You do not hear a lot these days about the history, the origins, of copyright. We sort of tend to feel that it's just always been there. Or, it's been one of those things like building roads or constructing sewers or something. It's something governments just start doing at a certain point. It's natural and uncontested.
That's not actually the case with copyright. In fact, some people will trace it back as far as the U.S. constitution; where there is a clause empowering congress to pass copyright legislation. But copyright's history predates even that. It was not created by artists and writers suddenly rising up to demand protection at all. It was created by the publishing industry, which, in the early days of the printing press was a very different industry from what it is today. Information distribution in general was very different from what it is today.
So where did it come from?
When the printing press first arrived in England in the mid 1470's, there was no such thing as copyright. In fact, there was a government and a society pretty much completely unprepared for the implications of the mass distribution of printed material. It was just a wild west out there. As soon as the press arrived, people began running off copies of just anything under the sun. Historical works, fact, fiction, religious tracts, political tracts, works by living authors and dead authors. They were not careful about crediting. They would engage in plagarism and reverse-plagarism. Sometimes a printer would write something, print it up and release it under the name of an author who had nothing to do with it, because that author was more famous and that way the work would get more attention. All sorts of things were going on. It was total chaos. From the government's point of view, the worst aspect of this chaos was the political tracts. All of a sudden, anyone with a printing press and a grievance could start writing off seditious pamphlets by the thousands, and distribute them all over the kingdom. If you're a government, especially in England in the 15-16th century, that's a disaster. You can't just have people printing anything they want, who knows what they might say. They might form a rebellion; make trouble.
The government's reaction was very interesting. It was to privatize censorship. They created a guild called the Company of Stationers. The company's charter gave it the sole right, with a couple of exceptions, to own and operate printing presses in England. The company had the right to seize and destroy presses operated by non-members of the company. And they had the right to burn books printed without the company's authorization. In return for this monopoly, the company of stationers was obligated to run the works they printed by the crown's censors first. And naturally, after a certain amount of time, they got pretty good at telling what the censor would and wouldn't like. And they would just do self-censorship. They wouldn't even bother, they would say "look, that's never gonna fly, you can't print that".
This arrangement lasted for about 150 years. During that entire time, there is still no such thing as copyright. The stationers did amongst themselves practiced a certain kind of proto-copyright. They would make arrangements where one member of the company would print one thing and no one else would print that. And they were actually were forming little agreements. So this notion of ownership of a work did begin to take hold among the printing community. But it was ownership by the printer and it was ownership of printing rights. It had nothing to do with the author. The works were entered into the compnany of statioiners's registry under the stationer's name, not the authors. This worked pretty well for about 150 years until almost 1700. And then disaster came. Disaster for the company of stationers, at any rate. Although not lovers of free speech.
The government of England changed hands. This is the Revolution of 1688, "The Glorious Revolution", it's sometimes called. Among the effects, to simplify greatly, Parliament changed hands and what in some senses had been the opposition now came into power. Furthermore, parliament's power relative to the crown was greatly strengthened. Those now in power had no love for censorship and no love for the company of stationers (for the most part). They decided to let the company of stationers's charter lapse. Now, if you have any experience with government regulated monopolies, you know that the story is never that simple. You can't just turn them off once you have them because they lobby. And that's what the stationers did. They went before parliament, realizing that their livelihood, their monopoly on printing was about to end and they made a rather new argument.
They said an author has a natural right of ownership in their work, and furthermore, this right is transferrable (assignable) by contract to other parties. Like a form of property, it can be sold (or contrated out, or leased). Parliament accepted this argument <Statute of Anne, Copyright Act of 1709>.
The reasons why are perhaps a bit hard to understand today. You have to cast yourself back into the mindset of information technology in the 18th century. The parliament did not like censorship, although they probably sensed that it had it's uses. But they didn't necessarily want a return to the chaos of the period between the arrival of the printing press and the chartering of the company of stationers. And the stationers were essentially saying to parliament, "if you do not protect our trade with this monopoly right, we will have an economic disincentive to behave well". "We will not be able to print things reliably, make identical copies, to avoid plagarism (both of the normal and reverse kind), and to protect the integrity of works if it's just a complete free market".
