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Timestamp: 2019-04-23 22:40:51+00:00

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The thesis of this Article is that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 (DMCA)  in the United States is a modern version of the Licensing Act of 1662  in England. The English censorship statute is sufficiently obscure to merit an explanation of why the similarity and why it makes a difference. The reasons can be simply stated. The statutes are similar because they represent the same goals: the control of access to ideas. The similarities make a difference because a legal construct to control public access to ideas undermines - and will eventually destroy - the right of free speech, the foundation of a free society. The Licensing Act and the DMCA are such constructs with one major difference. Under the Licensing Act, the persons given the power to determine what materials could be made accessible to the populace were public officials acting for the government; under the DMCA, they are private copyright holders acting for themselves as the beneficiaries of the copyright monopoly.
* Editor’s Note: Two proposals to amend the DMCA were introduced in the House of Representatives on October 2d and 3d, 2002. Both “The Digital Choice and Freedom Act” (H.R. 5522) and “The Digital Media Consumers’ Rights Act” (H.R. 5544) were drafted in part to amend the anticircumvention provisions at section 1201 of Title 17.
One of the stated goals of the Digital Choice and Freedom Act of 2002 [hereinafter DCFA] is to “restore the traditional balance between copyright holders and society, as intended by the 105th Congress, [which enacted the DMCA].” The DCFA notes in part that section “1201 has been interpreted to prohibit all users - even lawful ones - from circumventing technical restrictions for any reason … [and that a]s a result, the lawful consumer cannot legally circumvent technological restrictions, even if he or she is simply trying to exercise a fair use or to utilize the work on a different digital media device.” H.R. 5522, 107th Cong. (2002) (citing Universal City Studios, Inc. v Reinmdes, 111 F. Supp. 2d 294, 321-24 (S.D.N.Y. 2000)).
Similarly, in introducing the Digital Media Consumer’s Rights Act [hereinafter DMCRA], Representative Boucher stated that the enactment of the DMCA “dramatically tilted the balance in the Copyright Act toward content protection and away from information availability.” 148 CONG. REC. E1761 (extensions of remarks ed. October 4, 2002) (statement of Rep. Boucher).
** S.J.D. Harvard 1966, LLB. Mercer University 1956, M.A. Northwestern 1950, A.B. Mercer University 1949. Mr. Patterson is the Pope Brock Professor of Law at the University of Georgia School of Law where he teaches Copyright Law, Legal Profession, and Legal Malpractice.
1. 17 U.S.C. § 1201 et seq. (2000).
2. 13 & 14 Car. II, c. 33 (Eng.).
This difference would seem to give the advantage to the Licensing Act for effectiveness, but the perception is misleading. The political purpose that led to the Licensing Act was narrower than the profit purpose that led to the DMCA. The goal of the English statute was to deny public access only to “heretical, schismatical, blasphemous, seditious and treasonable” works.  The goal of the DMCA is to substitute for the public’s right of free access to published material the duty to pay a license fee whenever the material containing ideas is digitized. The motive behind the earlier statute was political, while the motive behind the contemporary statute is economic, which explains why the former was concerned with substance, and the latter with form. The significance: The concern for substance limited the material to be censored to a particular subject (e.g., religion), but the concern for form extends to all material in the protected format whatever its subject (e.g., a popular song or a Shakespeare play).
The political motive also tends to result in less efficient control than the profit motive since money is a more attractive goal than political oppression. More importantly, the money goal serves as a camouflage for the use of copyright as a tool of censorship because private censorship is considered to be a means of protecting one’s property. The preliminary question is whether private censorship to protect private property is as objectionable as public censorship to protect a state religion. The answer must be yes, because censorship makes intellectual property a commodity for the marketplace. Intellectual property is a lawyer’s euphemism. Ideas, and control of access to ideas that copyright represents is censorship whatever the mechanism or motivation; and since censorship is forbidden by the First Amendment, ’ the ultimate question is whether copyright used as a tool to protect ideas as private property is excused as an exception to the constitutional right of free speech.
The argument here is that it is not, and the reason is two fundamental, but seldom noted, propositions. One is that the Free Press Clause and the Copyright Clause are complementary, not contradictory. Therefore, to use copyright as an excuse for censorship by anyone, public official or private citizen, is contrary to both clauses. And the excuse that one’s own speech is private property immune from strictures of the First Amendment is a fallacy. One’s speech ceases to be private property when it is published, for the essence of a free press is the right of the public to read, which is the reason to protect the right of the press to print. The other proposition is that the complementary nature of the two clauses depends upon the proprietary reach of copyright. A copyright limited to the marketplace promotes access, while a copyright extended to the classroom, office or home inhibits access. The history of copyright demonstrates the point.
