Comments on: Copyright in 561 AD

By: Jonathan Bailey

Jonathan Bailey — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 08:53:57 +0000

While I understand your position, It is important to remember a few additional things. First, in none of the texts I've read about this dispute was there any mention that the Psalter involved contained any problematic passages. In fact, quite the contrary appears to be true, that it was a newer and better Psalter. Finnian had apparently adopted it for use in his monastery but, apparently forbade its copying.The second issue is that, even if there were problematic passages, the first copyright laws, had nothing to do with authorship or ownership. It was about preventing the printing of printings works that would be problematic to the crown. The Statute of Anne was the first copyright law to consider authorship and ownership, but the issues of copying and the legitimacy of who can copy were going on well before that.If you step outside the notion of copyright law simply being about ownership of a work and being about determining who can copy a work, for any reason, regardless of ownership, you see that this dispute was a forefather to many of the ones that would, in turn, become forefathers to many modern copyright laws. This dispute is an ancestor of our modern copyright system, a distant one at that. In many ways it is different but the core issues of copying, the right to copy and access to information are still there. Granted, many of our modern ideals are not, but if you take a broader look at copyright in history, it is easier to see the connection.

By: isaack

isaack — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 08:39:02 +0000

I daresay I find this rather misleading.There could be a number of reasons why St. Finnian denied Columbia his copy of the psalter, not the least of which would be a belief in the illegitimacy of the aforementioned work. If, in religious circles, something is not to be accepted as canon (or not YET canon), then the copying of said work would most likely be banned for fear of spreading potentially problematic passages among the faith.Ergo, while your story is quite wonderful and engaging, it nevertheless is wrong in its interpretation.There was no "right to copy" in dispute here – NO ONE was assumed to have had that right. Since no one was presumed to 'own' the rights to the work, no one was in position to deny that right. This was a matter of religious preservation, not the derivative rights of a book. To peg it as such is dishonest at worst and misleading at best.

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Links 25/07/2009: ASUS to Bring Linux Smartphones | Boycott Novell — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 22:45:36 +0000

[...] Copyright in 561 AD Most scholars will tell you, quite correctly, that the very first modern copyright law was the Statute of Anne. which was passed in 1710 in the Kingdom of Great Britain (now the United Kingdom). Prior to its passing, copyright was handled more by giving monopolies to publishers. The Statute of Anne had term limits, namely 21 years and a familiar goal, to promote the printing of new works. [...]

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Glyn Moody (glynmoody) 's status on Friday, 24-Jul-09 19:52:55 UTC - Identi.ca — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 19:53:03 +0000

[...] http://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2009/07/24/copyright-in-561-ad/ [...]

By: Jonathan Bailey

Jonathan Bailey — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 17:30:01 +0000

I agree completely this isn't copyright in its modern form. However, I would argue that, in many ways, the modern ideas of copyright, in many ways, morphed from these early disputes. The earliest copyright laws, even before the Statute of Anne, were more about controlling the flow of information by licensing only certain printers to produce works. The Statue of Anne was merely the first time copyright was used with the intent of increasing the amount of culture and rewarding authors, not as a tool to protect the nobility.You're absolutely right that their notion of "copyright" would be very different from our modern one. Absolutely. However, the issues at place are still very much the same. Who has the right to copy a work? Who has the authority to grant or deny that power? etc. When I think of copyright in the historical sense, I don't just see it as it is currently applied. I don't believe that Finnian believed he owned that particular book of Psalms, or that his work should be rewarded. Rather, I look at the broader picture, but rather, restrictions and rules placed on a certain work, whether for the benefit of a king, a Monk or the original author.So yes, you are right, I just may take a broader view on what copyright is and I find it fascinating that cultures were wrestling with the ethics of copying certain works, even in the 6th century. Thank you very much for your comment and I hope this clears things up!

By: Dr. Patrick Murray-J

Dr. Patrick Murray-J — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 16:05:14 +0000

Well, actually not. While I'm not familiar with this particular story, it rings very untrue to me as a Ph.D. in medieval literature, and your broader conclusion just isn't supportable. Copyright issues have not been with us for 1400 years, and certainly not since the dawn of written language, at least not in anything like the modern form. It was unusual for even a name to be attached to a manuscript, and copying and recopying of texts was something that routinely occupied to time of most monks. That's why there have been widespread disputes about the authorship of a particular work–there was simply no widespread notion of copyright until early modern time.