I think applying the term "laissez-faire" to "the publishing industry" might be problematic for a couple reasons. First, at that time, publishing (if I'm recalling properly from a 1998 seminar on publishing) was almost entirely confined to religious and academic texts, and to atlases. So thinking about a "cultural vacuum" might be kinda weird. Second, capitalism was barely underway at the time (Adam Smith wouldn't publish Wealth of Nations until 1776), and most economies were still highly mercantile, which renders modern conceptions of an "industry" and the free market troublesome. (As Neal Stephenson recently reminded us in his Baroque Trilogy, commerce itself is a technology, with a history.) Still, I'd be interested to hear what you discover. . .
--
Mike
http://www.vitia.org/

mre's cautions on needing to understand copyright and book history in general in its historical context. Another concern I'd raise is your reading of Ewing's two sentences "Chaos ensued. The book trade went from a tightly regulated enterprise to a wide-open free-for-all" as either "anarchy" or "blissful freedom." It could have been a lot of other things in addition to or instead of. Concepts such as capitalism, laissez-faire government, cultural production, professional authors (authors who could make a living doing nothing but writing for a market) were all different than they are now. In fact, all these things developed together. Other models or conceptions of copyright or any of these other concepts could have emerged, but one cannot forget that they are intimately tied to one another. To just focus on a single issue (copyright) during a short period of time (1692-1709) in a particular local (England) and make broad generalizations (book production seems to have thrived during this period so copyright is unnecessary) -- I realize you haven't done this -- is almost always going to produce seriously flawed scholarship. They study of book (print) culture/book history is the study of an ecology and it needs to be treated as such.

Of oral/manuscript/print/digital culture, I'm weakest in print culture. However, while I strongly believe and regularly argue that we need to be more historical in such studies, even if our focus is just one culture, I'm also keenly aware of how wrong just a bit of knowledge can go. Particularly in relation to people making arguments about digital culture, I regularly come across scholars who haven't done their homework well and base their arguments on complete misunderstandings or misconceptions of oral/manuscript/print culture. Because these publications are reviewed pre and post publication by other digital culture scholars and editors, these basic mistakes are missed and then other scholars rely upon the flawed historical surveys/assumptions/assertions in their own scholarship.

One such example is Beth Daniels failure to understand Walter Ong's distinctions between oral discourse, primary orality, residual orality, and secondary orality. For her, oral communication is oral communication and that leads her to compare a 20th Century highly literate person's oral discourse with that of Ong's description of the psychodynamics of primary orality and declare Ong wrong. In the past 20 years or so, there are now hundreds of scholarly articles and books that rely upon Daniels' portrayal of Ong than of what Ong actually says.

Another such example, one I came across this week, is in Kathleen Tyner's Literacy in a Digital World. Although I've just briefly skimmed the book, I can list a number of problems. On pages 13-15, her summary of M.T. Clanchy's From Memory to Written Record: England 1066-1307, she regularly conflates "writing" and "print," which leads her to write such sentences as "medieval citizens did not trust the printed word" (14). A careful scholar, one who is keenly aware of the differences between a chirographic culture and a print culture, would have used "written word," as Clanchy does. And on pages 54-55, she repeats the misconception a la Daniels that Ong and McLuhan, because they argue that printing emphasized the visual "that there is a clean divide between oral and print culture" (55). Anyone who has paid any attention while Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue, The Presence of the Word, Orality and Literacy, or any other of a hundred or so publications by Ong knows that Ong never suggests a clean divide between oral and print culture (a statement in itself is absurd because it ignores chirographic/manuscript culture) but instead suggests a slow progression through time with much intermingling and interaction throughout.

Essentially, I think your dissertation sounds great and investigating this particular issue, this period in which copyright didn't exist, is well worth pursuing. It just needs to be done ecologically. Because, really, if the only point is to prove that copyright isn't needed for cultural production, all you need to do is point to pre-copyright cultural production of oral and chirographic culture. They certainly weren't periods of cultural vacuum. But the social, economic, and political conditions and practices that supported cultural production in those pre-copyright eras were different than those of Western European print culture (which, really, can be divided into at least two epochs of its own -- 20th Century print culture is not 17th Century print culture), and both are different from the social, economic, and political conditions and practices that support cultural production today.

Regarding studies. If you're looking for studies specifically on 1692-1709 or about copyright, I don't have anything for you. But if you want titles on Early Modern print culture/book history, email me at walterj at slu.edu and I'll either email them to you or post them here (I'm more of a weekly/semi-weekly Kairosnews reader and may not notice a response here quickly).

Ewing also hasn't taken into much consideration the system that accompanied early notions of copyright -- patronage. Authors and texts were often put under the protection of royal & aristocratic & church patrons. Not exactly a laissez-faire approach to the control of texts! As you likely know already, Milton's Aeropagitica is a major statement against censorship:
http://www.worldwideschool.org/library/books/socl/socialconcerns/Areopag...

Also, Ewing overlooks a major scholar in the area: Martha Woodmansee
http://www.cwru.edu/artsci/engl/html/woodmansee.html

Good luck on the dissertation!