3. 13 & 14 Car. II, t. 33 (Eng.}.
During the time when copyright was a plenary property right in the nature of fee simple property, it was a tool of censorship. When copyright became a limited property right in the nature of an easement, it became a tool of learning. The purpose of this Article is to explain these developments.
In Part II, I present the background of the problem; in Part III, I show the similarity of the Licensing Act and the DMCA; in Part IV, I discuss the proprietary base of copyright in the Licensing Act; in Part V, I discuss the proprietary base of the statutory copyright created by the first English copyright statute, the Statute of Anne in 1710; in Part VI, I discuss the proprietary base of copyright that the Copyright Clause of the U.S. Constitution authorizes Congress to grant; and in Part VII, I explain how Congress enlarged the proprietary base of copyright in the 1976 Copyright Act.
Most everyone would agree that from today’s vantage point, the Licensing Act, having been contrary to the freedom of religion, would be deficient as a matter of public policy and constitutional law. That a seventeenth century English statute was characterized by unsound policy, however, does not mean that a similar twentieth century American statute suffers the same fate. Times change, and modern political, technological, and economic conditions may justify the kinship of the two statutes. The United States Constitution guarantees freedom of religion, ’ the personal computer has made the protection of copyrighted material more problematic, and the free market system prevails. And there is a difference between saying that government officials may protect a state religion by control of access and that a person may protect his or her property by control of access.
Those who would argue that the DMCA is a legitimate exercise of Congress’ copyright power, however, face the problem of the copyright dilemma. If a copyright holder can control access to the copyrighted work, logically it is because he or she owns the work. But since the essence of a copyrighted work is ideas, it follows that to own the work is contrary to the principle that one cannot own ideas. The ostensible choice is between ownership of the work, which would inhibit learning, and free use of the work by everyone, which would also inhibit learning (for the lack of a market).
6. See LYMAN RAY PATTERSON, COPYRIGHT IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE (1 968) for a detailed treatment of the history of copyright.
8. See generally A TRANSCRIPT OF THE REGISTERS OF THE COMPANY OF STATIONERS OF LONDON: 1554-1640 A.D. (Edward Arber ed., 1875) [hereinafter ARBER]. Arber noted the continual petitions of the booksellers for greater power and control of their copyrights. During the Interregnum, for example, the booksellers petitioned Parliament for legislation to replace the Star Chamber Decree of 1637 that expired with the abolition of the Star Chamber in 1640. The booksellers argued that without press control legislation, “Many Pieces [sic] of great worth and excellence will be strangled in the womb, or never conceived at all for the future.” Id at 587.
increased the value of the property. Thus, the booksellers were seeking to use the author’s natural law copyright argument to gain a personal benefit, at the public’s expense. Had the campaign for a perpetual copyright succeeded, William Shakespeare’s works today would be subject to the copyright monopoly.
Reflection demonstrates that one of the oddities of copyright jurisprudence is the persistence of the idea that copyright is a natural law right of the author because he or she created the copyrighted work. The seed for this idea was planted, watered and fertilized by the booksellers in their efforts to revive the perpetual copyright as a common law copyright to defeat the limitations that the Statute of Anne had placed on their monopoly. The oddity is that copyright as a natural law right of the author is contrary to the public interest purposes of copyright that the statutory copyright protects. Thus, the copyright of the Statute of Anne promoted learning, protected the public domain, and provided for public access. An author’s natural law copyright would have been anti-learning, would have destroyed the public domain, and would have been anti-public access.
The weakness of the natural law theory of copyright is that it is a disguise for self-interest in the guise of public interest. Certainly this was true when the booksellers in the eighteenth century argued that the courts should create a perpetual common law copyright based on natural law.  The surprising thing is not that the booksellers ultimately failed, but that they almost succeeded. They achieved their goal of a judicially created perpetual copyright in a 1769 King’s Bench decision, Millar v. Taylor,  but their victory was short-lived. A 1774 House of Lords decision, Donaldson v. Beckett,  overruled Millar and limited the copyright holder’s rights after publication to those granted by the copyright statute.
9. When the grandfather clause of the Statute of Anne ended after twenty-one years, the booksellers applied to Parliament in 1735, 1738, and 1739 for a longer term of years or for life. “The truth is, the idea of a common-law right in perpetuity was not taken up till after that failure in procuring a new statute for an enlargement of the term.” Donaldson v. Beckett, 1 Eng. Rep. 837 (H.L. 1774) (Lord Chief Justice DeGrey). See cases cited infra notes 10 and 11.
10. 98 Eng. Rep. 201 (KB. 1769).
