15.2: A Brief History of Copyright
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Early History
The concepts underlying copyright protection have been around for at least 1500 years. The situation before the sixth century is a little unclear. Copyright has always been a response to technological change. The first such change was the advent of writing itself. Before writing, history was recorded through stories that were told and retold to succeeding generations. In the oral tradition it would not have occurred to anyone to restrict who could repeat the tales.
The first documented copyright dispute occurred in sixth-century Ireland. This isn’t a tale of high priced lawyers arguing over minute details of the law—rather it is a tale of religion, power and bloodshed. In the early part of the sixth century Columba of Iona, a priest, borrowed a psalter from Finnian, and then diligently copied it page by page, though without asking Finnian for permission to do this. Finnian demanded the return of the psalter, and appealed to the Irish king Dermot, who ordered the copy be handed over to Finnian. When Columba refused to comply, Dermot used military force to see his judgment through. In the end, as many as three thousand men may have died.
While this tale certainly has all the elements of modern day copyright piracy, with the addition of armed conflict, it was not until much later that copyright issues came to the fore. St. Columba had to copy the psalter by hand, a very slow laborious process. Since very few people were literate, copyright wasn’t much of an issue. It was not until the invention of the printing press that the idea of granting permission to make copies has any significance.
First laws
With the printing press it became possible to make multiple copies of books efficiently. Books became a commodity. Printing and selling books was soon a lucrative venture. At first the system of controlling the right to make copies was ad hoc. Kings and other rulers would grant the privilege of printing books to one printer or another. Books that were not authorized were banned. Printers who produced unauthorized works were arrested. Printers held a monopoly on the titles they printed. This system was clearly aimed at aiding the printers, as opposed to the authors. It was also a system that was ripe for corruption. It has been argued that one of the causes of the English Civil War was the monopolies handed out to his friends by Charles I.
The Statute of Anne, enacted in 1710 by the British parliament, is regarded as the first copyright law. This law placed the right to authorize the reproduction of a book not in the King’s hands, but in the author’s. This exclusive right lasted for 21 years, after which time the book entered into the public domain, and anyone would be free to copy it. The state of affairs in copyright remained relatively calm for the next two centuries. Book publishing increased in importance, both in society and within the economies of the world’s nations. While printing technology improved, the process of publishing, and the state of trade in creative works remained largely the same.
Other nations took very different tacks in regard to copyright law. The United States of America, for example, entrenched the fundamental elements of their copyright law in their constitution.
Twentieth-Century Development
While the 18th and 19th centuries were relatively stable in terms of copyright law, the 20th century saw a torrent of challenges, changes, and adaptations to the law. Technological change became a constant. Many of the technologies we take for granted today represented major challenges to the copyright status quo.
The invention of the photograph created a new, previously unimagined method of creativity, and generated an intense debate over the difference between a painting and a photograph. Was a photograph even a creative work? Was it not just a reproduction of that which already existed in nature, or was it analogous to a painter creating an impression of the same scene?
The ability to record musical performances opened a fresh can of copyright worms. For the first time there was an ability to ‘fix’ the performance, to store it and repeat the performance indefinitely. This raised questions about the rights of the composer, the performer, the recorder, and the distributor. For the first time, the idea of everybody owning a tiny slice of rights surfaced.
The idea of derivative rights was brought to us via the motion picture industry. This new form of expression was ripe for exploitation. The law was clear that one could not reproduce a novel or story in print, but what about adapting it into a movie? There was no law in this area, and so naturally the movie studios quickly delved into the libraries, adapting popular books for film. Book publishers of the day quickly moved to have the laws amended to block this loophole!
Other innovations included radio, television, and the photocopier. These minor challenges were essentially dealt with without legislative change to copyright law, as was one much more significant innovation.. The anticipated introduction, by Sony, of the home video tape recorder caused a great deal of consternation for television broadcasters. The VCR would allow the public to retain copies of their broadcasts for later viewing, or even sharing with friends and neighbours. Universal Studios sued Sony in an attempt to block the introduction of the VCR, and thankfully for everyone who has ever taped a television program for later viewing, they lost. The courts ruled that Universal Studios could not block the introduction of the VCR, which they acknowledged could be used to infringe copyright, because the device had significant non-copyright infringing uses. Had the VCR been intended only to reproduce copyright works it never would have seen the light of day as a consumer product. Today the sale or rental of movies for home viewing represents a major source of revenue for companies like Universal Studios.
All of these technological developments and adaptations of copyright law, either through the judiciary or through legislative change, were little more than a prelude to the challenges that arose in the late 20 th century.
Contemporary Situation
At the beginning of the 21 st century technological change has reached an amazing pace. New methods of communication, creation and transmission of ideas or works are introduced every day. New methods of exploiting creative works appear almost daily. Until recently, the technologies available to copy a work would not allow a perfect copy. A photocopy of a textbook is a poor substitute for the original, a tape made from a record is never as clear as one from the publisher. Now digital technologies allow for perfect (or near-perfect) copies—as many as are needed—to be transmitted around the world.
These technological innovations have re-opened the debates surrounding copyright protection. Given the ease of reproduction, some people have wondered about the relevance of copyright laws—proposing movement from a monetary economy to a gift economy, from competitive production to collaborative models. The open-source movement is a prime example of this debate. As a response to closed, proprietary software many software developers have moved to a model where the sharing is a requirement of distribution. Open source software licences permit the modification, distribution, and reproduction of the software without further permission or payment. The only requirement of these licences is that the same terms must be offered to any recipient of the code, and that the original source must be publicly accessible. Often described as an ‘anticopyright’ movement, the open-source licences are entirely reliant on the existing copyright laws.