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Speaker 1: This Day in History Class is a production of I

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Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hello, Welcome to This Day in History Class,

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Speaker 1: where we flipped through the book of history and bring

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Speaker 1: you a new page every day. Today it's April tenth.

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Speaker 1: The day was April tenth, seventeen ten, the Statute of Anne,

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Speaker 1: often considered the first full copyright law, became effective. The

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Speaker 1: word copyright was not used in a statute. Instead, the

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Speaker 1: statute was called an Act for the encouragement of learning

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Speaker 1: by investing the copies of printed books and the authors

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Speaker 1: or purchasers of such copies during the times therein mentioned.

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Speaker 1: There had been other instances in history of artists and

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Speaker 1: publishers being protected from unauthorized uses of their work, but

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Speaker 1: the Statute of And was a milestone and a copyright law.

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Speaker 1: The statute influenced copyright legislation in other countries like Denmark,

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Speaker 1: the United States, in France in the eighteenth century, and

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Speaker 1: it was enforced until the Copyright Act eighteen forty two

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Speaker 1: was passed Before the Statute of Fan. The Licensing of

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Speaker 1: the Press Act sixteen sixty two gave a guild of

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Speaker 1: printers and booksellers from London called the Stationers Company, the

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Speaker 1: exclusive power to print and responsibility to sensor literary works.

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Speaker 1: Authors could not join the Stationers Company. People despised that

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Speaker 1: censorship and the fact that the Stationers Company had a

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Speaker 1: monopoly in printing, so a lot of authors and small

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Speaker 1: publishers protested the Act and objected when it was time

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Speaker 1: for it to be renewed every two years. The protesters

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Speaker 1: got what they wanted when in sixteen Parliament did not

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Speaker 1: renew the Act, so the Stationers monopoly ended. The Stationers

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Speaker 1: fought to get the old licensing system back, but Parliament refused. Meanwhile,

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Speaker 1: many authors and publishers were asking for a new licensing system.

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Speaker 1: Writer Daniel Dafote, for instance, wrote in seventeen o five

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Speaker 1: one man studies seven years to bring a finished peace

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Speaker 1: into the world, and a pirate printer reprints his copy

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Speaker 1: immediately and sells it for a quarter of the price.

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Speaker 1: These things call for an Act of Parliament, and that's

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Speaker 1: so loud as I hope will not be denied that

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Speaker 1: so property of copies may be secured to laborious students,

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Speaker 1: to the encouragement of letters and all useful studies. The

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Speaker 1: Stationers were losing money as small printing presses and internationally

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Speaker 1: printed books were cheaper, so the Stationers took notice of

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Speaker 1: the prevailing sentiment and decided to lobby for a new

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Speaker 1: copyright statute on behalf of the authors. They argued that

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Speaker 1: licensing needed to be reinstated so that authors could be

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Speaker 1: guaranteed an income. Otherwise, as stationer John Howe put it

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Speaker 1: in seventeen o six, learned men will be wholly discouraged

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Speaker 1: from propagating the most useful parts of knowledge and literature.

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Speaker 1: With the support of authors, the Stationers Company petitioned Parliament

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Speaker 1: in seventeen oh seven and seventeen o nine to write

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Speaker 1: a bill given copyright to authors. Member of Parliament Edward

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Speaker 1: Wortley introduced a copyright bill in January seventeen ten, after

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Speaker 1: which point many changes and amendments were made to the bill,

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Speaker 1: and on April five, the bill was granted Royal assent.

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Speaker 1: Five days later it went into force. The act became

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Speaker 1: known as the Statute of Anne because it was passed

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Speaker 1: under the reign of Queen Anne. The statute said that

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Speaker 1: for any book published after April tenth, an author had

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Speaker 1: a copyright term of fourteen years from the date of

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Speaker 1: first publication. Was the possible fourteen year renewal if the

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Speaker 1: author was still alive when the first term expired. A

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Speaker 1: legacy clause gave works that had already been published a

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Speaker 1: twenty one year copyright term starting from the date the

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Speaker 1: statute went into forests. When the copyright expired, then the

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Speaker 1: work would move into the public domain. The title of

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Speaker 1: a work had to be registered with the Company of

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Speaker 1: Stationers for the copyright to be binding, and if someone

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Speaker 1: broke the law, they had to forfeit the bad copies

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Speaker 1: and pay one penny per page, where the complainant could

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Speaker 1: claim half and the Crown would get the other half.

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Speaker 1: Unreasonably high prices for books were prohibited, and the importation

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Speaker 1: of most foreign works was banned. The copyright applied to England, Wales, Scotland,

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Speaker 1: and decades later Ireland. The stated aim of the Statute

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Speaker 1: of ann was to bring stability to the book trade,

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Speaker 1: and generally people felt it accomplished that goal, though the

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Speaker 1: legal deposit system it mandated was not so popular. The

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Speaker 1: statute required the deposit it of nine copies of the

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Speaker 1: book at the Stationers Company, the Royal Library, or certain universities.

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Speaker 1: The expiration of copyrights in seventeen thirty one led the

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Speaker 1: stationers to claim that copyright was perpetual according to common law,

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Speaker 1: and the effort, known as the Battle of the Booksellers,

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Speaker 1: soon began. Over the next century, copyright law expanded, and

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Speaker 1: in eighteen forty two Parliament passed a Copyright Act that

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Speaker 1: repealed the Statute of ann Still, the statute marks the

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Speaker 1: first time printers mistreatment of authors was recognized, and its

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Speaker 1: significance in copyright history is widely acknowledged. I'm Eve STEPF

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Speaker 1: Coote and hopefully you know a little more about history

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Speaker 1: today than you did yesterday. And a little note about

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Speaker 1: the dating in this episode. Many sources date the text

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Speaker 1: of the Statute of And to seventeen o nine, but

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Speaker 1: the correct year is seventeen ten. Keep up with us

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Speaker 1: on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook at T d i h

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Speaker 1: C Podcast. Thanks for joining me on this trip through history.

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Speaker 1: See you here, same place tomorrow