

What can and can’t be copied is a matter of law, but also of aesthetics, culture, and economics. The act of copying, and the creation and transaction of rights relating to it, evokes fundamental notions of communication and censorship, of authorship and ownership — of privilege and property.

This volume conceives a new history of copyright law that has its roots in a wide range of norms and practices. The essays reach back to the very material world of craftsmanship and mechanical inventions of Renaissance Italy where, in 1469, the German master printer Johannes of Speyer obtained a five-year exclusive privilege to print in Venice and its dominions. Along the intellectual journey that follows, we encounter John Milton who, in 1644 accused the English parliament of having been deceived by the ‘fraud of some old patentees and monopolizers in the trade of bookselling’ (i.e. the London Stationers’ Company).

Later revisionary essays investigate the regulation of the printing press in the North American colonies as a provincial and somewhat crude version of European precedents, and how, in the revolutionary France of 1789, the subtle balance that the royal decrees had established between the interests of the author, the bookseller, and the public, was shattered by the abolition of the privilege system. Some of the essays also address the specific evolution of rights associated with the visual and performing arts.

The volume is a companion to the digital archive Primary Sources on Copyright (1450-1900) , funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). Privilege and Property is recommended in the Times Higher Education Textbook Guide (November, 2010).



The Jessica E. Smith and Kevin R. Brine Charitable Trust and the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) have generously contributed towards the publication of this volume.





Privilege and Property: Essays on the History of Copyright

Ronan Deazley, Martin Kretschmer and Lionel Bently (eds.) | June 2010

xii + 438 | 11 black and white illustrations | 6.14" x 9.21" (234 x 156 mm)

ISBN Paperback: 9781906924188

ISBN Hardback: 9781906924195

ISBN Digital (PDF): 9781906924201

DOI: 10.11647/OBP.0007

BIC subject codes: LNRC (Copyright law), HBTB (Social & cultural history)

is recommended in the(November, 2010).



Introduction

The History of Copyright History: Notes from an Emerging Discipline

Martin Kretschmer , with Lionel Bently and Ronan Deazley



1. From Gunpowder to Print: The Common Origins of Copyright and Patent

Joanna Kostylo



2. ‘A Mongrel of Early Modern Copyright’: Scotland in European Perspective

Alastair J. Mann



3. The Public Sphere and the Emergence of Copyright: Areopagitica, the Stationers’ Company, and the Statute of Anne

Mark Rose



4. Early American Printing Privileges. The Ambivalent Origins of Authors’ Copyright in America

Oren Bracha



5. Author and Work in the French Print Privileges System: Some Milestones

Laurent Pfister



6. A Venetian Experiment on Perpetual Copyright

Maurizio Borghi



7. Copyright Formalities and the Reasons for their Decline in Nineteenth Century Europe

Stef van Gompel



8. The Berlin Publisher Friedrich Nicolai and the Reprinting Sections of the Prussian Statute Book of 1794

Friedemann Kawohl



9. Nineteenth Century Controversies Relating to the Protection of Artistic Property in France

Frédéric Rideau



10. Maps, Views and Ornament: Visualising Property in Art and Law: The Case of Pre-modern France

Katie Scott



11. Breaking the Mould? The Radical Nature of the Fine Arts Copyright Bill 1862

Ronan Deazley



12. ‘Neither Bolt nor Chain, Iron Safe nor Private Watchman, Can Prevent the Theft of Words’: The Birth of the Performing Right in Britain

Isabella Alexander



13. The Return of the Commons – Copyright History as a Common Source

Karl-Nikolaus Peifer



14. The Significance of Copyright History for Publishing History and Historians

John Feather



15. Metaphors of Intellectual Property

William St Clair



Bibliography

Index



Ronan Deazley On the Origin of the Right to Copy: Charting the Movement of Copyright Law in Eighteenth Century Britain (1695-1775) (2004) and Rethinking Copyright: History, Theory, Language (2006, 2008). Martin Kretschmer is Professor of Intellectual Property Law in the School of Law, University of Glasgow, and Director of CREATe, the RCUK Centre for Copyright and New Business Models in the Creative Economy. From 2000-2012 he was Director of the Centre for Intellectual Property Policy & Management (CIPPM) at Bournemouth University ( https://microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk/cippm/ ).

Lionel Bently The Making of Modern Intellectual Property Law (with Brad Sherman) (1999) and Intellectual Property Law , 3rd ed (2008). is the Herchel Smith Professor of Intellectual Property Law at the University of Cambridge, and Director of the Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law, Cambridge. His published works include:(with Brad Sherman) (1999) and, 3rd ed (2008). Lionel Bently and Martin Kretschmer are joint project directors of Primary Sources on Copyright (1450-1900). is Professor of Law at Queen's University Belfast. He is the author of(2004) and(2006, 2008).

Copyright Information:

© 2010 Ronan Deazley, Martin Kretschmer and Lionel Bently

Contributors are free to re-publish their contributions in whatever other ways they choose.







Some rights are reserved. This book is made available under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivative 2.0. This license allows for copying any part of the work for personal and non-commercial use, providing author attribution is clearly stated.



Ronan Deazley, Martin Kretschmer and Lionel Bently, Privilege and Property: Essays on the History of Copyright . Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2010, https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0007

Details of allowances and restrictions are available at:

© 2010 Ronan Deazley, Martin Kretschmer and Lionel BentlyContributors are free to re-publish their contributions in whatever other ways they choose.Details of allowances and restrictions are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/

Privilege and Property contributor William St Clair is part of the panel discussion. Click



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William St Clair's The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period is linked, in an online publishing blog, to the current copyright debates and Google's attempted takeover. You can read the post here.

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Privilege and Property is a companion to the digital archive Listen again to an event hosted by the British Academy at the Royal Society (27 October 2010) about Creativity and Copyright.contributor William St Clair is part of the panel discussion. Click here to access the recording.is a companion to the digital archive Primary Sources on Copyright (1450-1900) , funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).