Rose 1993

Rose, Mark. Authors and Owners: The Invention of Copyright. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993.

The Question of Literary Property

modern authorship as "proprietorship; the author is conceived as the originator and therefor the owner of a special kind of commodity, the work" (1)

copyright: drawing lines between works, where one ends and another begins (3)

Lockean notion of property -- every man has property in his own person, and whatever he converts from state of nature -- mixed with emphasis on originality in c18 = "author as a creator who is entitled to profit from his intellectual labor" (6); landed estate (real property) forms basis for understanding literary property (7)

The Regime of Regulation

"True copyright is concerned with rights in texts as distinct from rights in material objects, and its historical emergence is related to printing technology." (9)

printing privileges -- "exclusive rights granted by the state to individuals for limited periods of time to reward them for services or to encourage them in useful activities" (10); originate in c15 Venice; appear in England in 1518; 1517: decree revoking all existing privileges in books -- had become too unmanageable (10)

in early mdoern England, 2 parallel systems:

patents: grants to individual authors for particular titles, but by mid-c16, mostly for classes of books (lawbooks, catechisms, etc.); base don royal prerogative

guild system of Stationers' Company; note "copy" in register (copy as original manuscript and right to make copies of it) (12); SC derived authority from crown with royal charter of 1557 granting the guild a monopoly on printing -- interested in censorship

text "as an action, not as a thing," for early modern period (13)

1641: abolition of Court of Star Chamber, authority behind licensing and SC's monopoly