3 ms·

Take two minutes and reflect on why people wrote stories before the concept of copyright even existed.

• dtech 6y ago
  There were very few people who made it their job. The ease and accuracy with which artistic works can be replicated and replicates in the 1600s and earlier was much, much more limited. An actor or singer didn't need this protection in 1800 because there was no film or audio records. You had to hire them to perform. It's no coincidence that the first protected works were books, because there was the printing press.
  • Mediterraneo10 6y ago
    Mass replication is older than you think. In Ancient Rome when poets recited, it was common for an amanuensis in the crowd to copy down what was being recited. Copies would then be made by a team of slaves and sold in the marketplace without any of that money going to the poet. And yet there was absolutely no moral outrage at this. The only thing people objected to (a famous case is Martial in one of his epigrams) was someone passing off those poems as his own work. That is, there is a stronger case across space and time for disapproval of plagiarism, but the notion of copyright only arose in the West a few centuries ago, and still much of the world does not take it seriously.