I just came across a very nice little article which traces the development of copyright law, especially in England. I recommend reading the whole article itself, and it’s rather short. Basically, they say that the concept of copyright was not an issue before the printing press was invented.

The printing press represented a supreme threat to the clergys monopoly on idea dissemination; moveable type was the fifteenth century version of Napster.

Prior to that, the story goes that books were copied by hand in monasteries under the control of the Catholic Church, which means they had absolute power over them. I like how they compare it to Napster and how digital technology creates a threat to centralized ownership and distribution of media, because it all becomes very easy to duplicate, modify or create. (For more on this subject, check out an article I wrote called Canon, Apocrypha & Centralized Distribution)

To maintain some semblance of control over the creation and distribution of books and ideas, the British government enacted something called the Licensing Act in 1534.

Under its auspices, and purporting to control the production of religious materials, the British government granted the exclusive right to publish printed works to the Stationers Company in 1534. The Stationers Company, in exchange for its monopoly, was obliged to seek permission from the Crown before it printed anything.

Then, in the middle 1600’s, a fellow by the name of Sir Roger L’Estrange was instrumental in passing several publishing laws, which sought to ensure that books were always printed with the names of their authors.

This was not so much to ensure that the author got his due credit, so much as to enable the authorities to hunt down and eviscerate any dissident author that dared print without a license.

As a result, the concept of authorship arose because in the 17th century authors were treated like sex offenders or terrorists, required to register with the authorities so that they could be rounded up if their works were deemed subversive or printed without license.

Political turmoil in England eventually allowed the Licensing Act to expire, and it was replaced in 1710 by the Statute of Anne. This statute took the exclusive right to print books away from the Stationers Company, and gave them to the individual author for a period of 14 years, which was renewable for another 14 years, if the author was still alive at that point.

All pretty interesting stuff. For additional information on the idea of authorship in terms of cultural theory, I have an older post about that as well.