Because consider what a print run means. You have to gather a lot of dead tree pulp together, you have to arrange the plates for your press (which is quite labor intensive), if there are illustrations you have to get an engraver (and make those illustrations in metal), and then you print off thousands of copies (a great expense), you distribute them around (which may cost some money as well), and they you see if works sells. You haven't even collected any revenue yet. Now what if your competitors waiting in the wings can just watch you invest in 100 works, watch three of them that actually pay off and start selling, and then they run off copies of just those works? Well, they're not paying the cost of investment in the other 97. They have much lower risk. The stationer's argument was, "we need to be protected from that situation. We're caught in this sort of game theoretical dilemna. If you give us a monopoly, we will behave better."
You also have to think about the technology of printing. It's often said that the Internet is sort of an extension or the augmentation of the printing press. Kind of the final realization of the printing press's potential. But there is an important sense in which that is wrong. If you have a copy of a printed work and the printing printing press (especially the 18th century printing press) making a copy of that work is terribly difficult. And if you have illustrations, it's just not possible. You can duplicate them to some degree of approximation, but you can't really make a copy. And as far as the words and the text, you're gonna be very tempted to abridge the chapters that you think are boring, you're gonna have more misspellings because you won't have time to do it with the same care the original printer did. With the printing press, you can only make more copies if possess the master. With the internet, you can make copies from copies. The internet is masterless. In fact, with the internet, making perfect copies is what comes naturally and if you want them to have any variation you have to put in extra effort to do that. It's the reverse of the printing press.
They don't think like we think today. They were thinking "look, there's a natural monopoly physically inherent in printing because whoever prints it first has sort of created the work that's out there in the public; and they got the original plate". And if we just make our laws embody this monopoly without the odium of censorship, then we will have essentially the same arrangement we had during the entire 150 years of the company of stationer's heyday. And everything will be just as good as it was then only without censorship. And parliament didn't really object. It was actually a fairly reasonable argument given the technology and given the economics of the time.
Copyright was not designed by the writers and artists asking for a means to earn a living; for an economic basis for creativity. It was designed by the publishing industry to support a certain kind of distribution mechanism. One that is completely obsolete today.
I had a super long reply to this, but it's just so much. this is all tied together between the industrial revolution, the digital one (late 80s through to now...) and what I see as the second industrial and digital revolution that is beginning to unfold, or robotics and digital, or just automation, AI, who knows what it will be called in hindsight. FWIW this is me trying to keep it short and sweet...
that 50 percent figure is pretty apt, but I think optimistic. median and average incomes are increasingly disparate, and that holds true right up to the top quintile, which is the only group which has seen real incomes rise since the 80s. the "elephant graph" which is global shows only the top 5 percent? IIRC forgive my generalizing) showing any real gains in decades, globally, other than the effect on the middle portion of the global population due to the decentralization and already applied benefits of the digital revolution to globalize labor, manufacturing, and de-emphasize specialized and skilled labor, pushing much of the cooperative work alongside technology towards less and less skilled labor.
we can't put our heads in the sand on either issue, honestly. everyone is looking at housing and technology and asking "well, how do we keep the engine as it works now turning?" ... I think the wheels turning by the traditions we have desperately clung to out of desperation will simply continue the momentum they have built, and simply increase in tempo and speed, those gains made in the middle classes in other countries will begin to be clawed back, and an increasingly desperate populace will, at every income level, try to cling to wealth, social and labor status and value, by doing the same as we have for a hundred years. we need to live where there is work. we need transport. we need (now) the telecommunication and digital tools and knowledge to participate in an ever constricting income and job pool.
I don't have the answers, and this comment reaches far beyond the housing situation, but these things are all ultimately intertwined, the economic boom from globalization fed the neveau rich in China who have inflated our markets, under their own socially and modern reality dictated needs to protect and leverage their wealth to try to maintain their standing and ability to sustain themselves.
what I find most interesting in all of this is the actions of many of the largest corporations and big players specifically in Canada bjt also internationally.
prior to 2008 Ford was one of the big corporations which borrowed and saved quite intentionally a large war chest and a battle plan of sorts to use the crisis to restructure, modernize, and globalize, as well as to jump headfirst into utilizing the latest rounds of technological and labor mobility advances. by this I mean both engineering refinements in their lineup, updated/new factories built and relocated to different nations to leverage both less demanding and on average less experienced/skilled laborers to perform the same duties, while integrating and globalizing their engineering and design efforts.
information mobility, labor mobility, and shipping mobility.
some other companies also prepared, some strove on headlong into the crash either oblivious or incapable of adequate response to it.
