Primary sources on copyright (1450-1900)

Self-portrait

This is a digital archive of primary sources on copyright from the invention of the printing press (c. 1450) to the Berne Convention (1886) and beyond. The UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funded the initial phase (completed in 2008) focusing on key materials from Renaissance Italy (Venice, Rome), France, the German speaking countries, Britain and the United States.

We continue to add new materials. Primary sources from Spain were published in 2012, and the Netherlands followed in 2015. Jewish law sources, edited by Neil Netanel, were published in 2016.

For each of the geographical zones/jurisdictions, national editors take responsibility for selecting, sourcing, transcribing, translating and commenting documents. These include privileges, statutes, judicial decisions, contracts and materials relating to legislative history, but also contemporary letters, essays, treatises and artefacts.

The national editors’ initial brief was to limit the selection to 50 core documents for Britain, Germany, France, and to 20 core documents for Italy and the US (these covering only a shorter period). For the subsequent additions of Spain and The Netherlands, again a limit of 50 core documents was set. The methodological approach is explained here. Some editors have sourced many more contextual documents which are fully catalogued, and linked to the core materials. Document selection has been scrutinised by an international advisory board.

The national editors are Britain: Professor Ronan Deazley, Queen's University Belfast German speaking countries: Dr Friedemann Kawohl, Bournemouth University France: Dr Frédéric Rideau, Université de Poitiers Italy: Dr Joanna Kostylo, University of Cambridge Jewish Law: Professor Neil W. Netanel, University of California at Los Angeles Netherlands: Dr Stef van Gompel, University of Amsterdam United States: Professor Oren Bracha, University of Texas Spain: Dr José Bellido, University of Kent

Detailed information about our methodological approach may be found in the FAQ section. In 2010, Cambridge based publisher OpenBook published a companion volume to the digital archive: "Privilege and Property, Essays on the History of Copyright", containing an introductory essay by the editors: The History of Copyright History.

The original database design and website were coded by Karin Hoehne (Cologne, Germany). Redesigns were implemented in 2012 and in 2015. The functionality now provides an OAI/PMH data interface delivering record data as Dublin Core. Please refer to the FAQ section for information about accessing the interface.

Following the official launch of the project at Stationers’ Hall in London on 19 March 2008, we promised that the URLs for the documents in the archive would be permanent (permalinks). Therefore document links to the first version of this database (pre-2012) will continue to be redirected to the correct documents.

Please cite this resource as: Primary Sources on Copyright (1450-1900), eds L. Bently & M. Kretschmer, www.copyrighthistory.org

(http://www.copyrighthistory.org/cam/index.php)

Description

Digital archive of primary sources of copyright material in its major historical documents for general public access. The initial phase of this project started in 2008, mainly funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council of United Kingdom. The archive was accomplished thanks to the cooperation of more than 70 libraries, archives and institutions of various countries. The editorial team is comprised of scholars from universities such as Cambridge, Columbia, California, Leipzig, among others.

Intellectual property laws are fundamental cornerstones of modern societies. To understand the sources of current laws it is necessary to know their history and evolution. For this reason, Primary Sources on Copyright created an archive of documents that attest to the history of copyright laws, and opened it to the general public. The selection of documents was carried out through a curatorial process starting with the invention of the printing press in 1450, and includes a broad range of documents, from Johannes of Speyer's Printing Monopoly in Venice, 1469, to French copyright laws of 1791.

Documents can be searched by date, place, publisher, keyword, author, reference sites, institutions, legislation or identified cases, and are structured around three types of criteria. The first of these criteria refers to those documents that pose alternative interpretations of the history of copyright. For example, it is stated that while the United Kingdom and The United States have a utilitarian approach of these rights, France and Germany are generally focused on authorship. These alternative documents would be those that contradict these main conceptions. Under the second category are found those documents that illustrate the interaction of copyright laws with the aesthetic and commercial development, or those that show how legislations directly affected social practices. The third category includes documents that show influences among different jurisdictions, and provide evidence that nations had no watertight systems, For example, Venetian privileges formed a model of licensing system that was used in France, Germany and England.

Interview

http://dpya.org/en/index.php/Oren_Bracha

Links

URL: http://www.copyrighthistory.org/

Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.copyrighthistory.org/cam/index.php