11. 1 Eng. Rep. 837 (H.L. 1774).
attitude, which was obviously to their advantage, by lobbying Congress and litigating their rights. The point the entrepreneurs obscured, of course, was that entertainment, viewed as being an intellectually lightweight enterprise, formed a large part of American culture, the nature of which gives it an importance to rival the importance of learning to be gained from books, the paradigm of copyright protection.
The piecemeal progress of communication technology resulted in a stealth campaign to enhance the copyright monopoly that, by and large, has succeeded. The 1909 Act  created the recording right, and in 1912 Congress added motion pictures to the compendium of copyrightable works,  but by and large radio broadcasts were unprotected as such. The revolutionary change came with the enactment of the 1976 Copyright Act.  In order to protect the interests of television and computer entrepreneurs, Congress disregarded the Copyright Clause and its first cousin, the Free Press Clause of the First Amendment.
Properly interpreted, the Copyright Clause limits Congress’ copyright power to the grant of copyright as a market monopoly for published works for a limited time. In the 1976 Act, Congress extended copyright to the moment of fixation, which eliminated the publication requirement; it divided the publication right into two rights, the right to copy and the right to distribute copies publicly, and it codified the right of fair use in such a way as to give copyright holders a weapon to enhance the copyright monopoly further. They have been successful because the proprietary base of copyright determines the scope of the copyright monopoly. A copyright that is a plenary property right is a more comprehensive monopoly than a copyright that is a limited property right, and because property is a monopolistic concept, the fact that an increase in the property right enlarges the monopoly goes unnoticed.
My theory as to why Congress failed to act within its constitutional restraints is that the members knew not what they were doing. They were implementing the natural law copyright under the guise of copyright as a plenary property right. There are three parts to the theory: First, in England the natural law copyright was a plenary property right that both Parliament and the House of Lords in its judicial capacity rejected in favor of the statutory copyright; second, the English statutory copyright was adopted by the Founders, embodied in the U.S. Constitution, and prevailed until the 1976 Copyright Act; third, the natural law theory of copyright has been revived in the guise of a plenary property right, of which the DMCA is the exemplar.
12. Act of Mar. 4, 1909, ch. 320, 35 Stat. 1075 (amended and codified in 17 U.S.C. § 101 et seq.).
13. Townsend Amendment, Act of Aug. 24, 1912, ch. 356, 37 Stat. 488.
14. Pub. L. No. 94-553, 90 Stat. 2541 (1976) (codified in 17 U.S.C. § 101 et seq. (2000)).
The enactment of the DMCA, because of its similarity to the Licensing Act, provides an occasion to examine the impact of the English statute on American law. The most useful insight this examination reveals is that two provisions of the U.S. Constitution can be attributed to the English policy of press control as manifested in the Licensing Act; one directly, the other indirectly. The two provisions are the First Amendment and the Copyright Clause.
The similarity of the Licensing Act and the DMCA is seen in those provisions intended to control the manufacture of, and trade in, materials that would enable one to do the forbidden act, that is print unlawful material or gain unlawful access to digitized material.
15. Licensing Act of 1662, 13 & 14 Car. II, c. 33, § X (Eng.).
16. Digital Millennium Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. § 1201(a)(2)(A) (2000).
17. 13 & 14 Car. II, c. 33, § XXV (Eng.). The statute was renewed. 16 Car. II, c. 8 (Eng.), 1 Jac. II, c. 17, § XV (Eng.).
The common concern for controlling the manufacture of, and trade in, materials of communication technology is striking evidence of the similarity of the goals: to control access to learning materials. The most subtle similarity between the two statutes, however, is that copyright is a secondary consideration in both. The Licensing Act made the infringement of copyright as much of an offense as publishing a book without an imprimatur, but copyright was not available for unlicensed material. Although the DMCA is codified as part of the copyright statute, it does not specifically limit the materials available for encryption to copyrighted works. The primary concern in both statutes, in short, was and is what is communicated, although the criteria and motives differed. The Licensing Act was concerned with substance, that is with “heretical, schismatical, blasphemous, seditious and treasonable” material,  the DMCA was concerned with form, that is encrypted material.
18. 17 U.S.C. § 1201(a) (2000).
19. 17 U.S.C. § 1201(a)(1)(c) (2000).
20. 13 & 14 Car. H, c. 33, § I (Eng.).
condition for copyright, originality, and no recognition that materials in the public domain can be encrypted along with copyrighted material.
The copyright that was codified in the Licensing Act was a private law copyright of the Stationers’ Company, the London Company of the booktrade.
23. ROBERT ANDREWS, THE COLUMBIA DICTIONARYOF QUOTATIONS 511 (1993) (quoting Lord Acton in Letter, 3 Apr. 1887, to Bishop Mandell Creighton).
24. 13 & 14 Car. II, c. 33, § III (Eng.).
