From For the Hearts
Modern copyright has been influenced by an array of older legal rights that have been recognized throughout history, including the moral rights of the author who created a work, the economic rights of a benefactor who paid to have a copy made, the property rights of the individual owner of a copy, and a sovereign’s right to censor and to regulate the printing industry. Prior to the invention of movable type in the West in the mid-fifteenth century, texts were copied by hand and the small number of texts generated few occasions for these rights to be tested. Even during a period of a prospering book trade, during the Roman Empire, the occurrence of piracy was unlikely. This is because books were, typically, copied by expensive and high maintenance literate slaves. Because of this fact, any pirate would have had to pay much the same expense as the original publisher, effectively destroying any economic incentive for piracy.
During the centuries following the destruction of the Roman Empire, literary undertakings were confined almost entirely to the monasteries. The Roman usage, under which authors could dispose of their works to booksellers and the latter could be secure of some commercial control of the property purchased, was entirely forgotten.
Historically, governments issued monopolierechten – monopoly rights – to publishers for the sale of printed work. Copyright was not invented until after the advent of the printing press and with wider public literacy. As a legal concept, its origins in Britain were from a reaction to printers’ monopolies at the beginning of the eighteenth century. In Britain the King was concerned by the unfair copying of books and used the royal prerogative to pass the Licensing Act 1662 which established a register of licensed books and required a copy to be deposited with the Stationers Company, essentially continuing the licensing of material that had long been in effect. The Statute of Anne was the first real copyright act, and gave the author rights for a fixed period, after which the copyright expired. Unlike previous laws that gave broad monopoly power to the Stationers’ Company, who would then administer a private system of copyright between Guild members, the Statute of Anne directly outlined a public copyright system that applied to the public in general. Second, the Statute recognized a copyright as originating in the author, rather than a Guild member. Lastly, it placed a time limitation on the monopoly enjoyed by holders of a copyright. Specifically, the Act provided that an owner of the copyright in any book already printed should have the exclusive right of publishing it for twenty-one years. For works not yet published, the act provided an exclusive right to publish for fourteen years from the time of first publication, with the stipulation that the right could be extended by an author for another 14 years. However, printers argued that the texts were property owned by the authors, and therefore could be sold as such to the printers, who would then own the rights.
The Berne Convention in 1886 first settled the recognition of copyrights between sovereign nations. It set out the scope of copyright protection, and is still in force to this day. Copyright’s history has taken it from a legal concept regulating copying rights in the publishing of books and maps to one with a significant effect on nearly every modern industry, covering such items as sound recordings, films, photographs, software, and architectural works.
Under the Berne Convention the eigendomsrecht – right of ownership – was automatically granted to every creative work. The author no longer needed to register the work, and was not required to apply for copyright coverage. The Berne Convention still applies in practially all countries of the world.
