A Short Story of “Author”ized Printing-Birth of Copyright

(transcribed from Steal This Film 2)

"Print brought with an abundance of information in Europe. However, some were disturbed. Gutenberg's partner Johann Fust was accused of doing black magic because he brought a full wagon of printed Bibles to 15th century Paris, in which all the Bibles were the same! This new communication technology was seen as an unholy work of the Devil.

All of the emerging nation-states of Europe made it very clear that they would control information flows to the best of their ability.

The printers were the ones who were hunted down if they printed the "forbidden text." Writers and printers were the targets of persecution.

As printing technology emerged in Europe and America, its pivotal social role became clear. Printing becomes associated with rebellion and emancipation. Governor of Virginia, Governor Berkley who wrote his overseers in England in 1670: "I thank God, there are no free schools nor printing [in Virginia]; for learning has brought disobedience, and heresy ... and printing has divulged them, and libels against the best government. God keep us from both." This was a reaction to the English Civil War and pamphlet wars and they were called "paper bullets" at that period. There would be no printing press in Virginia until half a century after Berkeley's appalling utterance.

The basic idea of censorship in 18th century France is the concept of privilege or private law—a publisher gets the right of publishing a particular text that is denied to others. So, he has a privilege. What you have is a centralized administration for controlling the book trade using censorship and also using the monopoly of the established publishers.

Kings and churches made sure that the books that flowed through the society were "authorized", authorized editions. Also, those authorized editions were within the control of the state, the king, or the prince. You had a very elaborate system of censorship but in addition to that, you had a monopoly of production in the bookseller's guild in Paris. It had police powers. The police itself had specialized inspectors of the book trade. In sum, the state was very powerful in its attempt to control the printed word.

But not only was this apparatus incapable of preventing the spread of revolutionary thought, its very existence inspired the creation of new, parallel pirate systems of distribution.

What is clear is that during the 18th century, the printed word as a force is expanding everywhere. You've got publishing houses, printing presses surrounding France—dozens of dozens of them producing books which are smuggled across the French borders, distributed everywhere in the Kingdom by an underground system. For example, one Dutch printer, who looked at the index of prohibited books and used it for his publication program because he knew that these were the titles that sell well. The pirates had agents in Paris and everywhere else who were sending them sheets of new books which they think will sell well. The pirates were systematically doing "market research." There are thousands of historical letters in which pirates sounding the market, wanting to know what demand is. So, the reaction on the part of publishers at the "center" was, of course, extremely hostile. They called pirates buccaneers, people without shame, etc. In actual fact, the pirates were good bourgeoise in Lausanne, Geneva, or Amsterdam and they thought that they were just doing business, after all. There was no international copyright law, and they were satisfying the demand.

There were printers hidden in holes in the wall or floor. If they were printing subversive material, they had to hide their press very quickly. People used to put them on rafts and float down to another town if they were in trouble with authorities. It was very movable.

In effect, you've got two systems at war with one another: The system of production outside France that is crucial for the Enlightenment. Not only did this new media system spread the Enlightenment, but it "prepared the way for the Revolution." It's so indicted the old regime that this power, the public opinion became crucial in the collapse of the government in 1787-1788. In Paris, the Bastille had been the prison for pirates but in the years before the Revolution, the authorities gave up imprisoning pirates as the flow of ideas of the information was too strong to be stopped.

What happens when a copying mechanism is invented? You can take a printing press, or you can take bit torrent. It shapes people's habits. It gives people completely new ideas how they could work, how they could work together, and share and what their lives could be. The technique that brought us where we are is copying. Communication, the need to talk to someone is an act of sharing. Sharing is at the heart of existence."

Controlling the information flow in England

Source: The flourishing book trade: 1550–1800

In the golden age of Elizabeth I, publishing in England was probably at its most turbulent. Through her Injunctions of 1559, Elizabeth confirmed the charter of the Stationers’ Company and the system of licensing by the crown or its nominees, which now included church dignitaries. Controls were tightened in 1586 by a decree of the Star Chamber, which confined printing to London, except for one press each in the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. The Stationers’ Company was given powers to inspect printing offices and to seize and destroy offending material or presses, which it zealously did, as much in defense of its monopoly as in support of the crown. But despite stern measures, the great religious question, in which Elizabeth steered a precarious course between Papists and Puritans, continued to be fought out with secret presses on both sides.

-- NevfelAkkasoglu - 28 Feb 2021

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