would have a strong motivation to water down the works, and this would hurt the supply of culture and knowledge for the public. This was of course not the real reason for the ????monopolists???? to want to keep their monopoly, but thusly sounded their rethorics.

To accomplish this they claimed that there should be a natural ownership associated with something that someone wrote, an ownership which would be assigned to the author of a work. An ownership which prohibits others to print the same work. And if it is indeed an ownership, then it could also be bought and sold. (Guess who the monopolists thought should buy these rights.) This is the first occation where the term “intellectual property” appears in history, and the purpose of this rethorics was obviously to keep a profitable monopoly which was used for culture- and knowledgerepression.

The monopolists??? claimed to speak for the authors in this discussion about future lawmaking. The authors themselves, however, did not bring forward any such arguments at all. In this perspective, nothing has changed for three hundred years.

The parliment bought the rethorics and introduced a time limited copyright which could be bought and sold and which was assigned to the author who created a ????work???. The time limit was 21 years for earlier published works??? and 14 years for works??? created after the introduction of the law. This law was called Statute of Anne, and it was written into the law books in 1709 and took effect on april 10 1710. For those who promote copyright history usually starts here. London Company of Stationers continued however with their impounding and burning of others’ books, something which was not outlawed utnil the legal case Entick v. Carrington 1775.

At this point two things are worth noticing:

For one thing copyright never was meant to benefit artists or authors. Depending on ones level of cynisism, it has either been meant to benefit the public – with the public as one single interrested party – or for the publishers.

Secondly the motivation of copyright itself is the fact that it’s expensive to make perfect copies, but cheap to create copies which are not identical. In todays age the case is exactly the opposite. The kind of copy that is simplest to produce is the kind that is exactly identical – it can be produced at a cost of zero. On the other hand, any changes that needs to be made consumes time and resourses. One might argue that the progress of technology has completely falsified the very core assumption on which the existance of copyright is based.

With time the ideas spread and I usually distinguish between four distinct origins for copyright. The nordic one deals only with recogcition of authors and exists already in swedish “Västgötalagen”. The brittish, whis is the foundation for what we call copyright today, is what has been discussed here and which emerged between 1557 and 1710. The amerian was introduced in 1787 with the brittish one as its foundation, but there it was more clearly expressed that the public is the only ligitimate beneficiary: the constitution sais that copyright exists “to promote the progress of sciences and useful arts”. Finally there is the frensh tradition which emerged roughly at the same time as the american and which was pioneered by the writer Victor Hugo, here the emphasis was towards the authors moral rights. Both the american and the frensh is about one century later than the brittish one.

But the origin of them all – except the nordic one which only gives recognition – is a horrific repressive censoring mechanism formed around a monopoly with harsh punishments and the burning of books aimed towards political ???dissidents????.

Yes, jag har pratat länge och väl med Karl Fogel, och just upphovsrättshistorik är något av hans specialämne. Jag tittade faktiskt igenom hans keynotes en extra gång innan jag skrev den här artikeln.

Karl Fogel var den som arrangerade min talarturné i och kring San Francisco förra året: QCO – Rick Falkvinge Visit 2007. Jag hade nöjet att bolla tankar och idéer med honom på nära håll, och han är mycket kunnig i upphovsrättens historia och kulturella effekter. Det jag bidrog med till diskussionen var de politiska och medborgarrättsliga aspekterna, de flesta har inte beaktat dem – hur vi måste införa ett totalt övervakningssamhälle för att bevara dagens upphovsrätt.

Som Steelneck så precist formulerade det (med risk för misquote) – Hur stora ingrepp är staten beredd att göra i medborgares kommunikationsmöjligheter för att hindra medborgare att kommunicera redan publicerad information simsemellan sig?.

http://questioncopyright.org/promise

mvh //Ola