Editing Copyright (section)

=== Conception ===
The concept of copyright first developed in [[England]]. In reaction to the printing of "scandalous books and pamphlets", the [[Parliament of England|English Parliament]] passed the [[Licensing of the Press Act 1662]],<ref name=histpersp/> which required all intended publications to be registered with the government-approved [[Worshipful Company of Stationers and Newspaper Makers|Stationers' Company]], giving the Stationers the right to regulate what material could be printed.<ref>{{Cite journal |doi=10.1086/677787 |title=''Cum privilegio'': Licensing of the Press Act of 1662 |journal=The Library Quarterly |volume=84 |issue=4 |pages=494–500 |url=https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/1/17219056/1/677787.pdf |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20221009/https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/1/17219056/1/677787.pdf |archive-date=9 October 2022 |url-status=live |year=2014 |last1=Nipps |first1=Karen |s2cid=144070638  | issn=0024-2519}}</ref>

The [[Statute of Anne]], enacted in 1710 in England and Scotland, provided the first legislation to protect copyrights (but not authors' rights). The [[Copyright Act 1814]] extended more rights for authors but did not protect British publications from being reprinted in the US. The [[Berne convention|Berne International Copyright Convention]] of 1886 finally provided protection for authors among the countries who signed the agreement, although the US did not join the Berne Convention until 1989.<ref name=":2">{{Cite journal|last=Day O'Connor|first=Sandra|date=2002|title=Copyright Law from an American Perspective|journal=Irish Jurist|volume=37|pages=16–22|jstor=44027015}}</ref>

In the US, the Constitution grants Congress the right to establish copyright and patent laws. Shortly after the Constitution was passed, Congress enacted the ''[[Copyright Act of 1790]]'', modeling it after the Statute of Anne. While the national law protected authors' published works, authority was granted to the states to protect authors' unpublished works. The most recent major overhaul of copyright in the US, the ''[[Copyright Act of 1976]]'', extended federal copyright to works as soon as they are created and "fixed", without requiring publication or registration. State law continues to apply to unpublished works that are not otherwise copyrighted by federal law.<ref name=":2" /> This act also changed the calculation of copyright term from a fixed term (then a maximum of fifty-six years) to "life of the author plus 50 years". These changes brought the US closer to conformity with the Berne Convention, and in 1989 the United States further revised its copyright law and joined the Berne Convention officially.<ref name=":2" />

Copyright laws allow products of creative human activities, such as literary and artistic production, to be preferentially exploited and thus incentivized. Different cultural attitudes, social organizations, economic models and legal frameworks are seen to account for why copyright emerged in Europe and not, for example, in Asia. In the [[Middle Ages]] in Europe, there was generally a lack of any concept of literary property due to the general relations of production, the specific organization of literary production and the role of culture in society. The latter refers to the tendency of oral societies, such as that of Europe in the medieval period, to view knowledge as the product and expression of the collective, rather than to see it as individual property. However, with copyright laws, intellectual production comes to be seen as a product of an individual, with attendant rights. The most significant point is that patent and copyright laws support the expansion of the range of creative human activities that can be commodified. This parallels the ways in which [[capitalism]] led to the [[commodification]] of many aspects of social life that earlier had no monetary or economic value per&nbsp;se.<ref>Bettig, Ronald V. (1996). ''Copyrighting Culture: The Political Economy of Intellectual Property. Westview Press''. p. 9–17. {{ISBN |0-8133-1385-6 }}.</ref>

Copyright has developed into a concept that has a significant effect on nearly every modern industry, including not just literary work, but also forms of creative work such as [[Sound recording and reproduction|sound recordings]], [[film]]s, [[photograph]]s, [[software]], and [[architecture]].