0:03
Hi everyone, this is Kevin Smith, and for
this segment of our first week on copyright for educators,
I want to give you a brief introduction to the history of copyright.
Our hope is that even a pass acquaintance with this history will help you make
the pieces fit together a little bit better, as we go through the more
detailed discussion of U.S. law that we're going to pursue over the next four weeks.
So let's get started.
0:33
The idea of copyright began with something called
a Letter Patent that was issued by the king this is the case in England.
I don't want you to get confused by the word patent.
Copyright and patent today are very, very different legal regimes.
But this idea of copyright, this idea of an exclusive right that would be
granted to a printer to print a particular book or categories of books,
began with this issuance of letters patent by the king.
By getting a letter patent, a printer was authorized to purchase a copy of the book,
this is why we call it copyright, from the author and publish that book exclusively.
Often there were categories of books, so prayer books or
school textbooks, only one printer could print.
1:30
The basic idea of this was to prevent there being massive competition in
the printing industry, the very, very early printing industry and
to give the king control over what was printed and what was read.
And, of course, this was a new technology printing was a brand new technology.
The king of England had already seen from the religious wars in Europe
that the power of printing was very great for stirring up trouble.
And the king was interested in keeping control over what was published,
and therefore issued these letters to allow only certain people to print books.
In 1557 Queen Mary chartered the Royal Company of Stationers.
These were the people who originally sold paper and
they became the early printers and publishers.
2:29
And that group received a privilege under the licensing act of 1662 to print books.
They were the only people who were allowed to print books.
You had to be a member of this guild,
The Royal Company of Stationers, in order to print books in England.
And if anybody else tried to print books the Royal Company of Stationers was
authorized to seize and burn the unauthorized books.
So this was very strong control over publishing.
And the guild was allowed to give exclusivity
even to printers who did not have a separate royal patent.
So, if somebody wanted to print a particular book, and
they negotiated with the publisher, and they were a member of the Royal Company of
Stationers, they could go to the Stationers hall and
enter into a registry their intent to print this book.
And nobody else would be allowed to do that.
3:30
Another interesting part of this was that early on,
the stationers agreed to a deposit requirement.
And what that meant is, that they agreed to put a copy of
every new book that was printed on the Oxford University library.
This was an agreement that was a signed with Thomas Bodley in 1610.
You may recognise that Thomas Bodley was the Oxford librarian at the time, and
the library of Oxford still carries his name, it's called the Bodleian library.
But this is the beginning, of this link between copyright, and
the deposit requirement that helps to build a national library.
And we still have that link in U.S. law.
In U.S. law,
every copyrighted work is supposed to be deposited in the library of Congress.
So, this is a very old idea that's been around and we still hang
onto in the U.S.
this charter that I told you about, that the Royal Company of Stationers had,
lapsed in 1695.
And there was a real question then of who is authorized to publish books.
The desire for strong control censorship, if you will,
had gotten less over the years, but the stationers still wanted their privilege.
And, all of a sudden other people were allowed to print books, and
the stationers were facing competition that they would rather not have.
So they began to lobby Parliament to renew, they asked for a permanent
renewal of this charter that would make them the sole publishers in England.
Parliament wasn't willing to do that.
And so their early efforts to get this charter for
the royal company of stationers didn't work.
5:28
But over time they changed their tactics.
They began to stress the benefits to authors.
And we were beginning to see a real attitude towards authors,
that they were unique and individual geniuses who created these works.
And it was much more sympathetic to present
the needs of authors to parliament, than it had been to present the needs of
a particular guild that really just wanted a monopoly business.
5:59
That worked and in 1710, as I'll tell you in a minute, parliament
did pass the Statute of Anne, the first copyright law of the Anglo American world.
But I also want to emphasize here that this tactic, this decision to
stress benefits to the authors, even though it's very often
deployed by business that are simply looking to avoid unwanted competition,
has been around, again for a long time and we still see it today.
We see the publishing industry, the recording industry, and
the movie industry.
Often making appeals to the well-being of creators,
when what's really happening is that trade regulations are being enacted.
6:46
The Statue of Anne was the first statutory copyright law,
as opposed to these licenses or charters given by the, by the king or queen.
The Statute of Anne was adopted by Parliament in 1710, and
it gave the exclusive right in copy, in the manuscript of a book, for 14 years.
It's given to the author and the author's chosen printer.
So it is kind of an author's right.
In the sense that the author gets to choose whoever they want
to publish their book.
But it doesn't go into effect, until the book is actually published.
So it becomes a monopoly right for the publisher.
7:28
As I said, the earliest copyright law allowed copyright for only 14 years.
And the author, if they were still alive,
at the end of that 14 years, could get a renewal for another 14 years.
If the author had died, in the course of the first 14 years,
copyright lapsed, and it always lapsed after 28 years.
7:52
As I think I've already said,
copyright was obtained through a registration with the stationer's company,
and deposit of the published book in the Bodleian library.
So that's when copyright actually started.
And if a book hadn't been published,
if it was just an unpublished manuscript, it did not get copyright protection.
8:15
So what happens when that 28 years expires?
Well, remember the publishers were not very willing to have competition.
So when the copyrights started to expire, they had problems.
There were Scottish printers who began to publish books.
That had been published previously under this exclusive
regime by the London company of stationers.
When copyright started to expire and
the London stationers wanted to stop this competition from Scottish printers,
they began to rely on the author's natural right in their works.
The ownership that they said existed by simply by natural right.
8:56
And they tried to ask the courts and ultimately, the house of lords,
which is the Supreme Court for the United Kingdom,
to tell authors that they had this natural right.
And so, there would not be competition between the Scottish and
the British publishers, the English publishers.
9:17
In the case of Donaldson vs Beckett in 1774,
the house of lords decided this issue.
And what they decided was that, that 28 year statutory term, that
amount that was allowed by the statute of Ann, was all the right that there was.
Once it had expired, the books went into the public domain.
Neither the author, nor the publisher retained any rights
over their books after the term of copyright had expired.
And, as I'm sure you realize, what happened here was that in this case,
in Donaldson vs Beckett,.
The house of lords essentially created the public domain.
They created the idea that there would be creative works, works of literature, works
of knowledge that were not owned by anyone after some particular period of time.
Kevin Smith, M.L.S., J.D.Former Director, Copyright and Scholarly Communication
Lisa A. Macklin, J.D.,M.L.S.Director, Scholarly Communications Office
Anne Gilliland, JD, MLSScholarly Communications Officer
