Free Culture Passage

"First, about copyright. In the last three hundred years, we have come to apply the concept of 'copyright' ever more broadly. But in 1710, it wasn't so much a concept as it was a very particular right. The copyright was born as a very specific set of restrictions: It forbade others from reprinting a book. In 1710, the 'copy-right' was a right to use a particular machine to replicate a particular work. It did not go beyond that very narrow right. It did not control any more generally how a work could be used. Today the right includes a large collection of restrictions on the freedom of others: It grants the author the exclusive right to copy, the exclusive right to distribute, the exclusive right to perform, and so on.

So, for example, even if the copyright to Shakespeare's works were perpetual, all that would have meant under the original meaning of the term was that no one could reprint Shakespeare's work without the permission of the Shakespeare estate. It would not have controlled anything, for example, about how the work could be performed, whether the work could be translated, or whether Kenneth Branagh would be allowed to make his films. The 'copy-right' was only an exclusive right to print - no less, of course, but also no more.

Even that limited right was viewed with skepticism by the British. They had had a long and ugly experience with 'exclusive rights', especially 'exclusive rights' granted by the Crown. The English had fought a civil war in part about the Crown's practice of handing out monopolies - especially monopolies for works that already existed. King Henry VIII granted a patent to print the Bible and a monopoly to Darcy to print playing cards. The English Parliament began to fight back against this power of the Crown. In 1656, it passed to the Statute of Monopolies, limiting monopolies to patents for new inventions. And by 1710, Parliament was eager to deal with the growing monopoly in publishing.

Thus the 'copy-right', when viewed as a monopoly right, was naturally viewed as a right that should be limited. (However convincing the claim that 'it's my property, and I should have it forever,' try sounding convincing when uttering, 'It's my monopoly, and I should have it forever.') The state would protect the exclusive right, but only so long as it benefited society. The British saw the harms from special-interest favors; they passed a law to stop them."

from pages 87-88 in Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig