This book is the first in-depth and longitudinal study of the history of copyright protecting the visual arts. Exploring legal developments during an important period in the making of the modern law, the mid-nineteenth to early twentieth centuries, in relation to four themes - the protection of copyright 'authors' (painters, photographers and engravers), art collectors, sitters and the public interest - it uncovers a number of long-forgotten narratives of copyright history, including views of copyright that differ from how we think today. As well as considering the distinct nature of the contribution of copyright to the history of the cultural domain accounted for by scholars of art history and the sociology of art, this book examines the value to lawyers and policy-makers today of copyright history as a destabilising influence: in taking us to ways of thinking that differ from our own, history can sharpen the critical lens through which we view copyright debates today.

This book is the first in-depth and longitudinal study of the history of copyright protecting the visual arts. Exploring legal developments during an important period in the making of the modern law, the mid-nineteenth to early twentieth centuries, in relation to four themes - the protection of copyright 'authors' (painters, photographers and engravers), art collectors, sitters and the public interest - it uncovers a number of long-forgotten narratives of copyright history, including views of copyright that differ from how we think today. As well as considering the distinct nature of the contribution of copyright to the history of the cultural domain accounted for by scholars of art history and the sociology of art, this book examines the value to lawyers and policy-makers today of copyright history as a destabilising influence: in taking us to ways of thinking that differ from our own, history can sharpen the critical lens through which we view copyright debates today.

The first in-depth study of the history of copyright protecting the visual arts, uncovering long-forgotten narratives of copyright history and reflecting on how those sharpen the critical lens through which we view copyright today. It will appeal to copyright lawyers, scholars and policy-makers, as well as to art historians and curators.

This is the first text to specifically examine in detail the intellectual property rights protecting artistic works and artists' rights in the UK.

This original and relevant book investigates the relationship between intellectual property and the visual arts in France from the 16th century to the French Revolution. It charts the early history of privilege legislation (today's copyright and patent) for books and inventions, and the translation of its legal terms by and for the image. Those terms are explored in their force of law and in relation to artistic discourse and creative practice in the early modern period. The consequences of commercially motivated law for art and its definitions, specifically its eventual separation from industry, are important aspects of the story. The artists who were caught up in disputes about intellectual property ranged from the officers of the Academy down to the lowest hacks of Grub Street. Lessons from this book may still apply in the 21st century; with the advent of inexpensive methods of reproduction, multiplication, and dissemination via digital channels, questions of intellectual property and the visual arts become important once more.

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 property. This volume conceives a new history of copyright law that has its roots in a wide range of norms and practices. The essays reach back to the very material world of craftsmanship and mechanical inventions of Renaissance Italy where, in 1469, the German master printer Johannes of Speyer obtained a five-year exclusive privilege to print in Venice and its dominions. Along the intellectual journey that follows, we encounter John Milton who, in his 1644 Areopagitica speech 'For the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing', accuses the English parliament of having been deceived by the 'fraud of some old patentees and monopolizers in the trade of bookselling' (i.e. the London Stationers' Company). Later revisionary essays investigate the regulation of the printing press in the North American colonies as a provincial and somewhat crude version of European precedents, and how, in the revolutionary France of 1789, the subtle balance that the royal decrees had established between the interests of the author, the bookseller, and the public, was shattered by the abolition of the privilege system. Contributions also address the specific evolution of rights associated with the visual and performing arts. These essays provide essential reading for anybody interested in copyright, intellectual history and current public policy choices in intellectual property. The volume is a companion to the digital archive Primary Sources on Copyright (1450-1900), funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC): www.copyrighthistory.org.