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The Statute of Anne was not the first copyright law. Its antecedent was the Licensing of the Press Act[0], which had the explicit purpose of restricting the rig

The Statute of Anne was not the first copyright law. Its antecedent was the Licensing of the Press Act[0], which had the explicit purpose of restricting the right to make copies (i.e. to run a printing press) "for preventing the frequent Abuses in printing seditious treasonable and unlicensed Books and Pamphlets and for regulating of Printing and Printing Presses"—in a word, censorship. Note that the Wikipedia article for the Statue of Anne says "the first statute to provide for copyright regulated by the government and courts, rather than by private parties" (emphasis added). It was not the first copyright, just the first one where the government handled enforcement directly. Before that enforcement (including, but not limited to, government-mandated censorship) was handled by the printers' guild, with the government licensing the printers. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Licensing_of_the_Press_Act_1662 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Licensing_of_the_Press_Act_166...

throw0101a 6y ago
> The Statute of Anne was not the first copyright law. Its antecedent was the Licensing of the Press Act[0] It seems to me that the LPA was more primarily a 'business licensing' system. Sections I to IV are about who is allowed to print: * https://www.british-history.ac.uk/statutes-realm/vol5/pp428-435 https://www.british-history.ac.uk/statutes-realm/vol5/pp428-... Only one section (V) pertains to what we would nowadays refer to copyright, i.e., ownership of the content.
- nybble41 6y ago
  If the standard for what counts as "copyright law" is "what we would nowadays refer to [as] copyright" then it is of course trivially true that all "copyright" statutes, past, present, or future, share the same purpose as modern copyright. However, more generally the term "copyright" refers to "the right by law to be the entity which determines who may publish, copy and distribute a piece of writing, music, picture or other work of authorship"[0], and for that the Licensing of the Press Act qualifies. The Statute of Anne was intended as a modernized replacement for the LPA; it represented an evolution in the concept of copyright away from its origins as a means of censorship and toward a more lenient and democratized commercial model. [0] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/copyright#Noun https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/copyright#Noun

throw0101a 6y ago

> The Statute of Anne was not the first copyright law. Its antecedent was the Licensing of the Press Act[0] It seems to me that the LPA was more primarily a 'business licensing' system. Sections I to IV are about who is allowed to print: * https://www.british-history.ac.uk/statutes-realm/vol5/pp428-435 https://www.british-history.ac.uk/statutes-realm/vol5/pp428-... Only one section (V) pertains to what we would nowadays refer to copyright, i.e., ownership of the content.

nybble41 6y ago
If the standard for what counts as "copyright law" is "what we would nowadays refer to [as] copyright" then it is of course trivially true that all "copyright" statutes, past, present, or future, share the same purpose as modern copyright. However, more generally the term "copyright" refers to "the right by law to be the entity which determines who may publish, copy and distribute a piece of writing, music, picture or other work of authorship"[0], and for that the Licensing of the Press Act qualifies. The Statute of Anne was intended as a modernized replacement for the LPA; it represented an evolution in the concept of copyright away from its origins as a means of censorship and toward a more lenient and democratized commercial model. [0] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/copyright#Noun https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/copyright#Noun