The first copyright law

Today copyright protects the creators right to decide on their original works, who can access it and under what forms. This haven't always been the case, and the first copyright law was enacted 1710 in Great Britain. This law was called the Statute of Anne. The law granted 14 years of legal protection to support authors’ livelihood. There after it became public property.

The Statute of Anne changed copyright from being a private rule for publishers to a public law that protected authors.

A common understanding

The Berne Convention (Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works), started off as an international assembly held in 1886, where ten European countries agreed on a set of legal principles to protect original work. This was to create an agreements for a uniform, border-crossing system. Although the rules have been updated many times since then, the treaty gives creators, a way to control the terms for how their works are used.

In August 2023, the treaty had been signed by 181 countries.

Author' rights

Most of the world refer to these rules as copyright, some European countries refer to them as author' rights (from French: droits d'auteur) or makerright (German: Urheberrecht)*.

Information about the copyright history is shared under CC BY-SA 4.0 international license

A short story of copyright