On the Origin of the Right to Copy
On the Origin of the Right to Copy

Author: Ronan Deazley

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2004-07-31

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13: 1847310389

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Taking as its point of departure the lapse of the Licensing Act 1662 in 1695, this book examines the lead up to the passage of the Statute of Anne 1709 and charts the movement of copyright law throughout the eighteenth century, culminating in the House of Lords decision in Donaldson v Becket (1774). The established reading of copyright's development throughout this period, from the 1709 Act to the pronouncement in Donaldson, is that it was transformed from a publisher's right to an author's right; that is, legislation initially designed to regulate the marketplace of the bookseller and publisher evolved into an instrument that functioned to recognise the proprietary inevitability of an author's intellectual labours. The historical narrative which unfolds within this book presents a challenge to that accepted orthodoxy. The traditional analysis of the development of copyright in eighteenth-century Britain is revealed as exhibiting the character of long-standing myth, and the centrality of the modern proprietary author as the raison d'être of the copyright regime is displaced.

Authors and Owners
Authors and Owners

Author: Mark Rose

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 1995-08-11

Total Pages: 196

ISBN-13: 0674266803

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The notion of the author as the creator and therefore the first owner of a work is deeply rooted both in our economic system and in our concept of the individual. But this concept of authorship is modern. Mark Rose traces the formation of copyright in eighteenth-century Britain—and in the process highlights still current issues of intellectual property. Authors and Owners is at once a fascinating look at an important episode in legal history and a significant contribution to literary and cultural history.

In Praise of Commercial Culture
In Praise of Commercial Culture

Author: Tyler COWEN

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2009-06-30

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 0674029933

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Does a market economy encourage or discourage music, literature, and the visual arts? Do economic forces of supply and demand help or harm the pursuit of creativity? This book seeks to redress the current intellectual and popular balance and to encourage a more favorable attitude toward the commercialization of culture that we associate with modernity. Economist Tyler Cowen argues that the capitalist market economy is a vital but underappreciated institutional framework for supporting a plurality of co-existing artistic visions, providing a steady stream of new and satisfying creations, supporting both high and low culture, helping consumers and artists refine their tastes, and paying homage to the past by capturing, reproducing, and disseminating it. Contemporary culture, Cowen argues, is flourishing in its various manifestations, including the visual arts, literature, music, architecture, and the cinema. Successful high culture usually comes out of a healthy and prosperous popular culture. Shakespeare and Mozart were highly popular in their own time. Beethoven's later, less accessible music was made possible in part by his early popularity. Today, consumer demand ensures that archival blues recordings, a wide array of past and current symphonies, and this week's Top 40 hit sit side by side in the music megastore. High and low culture indeed complement each other. Cowen's philosophy of cultural optimism stands in opposition to the many varieties of cultural pessimism found among conservatives, neo-conservatives, the Frankfurt School, and some versions of the political correctness and multiculturalist movements, as well as historical figures, including Rousseau and Plato. He shows that even when contemporary culture is thriving, it appears degenerate, as evidenced by the widespread acceptance of pessimism. He ends by considering the reasons why cultural pessimism has such a powerful hold on intellectuals and opinion-makers.

The American Revolution In The Law
The American Revolution In The Law

Author: Shannon C. Stimson

Publisher: Springer

Published: 1990-06-18

Total Pages: 237

ISBN-13: 1349100560

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This study of the political and legal thought of the American Revolution and founding period explores the differences in the perceptions of judicial and jural power that characterized the conditions of law in late 18th century America, as compared to her British counterparts.