25. 13 & 14 Car. II, c. 33, § VI (Eng.). The provision also provided protection for the printing patent, a copyright that was granted by the sovereign for a fee that existed in addition to the stationers’ copyright. The Printing Patent was not significant in the development of copyright jurisprudence.
The early copyright was a stationers’ copyright in both function and name since it was limited to members of the Company.  It had existed for over a century when the Licensing Act was enacted, and one of the many ironies of copyright is that despite its current status as a concept to protect authors, it was created by tradesmen as a means of maintaining order among themselves in the conduct of their business. The business was the booktrade (from which authors were excluded) and the tradesmen were printers and publishers (called booksellers). An odd set of circumstances gave workmen the power to create copyright, one of the most far reaching legal concepts in history and, arguably, one that is essential for a free society because of its impact learning. The two most influential circumstances were the introduction of the printing press into England by William Caxton in 1471, and the religious schism created by Henry VIII’s break with the Roman Catholic Church in the 1530’s in order to divorce Queen Katherine, the mother of the future Queen Mary, and marry Anne Boleyn, the mother of Mary’s half-sister, the future Queen Elizabeth I.
The first event resulted in a new type of business - the booktrade - and the second was the reason the tradesmen were given a monopoly power to regulate their business. In 1556, Philip and Mary granted a royal charter to the tradesmen called stationers to create the Stationers’ Company, a London Company with unprecedented power to control the publication of books. As a Catholic intent on returning her subjects to the fold of the Holy Mother Church, Mary recognized that an unregulated press was an obstacle to her goal. She also recognized that making the printers and publishers beholden to her by vesting them with the power to control their trade was the most efficient means to keep “heretical, schismatical, blasphemous, seditious and treasonable” books out of the hands of her subjects.  To this end, the stationers were given the power to search out and destroy illegal presses and burn illegal books.
26. “That the custom of endowing a stationer with the copyright of any work he could get hold of, get licensed, and get entered in the Company’s Register might work hardship to the author is evident enough.” W.W. GREG, SOME ASPECTS AND PROBLEMS OF LONDON PUBLISHING BETWEEN 1550 AND 1650 72 (1956).
27. 13 & 14 Car. II, c. 33, § I (Eng.).
Licensing Act had merely confirmed the stationers’ rules in the same way the statute did. They were public law that supported the private copyright law of the company, the only reason the censorship regulations were important to the stationers.
The failure to articulate the proprietary basis of the stationers’ copyright is explained in part by the fact that the common law courts had no role in developing the concept. Consequently, there were no judicial opinions providing direct evidence of the nature of copyright as property. In the absence of direct evidence, circumstances serve the cause of proof.  There is substantial circumstantial evidence that the stationers viewed their copyright as having the characteristics of land ownership applied to the ownership of copies; for example, ownership in perpetuity that could be assigned or devised.
28. The difference between circumstantial and direct evidence is only that the former requires more inferences than the latter (which is proof of itself).
29. I ARBER, .supra note 8.
33. The continuation of the culture was assured when the Protestant Elizabeth I, who succeeded her half-sister Mary in 1558, renewed the charter and continued the policies of press control, albeit in support of a different faith.
34. The stationers’ role as policemen of the press proved to be a substantial benefit to them. To facilitate that role, the sovereigns from time to time promulgated decrees of press control, beginning with Elizabeth I’s Injunctions of 1559. The most notable of these decrees were the Star Chamber Decrees of 1566, 1586, and 1637, each of which produced increasingly restrictive control of the [press. The decree of 1637 was the last of the decrees because the Star Chamber was abolished in 1640, but it had a greater influence than its short existence would indicate, for it was revived in the form of the Licensing Act of 1662, after Charles II returned to the throne. In the meantime, during the Interregnum, Parliament had continued the policy of press control with the Ordinances of 1643, 1647 and 1649, despite John Milton’s plea for a free press, Arropergitica in 1644.
proprietary base of the stationers’ copyright was in the nature of a fee simple property, an inference supported by its two most important characteristics: it existed in perpetuity, and it was freely alienable.  There were two good reasons for these characteristics. First, the sovereign was interested in copyright as a tool of censorship, and its proprietary base determined the efficacy (and efficiency) of copyright for this purpose. Obviously, a term copyright would end the license at the end of the term while a perpetual copyright would continue the license. Second, copyright as a fee simple property was a reward that encouraged the stationers in their role as policemen of the press.
