[Gllug] Regarding priracy (sic)

[Jason Clifford]

On Wed, 5 Mar 2003, Rev Simon Rumble wrote:

> Not at all.  The original intent of copyright law (along with patent
> law) was to coax creators to put their works out in the wild, rather
> than rely on secrecy, copy protection ("you can read this book, but
> only by coming to our reading room and paying a fee") and other means
> to protect their work.

Actually that is only true in the USA.

In the UK modern copyright came about when Queen Ann introduced it to 
protect authors from the monopoly held by the printing houses who severely 
abused authors and kept almost all of the profits from their works for 
themselves - rather like the modern situation in many cases.

There was certainly no stated aim in the UK to encourage more such works 
although it may have been a consideration.

As I understand it the Queen Anne copyright legislation was designed to 
try and provide some protection for authors who at the time had none at 
all - prior to that all copyright rested with the Crown if it existed at 
all.

I understand that in France copyright law was also introduced to break the 
publishers monopoly.

I don't know about any other country.

> If creative works were the same as property (i.e., with ownership
> rather than rights), you would be able to inherit ownership of the
> works of your grandfather and in turn pass them on to your children.

That does seem to be what the large copyright beneficiaries such as Disney 
and the various labels/studios want to become of copyright.

Jason Clifford
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