Early American Printing Privileges. The Ambivalent Origins of Authors’ Copyright in America

Abstract

Maurizio Borghi is a Lecturer in Intellectual Property Law at Brunel Law School, and holds a Ph.D. from Bocconi University of Milan. He studied social sciences and philosophy at the University of Milan, has been a researcher at Bocconi University and a visiting scholar at the Center for the Study of Law and Society of the University of California, Berkeley. He has authored a monograph on the history of copyright (La manifattura del pensiero, 2003), edited a book on digital copyright (Proprietà digitale, 2006, with Maria Lillà Montagnani), and translated philosophical works from German and French. He is also author of a number of articles and papers on different topics, including philosophy and copyright law.

Cultural Spillovers: Copyright, Conceptions of Authors, and Commercial Practices

“…There are two dominant philosophies of copyright: a recognition of perpetual ownership rights for authors in the literary property over which they labored, and a statutorily granted, limited monopoly to authors that motivates them to produce creative works that benefit the public (Abrams ; Bracha ). In colonial America, copy privileges granted by colonial courts reflected a conception of copyright geared more toward monopolies for the proprietors who produced and distributed books (printers and booksellers) than toward rights imbued in authors (Abrams ; Bracha ,). Proprietors, not authors, usually sought copyright privileges, in part because most authors were gentlemen‐scholars who did not seek to profit from their writing (Bracha ; Bugbee ).…”

“…In 1772, the Connecticut colonial assembly was the first to grant copyright privilege to an author rather than a proprietor (Silver ). After the Revolution, the shift toward authors gained momentum (Bracha ,,). American writers, such as spelling‐book author Noah Webster and poets Joel Barlow and John Trumbull, lobbied state legislators for copyright protection (Barlow ; Grasso ; Webster ).…”

“…The emergence of the commercial conception of authors began to change American authors' and the public's legal consciousness (Ewick and Silbey ) regarding copyright. Indeed, this conception of authorship was partly responsible for the development of copyright law: lobbying by Noah Webster, Joel Barlow, and John Trumbull, who sought to safeguard their literary earnings, helped persuade state legislators to draft copyright statutes (Amory and Hall : 477–78; Bracha ,,; Grasso ). And the development of copyright law changed authors' conceptions of themselves (Grasso ; Kaplan ; Rice ; Wroth and Silver ).…”