The ultimate test of the proprietary nature of the stationers’ copyright is the form it took and the services it provided. In form it was the ownership of a copy (or manuscript) that entailed the right of exclusive publication in perpetuity. This meant that there would be an owner for all time with the right of exclusive publication, which, of course, entailed the right to prevent others from publishing the work even if the copyright owner did not wish to do so.  These characteristics meant that the stationers’ copyright was a tool that could be used to deny access, to prevent the development of the public domain, and to control learning. More succinctly, the stationers’ copyright was anti-access, anti-public domain, and anti-learning. The use of copyright as a tool of official censorship makes this obvious, but these truisms were lost when the statutory copyright replaced the stationers’ copyright as codified in the Licensing Act.
35. Copyright “was like an estate, ... it was assignable, . [and] after publication, an author, or his assigns, had an exclusive right in perpetuity of multiplying copies.” Donaldson v. Beckett, 1 Eng. Rep. 837 (H.L. 1774) (Mr. Justice Willes).
36. There is, however, evidence that if a stationer did not publish a work he registered, the Company would allow another stationer to print it. See GREG, supra note 26, at 71 (discussing the company’s rule that if a copy were out of print, and the owner did not, after warning, reprint it within six months, the journeymen of the Company should have leave to print it).
37. 8 Ann., c. 19, § I (1710) (Eng.).
right of publication for a limited term. The proprietary basis of copyright changed from a fee simple property to a limited property in the nature of a marketing easement for designated periods of time.
The statute also involved two shrewd political tactics: extension of the extant stationer’s copyrights for twenty-one years, and vesting of copyright in the author. The first tactic mollified the booksellers, who would otherwise have been chagrined to lose their perpetual copyright.  The second placated authors without objection from the booksellers because the new copyright was not available until a book was published, which meant that the booksellers could continue to be copyright owners as assignees of the author and therefore could continue their control of the booktrade.
to return to its original function. The following analysis demonstrates the relationship of the two statutes.
The Statute of Anne provided a scheme for controlling the prices of books  that was obviously patterned after the scheme for licensing books in the Licensing Act. Many of the same officials authorized to license books, for example, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of London, the Chief Justices of the Common law courts and the Chief Baron of the Exchequer, were the officials to whom complaint could be made if the price of a book was too high. The Statute of Anne also provided that it should not be construed to extend to prohibit the importation of books in foreign languages printed beyond the seas.  This provision can be viewed as protection against any recidivistic conduct by reason of the Licensing Act provisions that subjected the importation of books to the control of the licensors  and provided that no English books could be printed or imported from beyond the seas.
44. Ann., c. 19 (Eng.). Sections VI (granting jurisdiction of the Court of Session in Scotland); VIII (providing for the plea of the general issue and special matter in evidence); and X (setting three month statute of limitation).
45. Id Section III (providing for alternative method for entry - by advertisement in the Legal Gatette - if the Clerk of the Stationers’ Company refused to register).
46. Id Section XI (giving the author the right to a renewal term if living at the end of the first term).
47. Licensing Act of 1662, 13 & 14 Car. II, c. 33, § III (Eng.). A qui tam action for a criminal statute, which is what the Licensing Act was in effect, is understandable; but there seems to be no reason other than copying that it should be available for a tort such as copyright infringement.
48. 8 Ann, c. 19, § II (1710) (Eng.).
49. 13 & 14 Car. 11, c. 33, § III (Eng.).
50. 8 Ann., c. 19, § V (1710) (Eng.).
51. 13 & 14 Car. II, c. 33, § XIII (Eng.).
52. 8 Ann., c. 19, § IV (1710) (Eng.).
53. 13 & 14 Car. II, c. 33, § III (Eng.).
54. 8 Ann. c. 19, § VII (1710) (Eng.).
55 13 & 14 Car. II, c. 33, § V (Eng.).
56. Id at § IX.
Read literally, the provision makes no sense, because it negates the other provisions of the statute. Properly interpreted, however, the section meant that the statute was not “to prejudice or confirm” any printing patent, which was a privilege of the exclusive right to print a particular book or books granted by the sovereign.  Proper interpretation, however, was available only when the section was read in light of two provisions of the Licensing Act, sections XVIII and XXII. The former protected the printing patents of Oxford and Cambridge Universities, the latter the printing patents of all patentees.  By 1710, apparently the sovereign had ceased to grant printing patents, and there was no reason to create a controversy over a moribund issue. And it should be noted that the printing patent had no significant role in the development of copyright jurisprudence.
57. 8 Ann., c. 19, § IX (1710) (Eng.).
58. “[T]he saving clause could not refer to any common-law right, because… there existed no common law right. It was merely a salvo to the Universities and all who held under letters patent, which alone could in books or copies give a perpetuity.” Donaldson v. Beckett, 1 Eng. Rep. 837 (H. L.)1774) (Mr. Justice Gould).
