A different viewpoint concerning copyright in China is offered at the website of a Chinese trade group called Chinamet. The website asserts that there were restrictions on the reproduction of text as early as 1068 in China during the North Song Dynasty:

China, as the country which invented the printing technology, started official copyright protection in 1068 when the Emperor of the North Song Dynasty issued an order forbidding reproduction without authorization of the “Nine Books” which were published by an official publisher, Guo Zi Jian, of the Tang Dynasty in 932. It is believed that Guo Zi Jian was the first official publisher with explicit business purposes. According to Shu Lin Qing Hua, a book published in the late Qing Dynasty, at least one government document of the Song Dynasty prohibited reproduction, without authorization, of books, and provided that anyone found guilty of violation of this rule would be punished, and the printing equipment and carved letters would be smashed. …

Thus the protection extended from the publisher to the author in the Song Dynasty, quite close to the copyright protection of today. In fact, there were also cases (if not a formal system) of registration for copyright in ancient China. For instance, the page setting out the table of contents of the book entitled Brief Records of the East Capital (”Dong Du Shi LUe”) published during the North Song Dynasty contained the following note: “Published by Cheng She Ren Zhai of Mei Shan; registered with the government authorities; reproduction forbidden.”

Of course this web page text is not a traditional scholarly citation. Also, this is a controversial area of history with multiple interpretations. The book “Intellectual Property Law in China” by Peter Ganea and Christopher Heath discusses the controversy on page 206 but I am too lazy to retype it here. Check Google Books.

As for agrarian societies that were largely illiterate, those were not the examples I used. One might argue that the Egyptians kept literacy confined to an exclusive group of scholars. The same argument could in no way be applied to China. Education and literacy were traditions in China before Alexander left Macedonia to “conquer the world”. As a result of the civil service examinations implemented in the Han Dynasty (202 BC – 220 AD), acquiring education became popular with most urban inhabitants and many rural ones.

The period I mentioned in Chinese history, the Song Dynasty, had mechanised clocks, every airfoil based flying design except for the airplane (but including the helicopter), 300 foot ships (ships so large all three of Columbus’ ships could have been carried on the deck of one and unachievable with European technology until the 1850’s), and multi-stage, anti-personnel, ship to ship missiles. Cities were large and so were populations. Chinese cities of this period were “modern” by the standards of most countries today.

This assumption that ancient societies consisted of mostly illiterate people is based in European tradition. Do people on this site honestly believe that European society was always the first in the world in knowledge, education, and literacy?

What I am opposed to, specifically, is the concept of social progress. “We are modern, and therefore we are better.” Urban society, except for technology, is the same as it was 10,000 years ago. Have we been so indoctrinated by the news that we are willing to forget the great achievements of history? Europeans do not have a monopoly on history. Many societies were quite literate and educated when the Europeans were still throwing rocks at each other.

(And that’s not the official stance of TeleRead, either.)

Tell me why I, as an author in today’s modern society, should spend years of my life writing a book, only to be told that I have no rights to what I have written?

LuYu,
Surely you are not comparing ancient memos and shopping lists to the fine concepts committed to writing in the modern era?

Well, I should not be as copyright was neither designed nor intended to protect such things. But since 1978 in the US and the Berne Convention elsewhere, such works are protected by copyright. Are you making the claim that writers are better today than before 1710? Many great books were written before copyright. This includes all the Greek and Roman works that form the foundation of European philosophy and culture. The Library of Alexandria was certainly not filled with copyrighted books.

Earlier eras, which did not provide any “income” for many people, while granting income-free lives to others, had no conception of the idea of ownership beyond physical goods (and other people).

This statement makes no sense. First of all, “income” is technically the profits made from investments. This is as opposed to “wages” which are monies earned from selling labour or services. The expansion of “income” to encompass “wages” has only happened in the last century or so due to the Federal government’s wish to tax everyone (and not just punish the rich bankers as the law originally intended). So, no, ancient people could not derive income from writings and neither can modern authors. The only people who can derive “income” are the publishers who patronise writers and then reap the profits (income) of their subsequent sales.

As for authors making money, which is probably the issue you intended to address, there are many ways they could be paid to write. Only one of those is a monopoly, and that monopoly does not guarantee or even purport to guarantee that the author will make money. Should we extend our charity to authors who write nothing anyone would be inclined to buy? But it is for the authors!

On the other hand, if an idea was considered to be of value, it was locked away from others, to prevent its dissemination, and to assure that those who knew the secrets wielded power over those who did not.

Trade secrets and state secrets still exist and are enforced, and I do not see any evidence that copyright is having any effect upon those at all whatsoever.

So the idea of “copyright” is relatively new. So are the joint ideas of holding money without connecting it directly with “stored goods,” and using that money to buy things other than “stored goods.” IOW, copyright goes hand-in-hand with the modern concept of “abstract finance,” a concept that the Founding Fathers were wise enough to understand and incorporate into the modern life they were carving out for themselves.

