From: "Michael O'Keefe" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Alan wrote:
Michael O'Keefe wrote:
When was this "roam free, as free as the birds" period of IP ?
Back in the 1800s, U.S. companies routinely "borrowed" other countries
patented and/or copyrighted items, not unlike China and friends do now.
Not that I'm implying boblq is quite _that_ old...
heh.
In the ACTUAL nought-nought's ? or sometime during the 19th century ?
When was "copyright" born ? I remember someone quoting how kings used to
hand them out like toilet paper to their friends, depriving the actual
artists of their works ?
Copyright was first born in England in the 1500s. IT wasn't anything about
the authors- it was an agreement between members of the publishing guild
where only certain members would print certain books. This way they
wouldn't compete and could set prices higher.
Modern copyright was born in the 1709 with the Statute of Anne. THis was
basicly the British crown;'s attempt to destroyu the publishing guild. It
gave the publishers copyright to all previous works for some years, and
authors all rights to the future works. It killed the guild, as it was
meant to.
There were also similar occurences in France, where the idea of copyright
was more of the idea of "rights of the creator". In an amusing parallel to
today, there was a long standing battle between enlightenment folks (who
believed ideas belonged to the world) and interests who wanted to make more
money. The money people won in the aftermath of the french revolution.
US law comes from english law, thus the rights of the creator is nil. This
is a major difference to this day between continental and english/us
copyright laws. Up until the early 1900s, although the US had coopyright
laws, enforcement was just not done. In fact, until the 1910s or so the US
was like China today- everything was pirated. In fact, this still carried
on until the 60s. The first major publication of Lord of the Rings in
America was pirated (the official version didn't sell well).
What you remembered being passed out were patents, not copyrights. The
original patents were basicly monopolies on a product in an area. Noone
else could make/sell that product there. Copyrights were never treated like
that to my knowledge.
Gabe
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