Provided always, That nothing in this act contained, shal be construed to extend to the prejudice or infringing of any of the just rights and priviledges of either of the two universities of this realm touching and concerning the licensing or printing of book in either of the said universities.
Provided also, That neither this act, nor any thing there in contained, shall extend to prejudice the just rights and priviledges granted by his Majesty, or any of his royal predecessors, to any person or persons, under his Majesties great seal, or otherwise, but that such person or persons may exercise and use such rights and priviledges as aforesaid, according to their respective grants; any thing in this act to the contrary notwithstanding.
the statute included the purchasers of copies. This meant that the benefits for the author (except the renewal right) accrued to the author’s assignee, that is the publisher.  Even so, there was a little recognized value in vesting the initial copyright in the author. The change protected works in the public domain from being captured by copyright, because it made the condition for the statutory copyright a new (original) work. The limited term, of course, meant that the public domain would be enriched as copyrights expired.
Acceptance of the idea that the Statute of Anne created an author’s copyright is attributable mainly to the arguments of the booksellers - the most powerful group in the booktrade and the 18th century counterpart to today’s copyrightists - in “The Battle of the Booksellers.” This was the epithet applied to a forty-year effort to get the courts to override the limitations of the Statute of Anne by creating a perpetual common law copyright for the author based on natural law. Using natural law as a premise, the lawyers for the booksellers argued that the author, as creator, is entitle to ownership of his creation in perpetuity as a matter of equity and justice.  But the lawyers did not note that few authors live in perpetuity, that corporate booksellers would continue as beneficiaries of the author’s natural law copyright as assignee long after the author’s demise, or that the natural law copyright would substantially limit, if not destroy, the public domain.
The limited proprietary base of the statutory copyright can best be understood by comparing ownership and term. A perpetual copyright for publishers was changed into a temporary copyright for authors. The most important difference, however, may be the new conditions for copyright: the creation and publication of a work. These differences represent a change from a permanent to a temporary property right, and when one analyzes the Statute of Anne, two points become apparent. The statute was a regulatory statute that created the property it regulated. In proprietary terms, the statutory copyright was a temporary easement granted for a particular purpose – learning - upon specified conditions - a new work, a limited term, and publication - that created and protected the public domain.
60. See Millar v. Taylor, 98 Eng. Rep. 201, 205 (justice Willes).
[I]t is just, that an author should reap the pecuniary profits of his own ingenuity and labour. It is just, that another should not use his name, without his consent. It is fit that he should judge when to publish, or whether he ever will publish. It is fit he should not only choose the time, but the manner of publication; how many; what volume; what print. It is fit, he should choose to whose care he will trust the accuracy and correctness of the impression; in whose honesty he will confide, not to foist in additions: with reasoning of other the same effect.
While an analysis of the language of the Statute of Anne makes this clear, subsequent events created a new dimension that distorted the language. These events were the efforts of the booksellers to revive the stationers’ copyright in the form of an author’s common law copyright based on natural law. The efforts were ultimately rejected, but they are very important in understanding the proprietary base of the copyright that the Constitution in article I, section 8, clause 8 empowers Congress to grant.
The booksellers actually achieved their goal in the King’s Bench case of Millar v. Taylor, but their victory was likely more attributable to Chief Justice Mansfield, who had been counsel for the booksellers, ruled in their favor and than to the merits of their claim. Indeed, the infirm logic of the booksellers’ argument about justice for the author explains the ultimate failure of their quest for a revival of the stationers’ copyright in the form of a perpetual common law copyright. The House of Lords in Donaldson v. Beckett  ruled that while the author does own the work he or she creates, that ownership lasts only until publication, after which the author must rely on the copyright statute for his or her rights. The House of Lords thus created the common law copyright, which was merely the right of first publication, not a true copyright, which was the right of continued publication.
The failure of the booksellers’ campaign, however, should not be allowed to obscure the impact of their arguments on copyright jurisprudence. That impact, the popularization of the idea that copyright is an author’s property, obscured the fact that the Statute of Anne was a regulatory, not a proprietary, statute, and that the statutory copyright was basically a regulatory, not a proprietary, concept. The regulatory nature of the early statutory copyright is clearly shown by the ruling in Donaldson v. Beckett that, except for the copyright statute, publication of a book would put it into the public domain for anyone to publish. Logically, then, the rights granted by the copyright statute had to be a matter of regulation, not property.  Or to put the point another way, the regulatory aspects of copyright were superior to the proprietary aspects.  This is because the rights were conditional.
62 It should be noted that the dissenter in Millar, Justice Yates, had been counsel against the booksellers.
63. 1 Eng. Rep. 837 (H.L 1774).
64. The argument as to the regulatory nature of copyright law in the Statute of Anne is clinched by the price control provision of the statute. There is no clearer form of regulation than control of the prices for books.