Thanks, Klunsford and John, for your excellent responses to the post. Actually, my dissertation isn't solely on this topic; I just thought it might be an interesting topic to cover. I'm well aware of Woodmansee's work and countless other folks. There's a nice connection between Woodmansee and Jaszi's work and Andrea Lunsford and Lisa Ede's. The latter talk a lot about applying the critique of authorship and "intellectual property" to teaching composition and collaboration; it's fascinating stuff.

The reason I used the term "laissez-faire" for this period is that the stationer's guild had a monopoly over all publication before 1692. They had books approved by the Crown. Censorship was an integral part of this arrangement. However, in 1692 the House of Lords decided not to renew the Stationer's license, so for a chunk of time there was nothing in place that we might consider "copyright." Now, censorship is another matter--of course, I'm certain that documents heavily criticizing the administration or the like would probably have still landed the author (if traceable) into a heap of trouble.

What concerns me is that I can't locate a historical source that examines the publishing industry during this time. I've read that there were heavy protests from the Stationer's and authors, and that eventually those concerns manifested themselves in the famous Statute of Anne in 1709. What I'd be curious to know is how much the printers and authors were actually suffering in the meantime, and, more importantly, how the reading public was affected by the lack of formal protection for copyright holders.

Hi Matt!

Thought you might want to check out an article reported on DocuTicker yesterday; the RIAA together with the IIPA (the Int'l Intellectual Property Alliance) have submitted a report to the US Trade Representative for "identifying copyright problems [in] more than 60 countries." I haven't had time to read it yet, but I have some immediate problems with the language that is flattening out and conflating terms of industry with culture and social with economic needs.

Here's the DocuTicker's synopsis of the press release:

Monday, February 14, 2005

International Intellectual Property Alliance 2005 Special 301 Report on Global Copyright Protection and Enforcement

Intellectual Property

Source: International Intellectual Property Alliance

International Intellectual Property Alliance 2005 Special 301 Report on Global Copyright Protection and Enforcement

From press release: "The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), together with associations representing other sectors of the U.S. copyright industry, who collectively constitute the International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA), today filed a report with United States Trade Representative (USTR) identifying copyright problems more than 60 countries. The report was submitted under a provision of trade law known as 'Special 301' through which USTR identifies countries whose performance in the protection of intellectual property is inadequate. Identification under Special 301 can have a number of ramifications, and can lead to the imposition of sanctions (for countries identified as Priority Foreign Countries), the suspension of trade benefits under programs such as General System of Preferences, the initiation of disputes in the World Trade Organization or under other regional and/or bilateral agreements."

posted by Shirl @ 12:15 PM  

Here's the direct link to the pdf of the press release: http://www.iipa.com/pressreleases/2005_Feb9_PRC_OCR_Press_Release.pdf .

Best!

:-D.

http://www.deanya.com/

This is a classic example of how the RIAA and other industry-supporting organizations do not have the best interests of the public in mind when they talk about "problems." The problems they identify are problems for the power elite who prospers under these conditions, not the people who would enjoy or profit from greater access to copyrighted materials. As America moves ever closer to an "information economy" reliant on copyright, patent, trademark, and contract law to keep itself afloat, we will see an extension and solidification of that awful barrier between strong and weak countries.

I would be very interested to see if some countries that are hostile to the United States, such as North Korea, might decide to cease obeying all of these "international" agreements about protecting "intellectual property" and allow their people freedom. I've heard that these laws are rather loosely enforced in China, and, from all accounts, this situation has led to rich innovation rather than a return to the Middle Ages. I certainly don't blame countries struggling to feed and provide decent medical care to their populations who find it necessary to break or ignore the rather draconian "intellectual property" law we suffer here in the US.

When North Korea starts acting to allow its citizens more freedom, we'll all have something to celebrate. I understand the sentiment, but compared to North Korea's policies on social and intellectual activities, America's intellectual property rights laws are positively benign.

And, um, the Middle Ages weren't a cultural wasteland devoid of innovation. Among other things, the Middle Ages gave us the printing press itself. I can't help but think your example would have worked much better if you'd said something like "rather than a return to the days of Mao and the 'Cultural Revolution.' And no, I'm not anti-communist, just anti-totalitarian. :)

Thanks, John. I've actually been studying the Medieval universities quite a bit lately (and the history of publishing), so I should've known better than to abuse the term in that manner. I was actually going to ask you if you had any information about the process by which Medieval scholars became doctors (i.e., the Medieval equivalent of our "dissertation" process). I've found some vague information, but nothing really enlightening.

The reason I mentioned North Korea was that I read somewhere (I guess it must have been in Lessig's work) that, while we were concerned about Hussein because he invaded a neighboring country, we would've been far more concerned if he was ignoring our "intellectual property laws" and allowing Iraqi publishers to make "illegal" copies of "protected" works. In other words, the threat to our nation (or, at least, the power elite) represented by the violation of our "intellectual property laws" is greater than the threat poised by a nuclear weapon or one country's invasion of another.

For instance, suppose that North Korea began manufacturing expensive drugs that are protected by powerful US patents and kept at extremely high rates. They could send them to their own people, but perhaps also sell them to other countries that desperately need them. However, the US would level trade sanctions, and, if that failed, would undoubtedly invade the offending country and, er, "liberate" their people.

As the US continues to move from an industrial nation to an "information nation," enforcing the tolls and licensing fees for use of its "intellectual property" will become increasingly critical to our economy. There's no doubt in my mind that wars will be fought over it.