Brief History of Copyright

Copyright
A work in progress, please comment and help improve this table.

The table below, drawn up from some of the writings of Lessig  , Benkler and Aigrain. Ghosh (2005), summarises the history of copyright indicating how the freedom to adapt and share has been progressively taken away since the invention of the printing press.

The trend is clear. Since 1710, when copyright restricted the right to copy a book to a particular machine (usually a bookseller's printing press) with no restrictions on use, there has been a progressive reduction in formalities required to register copyright, for an ever increasing duration, and with incumbent restrictions on use of the work by readers, performers, etc..

Currently, in most countries, the default copyright (if nothing to the contrary is indicated in the work) is all rights reserved for the author, apparently indefinitely. Many publishers require authors to sign over that all-encompassing copyright to them, e.g.


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 * Copyright © 2007 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed ... [in any way whatsoever] ... without the prior written permission of the publisher ....
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though this can often be negotiated. In the modern connected world, this situation generally restricts progress, contradicting the original purpose of copyright: to promote progress in science and the useful arts - a public good. The purpose is not to enrich publishers or authors, or to grant them undue influence on development and distribution of culture (Lessig, 2004).

The effect is a severe restriction of the growth of the knowledge commons, and of the flow of creativity that supplies the publicly available pool of cultural resources.


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 * Free software guru Richard Stallman claims that in the age of the digital copy the role of copyright has been completely reversed. While it began as a legal measure to allow authors to restrict publishers for the sake of the general public, copyright has become a publishers’ weapon to maintain their monopoly by imposing restrictions on a general public that now has the means to produce their own copies.

Anna Nimus, 2006


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Reforming copyright law is one approach to correcting this situation. There are efforts to do so, but the task has proved extremely challenging on account of strong lobbying on the part of publishers and media companies with a vested interest in the traditional property-based approach.

In the meantime, there are some work-arounds: copyleft (Free Software Foundation) and some of the Creative Commons licenses.

Links etc.

 * Misinterpreting Copyright - A Series of Errors.
 * QuestionCopyright.org - whose mission is "to educate the public about the history of copyright, and to promote methods of distribution that do not depend on restricting people from making copies".
 * The Surprising History of Copyright and The Promise of a Post-Copyright World.
 * History of copyright law.
 * A Brief History of Copyright and Innovation.
 * Free Culture - Lawrence Lessig Keynote from OSCON 2002 on the current state of intellectual property and its ramifications on creativity and culture.
 * Time to update copyright law? - By William Patry, Special to CNN January 31, 2012 - Updated 2130 GMT (0530 HKT).
 * Center for the Study of the Public Domain - CSPD Duke University School of Law
 * See CSPD Comics: Tales from the Public Domain: BOUND BY LAW?