This chapter is structured around the key evolutionary phases of the modern copyright paradigm: (1) the proto-copyright of crown privileges and letter patents, responding to the invention of the printing press since the late 1400s; (2) the 18th century Battle of the Booksellers, eventually...

What can and can't be copied is a matter of law, but also of aesthetics, culture, and economics. The act of copying, and the creation and transaction of rights relating to it, evokes fundamental notions of communication and censorship, of authorship and ownership – of privilege and...