65. The U.S. Supreme Court makes this point each time it rules, as it often has, that copyright is primarily to benefit the public interest, the author’s interest only secondarily.
An analysis of the Statute of Anne reveals three policies: the promotion of learning because the language so stated; the protection of the public domain because copyright required an original writing and existed only for a limited time (the first condition meant that copyright could not be used to capture public domain works and the second meant that all copyrighted works would go into the public domain); and public access, because the exclusive right was only the right to publish (the statute made publication a condition for copyright).
66. The U.S. Supreme Court in Wheaton v. Peters, 33 U.S. (8 Pet) 591 (1834), determined in effect that the provisions are conditions.
67. U.S. CONST. art. I, § 8, cl. 8.
68. The Statute of Anne used the plural “times” because the statute contained provisions for three copyrights: the extant copyrights were extended for twenty-one years; copyright for books written and not published and to be written in the future were given a term of fourteen years; and the author was given a renewal term of fourteen years if living at the end of the first term.
censorship and anti-monopolistic. A rational inference is that this was because the Stationers/Licensing Act copyright had been a monopoly used as a device of censorship. The most effective way to reject this dual role was to redefine copyright’s purpose as the promotion of learning and to impose three conditions for copyright protection: a new work, a limited term, and publication. The most interesting point about these policies, perhaps, is how well they are integrated as a matter of logic. A condition for learning is access, and between these two policies are the policies necessary for the public domain, the conditions of a new work, and the limited term.
While history makes apparent the utility of the policies and their presence in the Copyright Clause, copyright scholars have by and large ignored them. Two reasons may explain this oversight. First, the promotion of learning literally interpreted would require that a copyrighted work promote learning in fact. But this would result in a content-based copyright and arguably make the copyright statute a law regulating the press. (The requirement of a new (original) work was consistent with this position.) History, however, provides the answer to this conundrum. The promotion of learning was an anti-censorship policy and the requirement for a new work was an anti-monopoly policy to protect the public domain; the Licensing Act made both policies desirable, if not necessary.
The second reason for oversight of the policies is that copyright is so closely identified as the property of the author that a larger purpose - protection of the public domain - has been overlooked. Yet, it is clear that the requirement of an original work and the limited term were protection for the public domain, and arguably the public domain is more important for the promotion of learning than the protection of original works.
The oversight of the copyright policies has been expensive in intellectual terms, for the cost has been the failure to recognize that the policies are in fact free press components of the Copyright Clause. The promotion of learning is a free-press goal; the protection of the public domain is a predicate for a free press; and public access requires a free press. These are lessons from the Licensing Act, the most important of which is that the Copyright Clause complements, and does not contradict, the Free Press Clause. This follows from the fact that, as the Licensing Act demonstrates, the essence of a free press is the right of public access. This is why the Statute of Anne made publication a condition for copyright protection, for the Licensing Act was in fact a printing act to regulate the booktrade in the service of religion and politics. Licensing was merely a predicate for books to which access could be granted.
70. THE RANDOM HOUSE DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 826 (1966).
71. 33 U.S. (8 Pet.) 591, 660-69 (1834).
72. 17 U.S.C. § 106 (2000).
73. The fact that gives force to importance of the licensing argument is the subject of copyright, which is speech, albeit in printed form. Presumably, when the Founders denied Congress the power to regulate the press or speech, they did not intend that Congress delegate the power to copyrightists in the interest of private profit. This is why the Founders understood publication to be a condition for copyright protection. To treat copyright holders as governmental licensees is merely a way of saying that they have responsibilities as well as rights.
that made the Stationers/Licensing Act copyright effective for both monopolistic and censorship purposes was that its proprietary base was treated as being in the nature of fee simple property.
[W] e must recognize that the essential purpose of encryption code is to prevent unauthorized access. Owners of all property rights are entitled to prohibit access to their property by unauthorized persons. Homeowners can install locks on the doors of their houses. Custodians of valuables can place them in safes. Stores can attach to products security devices that will activate alarms if the products are taken away without purchase.
Surely the court did not recognize the import of its language. The DMCA uses copyright law to give effect to the encryption code, and the court says in effect that “the essential purpose of copyright is to prevent unauthorized access” for “[i]n its basic function, copyright is like a lock on a homeowner’s door, a combination of a safe, or a security device attached to a store’s products.”  In this language, we see the ghost of the stationer’s copyright brought back to haunt the public domain and to thwart the constitutional purpose of copyright, the promotion of learning. The error of the court was fundamental. It started with an illogical premise and proceeded logically to an illogical conclusion. The faulty premise was that copyright is property the same as a house, jewels to be put into a safe, and items sold in a department store. The court’s reasoning, of course, was a product of the proprietary culture of the common law legal system.
