that was resources/materials problem not content problem. To make a book back then involved paying a scribe to handwrite on a parchment which is made of sheeps

that was resources/materials problem not content problem. To make a book back then involved paying a scribe to handwrite on a parchment which is made of sheeps skins. it usually took about 425 sheep skin to make one bible for example. Yet libraries still existed. Copyright by contrast has never been about incentivizing literary creation but the opposite. It was in fact was put in effect as a censorship mechanism where the printers where given exclusive right to copy a written works in exchange for not printing book that parliament objected to. Under the Statute of Ann, the first copyright law, an author did not have right to his work the printer did.