"Pirate" Publishing

Author: Shoji Yamada

Publisher: International Research Center for Japanese Studies

Published: 2012-12-01

Total Pages:

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In 1774, Edinburgh “pirate publisher” Alexander Donaldson boldly challenged a group of major London booksellers who sought to monopolize the right to copy books in perpetuity. Why is there a time limit on copyright? This book goes back to the beginning on this question by focusing on a pivotal eighteenth-century court debate in England from a social and cultural point of view. Its historical investigation of the issues of copyright is based on detailed documentary research. The book explores the relationships among the booksellers, lawyers, members of the nobility, and writers who formed the backdrop to the eighteenth-century publishing industry, a backdrop that offers many insights in considering the issues of copyright today. It is also a history of publishing culture, introducing the ideas and debates about literary works prevailing at that time and the people who figured in those debates. “It is difficult to treat ‘monopoly’ or ‘piracy’ as a clear dichotomy of good and bad,” writes Yamada in his conclusion. “Both were ultimately acting in the pursuit of economic gain, and both claimed to either represent the rights of authors or the convenience of readers to defend their own position. This book tries to illustrate how their head-on clash in the courtroom, intertwined with the interpersonal relationships among lawyers and judges. This approach may seem curious to scholars of law who may be interested primarily in a detailed analysis of the logical structure of court debates. I am convinced, however, that matters not to be found in the courtroom debates alone can show us the forces that set history in motion.” Copyright is an artificial thing, which was born out of the pulsing magma that was the emergence of modern society. Today in the twenty-first century, once again society is undergoing great changes wrought by advances in digital technology and the development of global capitalism. Renewed debate over copyright is indispensable. A parable for the digital media era, this book’s examination of the historic case of Donaldson offers valuable hints as we develop our own stance on the issues of copyright.

Plagiarism and Literary Property in the Romantic Period
Plagiarism and Literary Property in the Romantic Period

Author: Tilar J. Mazzeo

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 252

ISBN-13: 0812239679

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In a series of articles published in Tait's Magazine in 1834, Thomas DeQuincey catalogued four potential instances of plagiarism in the work of his friend and literary competitor Samuel Taylor Coleridge. DeQuincey's charges and the controversy they ignited have shaped readers' responses to the work of such writers as Coleridge, Lord Byron, William Wordsworth, and John Clare ever since. But what did plagiarism mean some two hundred years ago in Britain? What was at stake when early nineteenth-century authors levied such charges against each other? How would matters change if we were to evaluate these writers by the standards of their own national moment? And what does our moral investment in plagiarism tell us about ourselves and about our relationship to the Romantic myth of authorship? In Plagiarism and Literary Property in the Romantic Period, Tilar Mazzeo historicizes the discussion of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century plagiarism and demonstrates that it had little in common with our current understanding of the term. The book offers a major reassessment of the role of borrowing, textual appropriation, and narrative mastery in British Romantic literature and provides a new picture of the period and its central aesthetic contests. Above all, Mazzeo challenges the almost exclusive modern association of Romanticism with originality and takes a fresh look at some of the most familiar writings of the period and the controversies surrounding them.

Common As Air
Common As Air

Author: Lewis Hyde

Publisher: Union Books

Published: 2012-03-01

Total Pages: 342

ISBN-13: 190852605X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his famous ‘ I Have a Dream’ speech. Thirty years later his son registered the words ‘ I Have a Dream’ as a trademark and successfully blocked attempts to reproduce these four words. Unlike the Gettysburg Address and other famous speeches, ‘ I Have a Dream’ is now private property, even though some the speech is comprised of words written by Thomas Jefferson, a man who very much believed that the corporate land grab of knowledge was at odds with the development of civil society. Exploring the complex intersection between creativity and commerce, Hyde raises the question of how our shared store of art and knowledge might be made compatible with our desire to copyright everything, and questions whether the fruits of creative labour can – or should – be privately owned, especially in the digital age. ‘ In what sense,’ he writes, ‘ can someone own, and therefore control other people’ s access to, a work of fiction or a public speech or the ideas behind a drug?’ Moving deftly between literary analysis, history and biography (from Benjamin Franklin’ s reluctance to patent his inventions to Bob Dylan’ s admission that his early method of songwriting was largely comprised of ‘ rearranging verses to old blues ballads, adding an original line here or there… slapping a title on it’ ), Common As Air is a stirring call-to-arms about how we might concretely legislate for a cultural commons that would simultaneously allow for financial reward and protection from monopoly. Rigorous, informative and riveting, this is a book for anyone who is interested in the creative process.