John Willinsky
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780226487922
- eISBN:
- 9780226488080
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226488080.003.0012
- Subject:
- History, History of Ideas
In 1693, Locke undertook a campaign to defeat the renewal of the Licensing Act of 1662, a source of press censorship and printing monopolies. He brought forward proposals for reforming the law, to ...
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In 1693, Locke undertook a campaign to defeat the renewal of the Licensing Act of 1662, a source of press censorship and printing monopolies. He brought forward proposals for reforming the law, to acknowledge the rights of authors and provide support for access to scholarship. While Parliament allowed the Press Act to lapse in 1696, it did not proceed with a new legal structure, freeing the press and giving rise to press piracy and scandalous publications. Daniel Defoe was among those who advocated regulation, following Milton and Locke in defending the interests of learning. By 1709, printers were also in favor of bringing back some form of licensing, and in 1710 parliament passed the Statute of Anne that granted authors control over the right to copy for fourteen years, renewable for the same. This “Act for the Encouragement of Learning” included measures in support of learning, including the right for university officials to roll back prices, author rights on new editions, a protection of book importing, a book deposit policy for libraries, and a continuation of the university’s printing rights. The chapter concludes with a review of the intellectual properties associated with learning--rights of access, accreditation, autonomy, sponsorship, and use.Less
In 1693, Locke undertook a campaign to defeat the renewal of the Licensing Act of 1662, a source of press censorship and printing monopolies. He brought forward proposals for reforming the law, to acknowledge the rights of authors and provide support for access to scholarship. While Parliament allowed the Press Act to lapse in 1696, it did not proceed with a new legal structure, freeing the press and giving rise to press piracy and scandalous publications. Daniel Defoe was among those who advocated regulation, following Milton and Locke in defending the interests of learning. By 1709, printers were also in favor of bringing back some form of licensing, and in 1710 parliament passed the Statute of Anne that granted authors control over the right to copy for fourteen years, renewable for the same. This “Act for the Encouragement of Learning” included measures in support of learning, including the right for university officials to roll back prices, author rights on new editions, a protection of book importing, a book deposit policy for libraries, and a continuation of the university’s printing rights. The chapter concludes with a review of the intellectual properties associated with learning--rights of access, accreditation, autonomy, sponsorship, and use.
Joseph Loewenstein
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- February 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226490403
- eISBN:
- 9780226490410
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226490410.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
This book offers an institutional and cultural history of books, the book trade, and the bibliographic ego. The author traces the emergence of possessive authorship from the establishment of a ...
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This book offers an institutional and cultural history of books, the book trade, and the bibliographic ego. The author traces the emergence of possessive authorship from the establishment of a printing industry in England to the passage of the 1710 Statute of Anne, which provided the legal underpinnings for modern copyright. Along the way he demonstrates that the culture of books, including the idea of the author, is intimately tied to the practical trade of publishing those books. As the author shows, copyright is a form of monopoly that developed alongside a range of related protections such as commercial trusts, manufacturing patents, and censorship, and cannot be understood apart from them. The regulation of the press pitted competing interests and rival monopolistic structures against one another—guildmembers and nonprofessionals, printers and booksellers, authors and publishers. These struggles, in turn, crucially shaped the literary and intellectual practices of early modern authors, as well as early capitalist economic organization.Less
This book offers an institutional and cultural history of books, the book trade, and the bibliographic ego. The author traces the emergence of possessive authorship from the establishment of a printing industry in England to the passage of the 1710 Statute of Anne, which provided the legal underpinnings for modern copyright. Along the way he demonstrates that the culture of books, including the idea of the author, is intimately tied to the practical trade of publishing those books. As the author shows, copyright is a form of monopoly that developed alongside a range of related protections such as commercial trusts, manufacturing patents, and censorship, and cannot be understood apart from them. The regulation of the press pitted competing interests and rival monopolistic structures against one another—guildmembers and nonprofessionals, printers and booksellers, authors and publishers. These struggles, in turn, crucially shaped the literary and intellectual practices of early modern authors, as well as early capitalist economic organization.