the last few years what I see is nations leveraging their oil based assets as hard as they can, waging economic combat via extraction, but vast sums of that capital are being accrued, similarly in Canada wealth is being concentrated inside corporations and private holdings, and I think it is, much like in the case of ford, in preparation as several emerging technologies which individually are scoffed and and chided as small potatoes, easily surmount able problems... but together, like what occurred between the digital and industrial advancement and synergy in the 90s thru today are terrifying in their potential ramification, terrifying if you only look backward and cling to our economic and self reliant ideals, and terrifying if you look forward and realize our tendency to cling to those ideals even in the face of mass suffering.
solar, wind, robotics, global unbroken telecommunication links, automated transport, accounting, legal actions, food production, automated manufacturing, automated news and social curating, and in the end automating the links, maintenance, and in many aspects the refinement and even maintenance of these tasks.
a civilization with robots which mine materials, to build robots automatically, tapping nearly limitless sources by our current concepts of energy has no need for such a vast proportion of human labor that we don't even have a historical precedent worthy of comparison, let alone the further implications such a system has on food production (vertical farms are costly in terms of material, labor, and energy. which of those really carries weight in that paradigm?)
the value of human labor will be only that which is of direct benefit to another, and even those areas of creative and artistic industry are now and will continue to be encroached on by technology and automation, it only takes the piecing together of existing pieces of our current reality to see that too. software that writes music, another that compares songs, evaluating emotional valuations of rhythms and bars, automated audio modulation and voice synthesis, algorithms which suss out your likes and dislikes, emotional states, and others which keep tabs on your musical interests over time, location, and an ongoing track of your activity, physical and emotional states and overall wellbeing.
all that data and ability could basicailly create a soundtrack for your day, your life, which would summon deep emotional responses and memories and yet speak to your current state, or be tweaked to help guide you towards better states and wellness yet not feel to you as insultjng, cloying, or insulting.
the pieces need refinement, but all exist individually. much like we had wheels, steel frames, and heat engines before locomotives and then cars, and we had rudimentary aerodynamics figured out before aircraft, lest we forget our mastery of arrows, boomerangs, simple rockets, javelins, etc.
if I had to pick a historical example which I feel is most applicable to the next... well in the interests of being realistic 10-30 years, it is pre-revolutionary France. Things are getting worse for many, though they are determined to make things work and save face, while those at the center of the economic Web increasingly take increasing pride in their own value, heedless of the reality that ultimately the rich enjoy prosperity at the acquiescence of the not rich. the slowly diminishing but desperately clung to illusion of easy mobility between several distinct economic classes leaves it less volatile, but the trend is towards equalizing, minus the top few percent.
I've been watching the housing bubble for years, and expecting a crash... to be totally honest despite thoroughly expecting it "any year now" I actually don't think that this is the "black swan." which will actually pop it, because Vancouver is not the nation, and despite what's being discussed the bubble is not just in Vancouver it is national. 3o percent on housing is "useless" because it can't be that high at the bottom of the spectrum and can be higher at the top. saskatchewan as an example, a social assistance single bedroom suite can cost 750/mo, median (single, half earn more half earn less) would be spending over 30 percent of their net income on housing.
that median income is 27500-, and average is 51k, or 40k after tax. that average isn't so far away from median because lots earn good wages that would see the average 900 dollar one bedroom be somewhere near that mythical "30 percent" though, although lots do, the number is skewed upwards so sharply because of the highest quintile, and more specifically by the highest 20, 10. and as you look at the numbers, 1 and less percentage points.
all the money is, ultimately, flowing up, it is not flowing back down so it can cycle up, and this system is going to starve at some point, figuratively and, quite possibly literally.
sorry for being dramatic, haha, but boy do I find this coalescing of these disparate issues fascinating.
oh, and vis-a-vis all of this ; xenophobic anti immigration and phobia/rejection of status quo voices and actors in the brexit vote and Trump support are, in my and some pundits viewpoints, closely linked to all of these issues and the establishments failure to address growing inequality and quality of life declines while not attempting to loosed the requirements and financial demands for participation in society. do as we say and things will be as good as they can/improve, followed by,decades of erosion, it's little wonder why people voted against the "common/elites' wisdom" IMO.
I have hopes for UBI, but it will/would be difficult to step into... when the time for it is ripe though there will likely be less complaints of people who don't want to work, and more calls to relieve crime, hunger. and even acquiescence and even lobbying for it by industry who must at some juncture recognize that a self building economic engine with no base/no innate demand to drive it will simply flounder and die.