I recently came across a fascinating work on the history and theory of copyright law titled Critical Perspectives on the History and Philosophy of Copyright by Ronald V. Bettig, published in 1992. It references some compelling historical studies related to copyright law and, more broadly, knowledge production. I will be discussing some of these in my upcoming post. In this post, I want to introduce readers to Bettig’s work and briefly outline its content. I would encourage readers to check it out—it is relatively short, spanning only 26 pages.
Full citation:
Ronald V. Bettig (1992), Critical perspectives on the history and philosophy of copyright, Critical Studies in Mass Communication, 9:2, 131–155. (Unfortunately paywalled, but feel free to reach out if you need a copy.)
The abstract of Bettig’s piece explains:
“The philosophy of intellectual property reifies economic rationalism as a natural human trait and assumes that, without mechanisms such as copyrights and patents, human beings would cease to be intellectually and artistically creative. To discover the roots of this assumption, this article employs a theoretical combination of political economy and the cultural history of communications to locate the origins of the concept of literary property. With attention directed toward the modes and relations of production and communication, this study reveals that the rise of capitalism and the development of the printing press are the keys to understanding the emergence of intellectual property law and how it serves as the basis for the “enclosure” of the intellectual and cultural “commons.”
Betty begins the piece by noting that
“Critical research on intellectual property is still pioneering work, including the relatively unexplored history of copyright. The traditional histories of copyright (see Bugbee, 1967; Patterson, 1968; Putnam, 1896/1962; Whale, 1971) provide adequate descriptions of the origins and evolution of copyright but lack any real explanation for its emergence and function. These histories are also teleological; they treat the evolution of the concept of literary property as a reflection of the natural progressiveness of human beings. The history of copyright developed in this article is based on an analytical framework that stresses the modes and relations of production and communications as the key explanatory variables in accounting for the origin and development of a concept of literary property. Accordingly, this history of copyright suggests that there is an essential connection between the rise of capitalism, the extension of commodity relations into literary and artistic domains, and the emergence of the printing press.
The first section of this article looks for evidence of intellectual property rights in ancient and medieval times. In a second section, an analysis of the dawn of capitalism and the development of the printing press is linked to the emergence of copyright, a crucial connection that is generally neglected in the traditional histories. The evolution of copyright in England and the United States is the central focus of the third section, which includes a significant revision and expansion of previous copyright histories on the connection between John Locke and the articulation of literary property rights. Patterson (1968) argues that a historical analysis of copyright “removes obstacles—long-continued acceptance of certain ideas, self- interest, and the pressing need to resolve immediate problems—which may be present when analysis occurs in a wholly contemporary context” (p. 223). It also provides the occasion, in the last section of this work, to compare the earliest ideas concerning copyright to current copyright practices. Here special attention also is paid to patterns of ownership and control of intellectual and artistic creativity.”
Okay, I leave this here. Bettig structures this piece into 6 parts, but I’ll leave the details for readers to explore further. Bettig’s piece, I reiterate, can be a useful piece for understanding the historical and theoretical underpinnings of copyright and knowledge production.
See you in the next post.
IP Musings 