The assumption that “abstract finance” has helped society is tenuous at best. Currency did not lose its physical backing until the 20th Century in the US, and later everywhere else. The US became an industrial powerhouse with gold and silver backed currency. In fact, that supports my claim because the US experienced unprecedented growth after Andrew Jackson dissolved the Bank of the United States and banks became free to issue their own gold and silver backed currencies. The previous regulations restricting currency issue to one bank stifled the economy. Copyright similarly suffocates the natural production of speech and creation of new works by allowing people to constrain their distribution.

Copyright does not fit into the simple goods-based agrarian lifestyle you compare it to… in that culture, there is little need for it. It is a product of modern times, and it does serve a useful purpose by encouraging creativity, which in turn speeds up the development and dissemination of knowledge, and has been directly responsible for the incredibly-accelerated pace of social and technological development over the last 200 years.

It is impossible to accept that copyright promotes creativity. The Internet has demonstrated beyond any doubt that this concept is ludicrous. Many of the works that are Fair Use exceptions are far and away more creative than the original works they parody or borrow from. One of the best books I have ever read, one that changed my outlook on life, was offered for free online because the author just had it sitting around on his hard drive. You might argue that the quality is not as high as with finished, published works, and that is all well and good, but what is better: A sketch that reforms society or another perfectly rendered Mickey Mouse?

Copyright is not a product of modern times. It is a product of the Industrial Revolution, and that is no longer modern. Unfortunately for modern people we still have to deal with its limited producer-consumer orientation. This creates a caste system of haves and have-nots. A better system would treat all participants in our global conversation as equals. It is always nice when Europe exports its medieval stratification to the rest of the world.

For too long, the publishers have producers have been constraining what we read and experience. TV was terrible when it was dominated by the three big networks, MTV was ruined when it was bought by Disney, and musical creativity was virtually destroyed when the record industry consolidated in the 90’s. Copyright was the sword these people used to destroy creativity, not support or enhance it.

Tassia Said:

I’d suggest that a little more digging into the history of copyright – say the 17th and 18th centuries, for a start – might be in order. The copyright laws we have today weren’t in place, of course, but rights to what a person wrote were being bought and sold. It wasn’t a free-for-all.

I have less reservations with those copyright laws. Before 1978, things were definitely better. However, monopolies were unconscionable even then. Monopoly rights are things for monarchs, so unless you believe that the US should consider Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth its God given sovereign, you should oppose copyright. Monopolies are anti-democratic.

Rights to writings were being bought and sold — in England. Prove to me that they were being bought and sold in Sumer or China or Ancient Egypt. Tell me the Mayans had some sort of copyright law. All of these societies had both books and libraries. All of these societies had authors. All of these societies had scholars — people who did nothing but crunch information for a living.

China was the most extreme. During the Zhou Dynasty (1045-256BC), more philosophy was invented than the Greeks could have dreamed. All of that was written in books (which were rolls of bamboo slats bound with silk strings). Copyright is no more necessary today than it was then.

Until the Sumerians have an industrial revolution fueled by ideas that – sometimes – the originator gets paid for, I don’t see this being a valid argument.

If this were an argument for patent law, I would say you have a point. But for copyright, this is a bold statement. Prove to me — beyond any reasonable doubt — that the Industrial Revolution would not have occurred in the absence of copyright. I hold that an absence of copyright would have accelerated it greatly and the fact that the US did not recognise foreign copyrights was one of the largest factors propelling the US into a position to contend with the European powers of the time.

As for economies, I pointed out above that China had the largest economy in the world for more than 1,000 years and that it took all of Western Europe until 1750AD to surpass China’s industrial production in 1000AD. Copyright clearly is not necessary for such economic activity.

I’d suggest that a little more digging into the history of copyright – say the 17th and 18th centuries, for a start – might be in order. The copyright laws we have today weren’t in place, of course, but rights to what a person wrote were being bought and sold. It wasn’t a free-for-all.

Until the Sumerians have an industrial revolution fueled by ideas that – sometimes – the originator gets paid for, I don’t see this being a valid argument.

Earlier eras, which did not provide any “income” for many people, while granting income-free lives to others, had no conception of the idea of ownership beyond physical goods (and other people). On the other hand, if an idea was considered to be of value, it was locked away from others, to prevent its dissemination, and to assure that those who knew the secrets wielded power over those who did not.

So the idea of “copyright” is relatively new. So are the joint ideas of holding money without connecting it directly with “stored goods,” and using that money to buy things other than “stored goods.” IOW, copyright goes hand-in-hand with the modern concept of “abstract finance,” a concept that the Founding Fathers were wise enough to understand and incorporate into the modern life they were carving out for themselves.

Copyright does not fit into the simple goods-based agrarian lifestyle you compare it to… in that culture, there is little need for it. It is a product of modern times, and it does serve a useful purpose by encouraging creativity, which in turn speeds up the development and dissemination of knowledge, and has been directly responsible for the incredibly-accelerated pace of social and technological development over the last 200 years.