January 18, 2012 may well go down as a pivotal date in the history of the Internet – and of copyright. For on that day, the English-language Wikipedia and thousands of other websites were blacked out or modified to protest against two bills passing through the US legislative system that were designed to fight copyright infringement. To understand why that unprecedented action took place, and what it means for the future of the Net, it’s necessary to review the history of copyright briefly.

The Struggle Between Copyright and the Internet

Glyn Moody
STIR

Copyright law has its origins in attempts by the governments of Europe to control and regulate the Internet of its day, the printing press, then still relatively new. In other words, copyright was originally a form of censorship.

In England, the first copyright privilege – literally a monopoly right to make copies of certain books – was granted in 1518. During the 16th century, English printers formed a collective organisation, known as the Stationers’ Company. It was granted the right to require all lawfully printed books to be entered into its register. The printers were thus able to maintain their lucrative printing monopolies, and the English authorities gained a convenient central control point to regulate what could be printed.

This continued until 1694, when the monopoly of the Stationers’ Company was abolished. In 1710, the Statute of Anne came into force; this is generally regarded as the first “modern” copyright, and lies at the root of the entire Anglo-American copyright system.

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