74. 273 F.3d 429, 452-53 (2d Cir. 2001).
75. See id (emphasis added).
the basis of the booksellers’ greed in the eighteenth century and of the copyrightists’ greed in the twentieth. In the beginning, the idea that copyright is a plenary right in the nature of fee simple property is understandable. Those who create a new proprietary concept give it as broad a reach as possible, especially if the creators are tradesmen whose livelihood depends upon the concept they create, as in the case of copyright. The fortuitous circumstance that printed books became the basis of a trade in a time when unfettered learning was a threat to the welfare of the state gave the members of the trade unusual power in the development of copyright as a plenary property that existed in perpetuity. When freedom of learning ceased to be a threat to the government, it became apparent that copyright as a plenary property primarily served the publisher’s interest and disserved the public interest. The statutory copyright created by the Statute of Anne was the legislative response: a copyright with a limited proprietary base. The ruling in Donaldson v. Beckett that confirmed the limited proprietary base of the statutory copyright was rendered in 1774,  only thirteen years before the Framers used the English statute to write the Copyright Clause of the U.S. Constitution. It is logical to assume, then, that the limited proprietary base of copyright in the U.S. is constitutionally mandated.
76. 1 Eng. Rep. 837.
77. THE RANDOM HOUSE DICTIONARY, supra note 70, at 449.
despite the statutory recognition of the distinction.  Thus, the easement theory comports with the statute as well as common sense.
78. 17 U.S.C. § 202 (2000) (referring to ownership of copyright as “distinct from ownership of material object in which the work is embodied”).
79. 17 U.S.C. § 102(b) (2000).
80. See 17 U.S.C. § 109 (2000).
81. 101 U.S. 99, 101-03 (1879).
82. See 8 Ann., c. 19 (1710) (Eng.).
84.33 U.S. (8 Pet.) 591, 668 (1834).
of the proprietary base for copyright, which occurred in the 1976 Copyright Act. There were two subtle changes (in that their impact was not realized), both related to publication, that expanded the copyright monopoly. The first was to eliminate publication as a condition for copyright, which automatically extended copyright protection to the moment of fixation.  The second was the division of the right of publication into two rights - the right to reproduce in copies and the right to distribute copies publicly. The first change enlarged the proprietary base of copyright by eliminating a restrictive condition; the second multiplied the rights of copyright by division. Both changes were made in disregard of the constitutionally based easement theory of copyright.
85. See 17 U.S.C. § 102 (2000).
86. 273 F.3d 429, 440 (2d Cir. 2001).
87 Donaldson v. Beckett, 1 Eng. Rep. 837 (H.L. 1774).
natural law copyright is that it is an author’s plenary property right, which relieves the copyright holder of any obligations to the public. While the beneficiaries of the statutory copyright are the author, the publisher, and the user, the sole beneficiary of the natural law copyright is the author.
If the U.S. Constitution is to be implemented with integrity in accordance with the principle that the Copyright Clause is a limitation on, as well as a grant of, congressional power, the unconstitutionality of the DMCA is beyond doubt. The statute is a complete repudiation of the constitutional policies that copyright promote learning, protect the public domain, and provide public access. The DMCA thus returns to the anti-learning, anti-public domain, anti-access policies of the Licensing Act.
Congress did not, of course, set out to emulate the English statute. The route leading back to the policies of the Licensing Act was much more subtle. The journey began with the 1976 Copyright Act, which was a codification of the natural law copyright, a topic for another day. To accept the conclusion, however, one need only compare the benefits the statute denied to the public with those conferred on the relatively small class of copyright holders. Consider the pattern of the statute, a grant of exclusive rights to the copyright holder, subject to narrow limitations designed to protect the copyright holder while appearing to benefit the public. Notice, for example, the fourth fair use factor in section 107 - ”the effect of the use upon the potential market or value of the copyrighted work” There are few works that cannot be said to have a potential market in addition to the actual market.
The change in the 1976 Act that paved the way for the DMCA, however, was the transmission copyright that protects the live transmission of television and radio broadcasts.  The DMCA represents the epitome of the transmission copyright. It protects the work only by protecting the transmission, which is directly contrary to the constitutionally mandated policy of public access by publication.
88. 17 U.S.C. § 107(a) (2000) (emphasis added).
89. This result was achieved by several provisions of the statute. See 17 U.S.C. § 101 (definition of “fixed” and “to perform”); § 102 (extension of copyright to work fixed in tangible medium of expression); § 106 (performance right); § 411(b) (allowing subsequent registration for transmission works).
90. 17 U.S.C. § 1201(b) (2000).
91 17 U.S.C. § 1201(a) (2000).

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