Did you happen to read the GP's link? The Stationer's Guild was granted a monopoly on printing so that it could implement the government's censorship: > During

Did you happen to read the GP's link? The Stationer's Guild was granted a monopoly on printing so that it could implement the government's censorship: > During the Tudor and Stuart periods, the Stationers were legally empowered to seize "offending books" that violated the standards of content set down by the Church and state; its officers could bring "offenders" before ecclesiastical authorities, usually the Bishop of London or the Archbishop of Canterbury, depending on the severity of the transgression. As printing replaced hand-copying, enforcement of "authorized" printing (as in printing only what the government approves) came to include the "copy right", a rule devised by the Stationer's Guild wherein only certain printers were granted the privilege of printing certain books. Anyone who was not a guild member, or who didn't accept the government's censorship, would not be granted the "copy right" and would be punished for attempting to print or distribute the unauthorized books. This is where copyright originated, as an outgrowth of monopoly privileges designed for the purpose of censorship. The Statute of Anne took the term "copyright" in a somewhat different direction, emphasizing the privileges of authors over printers, but in the beginning (from ca. 1557 to 1695) it was designed precisely to "control the mass distribution of information [the government] doesn't like".