From Cave Paintings to the Internet A Chronological and Thematic Database on the History of Information and Media Law / Copyrights / Patents Timeline

"The Code of Ur-Nammu is the oldest known tablet containing a law code surviving today. It was written in the Sumerian language ca. 2100-2050 BC. Although the preface directly credits the laws to king Ur-Nammu of Ur (2112-2095 BC), some historians think they should rather be ascribed to his son Shulgi.

"The first copy of the code, in two fragments found at Nippur, was translated by Samuel Kramer in 1952; owing to its partial preservation, only the prologue and 5 of the laws were discernible. Further tablets were found in Ur and translated in 1965, allowing some 40 of the 57 laws to be reconstructed. Another copy found in Sippar contains slight variants.

"Although it is known that earlier law-codes existed, such as the Code of Urukagina, this represents the earliest legal text that is extant. It predated the Code of Hammurabi by some three centuries.

"The laws are arranged in casuistic form of if-(crime), then-(punishment) — a pattern to be followed in nearly all subsequent codes. For the oldest extant law-code known to history, it is considered remarkably advanced, because it institutes fines of monetary compensation for bodily damage, as opposed to the later lex talionis (‘eye for an eye’) principle of Babylonian law; however, the capital crimes of murder, robbery, adultery and rape are punished with death.

"The code reveals a glimpse at societal structure during the 'Sumerian Renaissance'. Beneath the lu-gal ('great man' or king), all members of society belonged to one of two basic strata: The 'lu' or free person, and the slave (male, arad; female geme). The son of a lu was called a dumu-nita until he married, becoming a 'young man' (gurus). A woman (munus) went from being a daughter (dumu-mi), to a wife (dam), then if she outlived her husband, a widow (nu-ma-su) who could remarry" (Wikipedia article on Code of Ur-Nammu, accessed 02-04-2009).

The Code of Hammurabi  is the best-preserved ancient law code. It was enacted by the sixth Babylonian king, Hammurabi, and inscribed on stelae displayed in temples around the Babylonian Empire. Of these only one example survives, inscribed on a seven foot, four inch tall basalt stone slab or stele, preserved in the Louvre.

"The stele containing the Code of Hammurabi was discovered in 1901 by the Egyptologist Gustav Jéquier, a member of the expedition headed by Jacques de Morgan. The stele was discovered in what is now Khūzestān, Iran (ancient Susa, Elam), where it had been taken as plunder by the Elamite king Shutruk-Nahhunte in the 12th century BC. . . .

"At the top of the stele is a bas-relief image of a Babylonian god (either Marduk or Shamash), with the king of Babylon presenting himself to the god, with his right hand raised to his mouth as a mark of respect.[1] The text covers the bottom portion with the laws written in Akkadian language cuneiform script. The text has been broken down by translators into 282 laws, but this division is arbitrary, since the original text contains no divisional markers" (Wikipedia article on Code of Hammurabi, accessed 02-04-2009).

The Code of Hammurabi applied to medical practice as it mentioned "fees payable to a physician following successful treatment; these varied according to the station of the patient. Similarly, the punishment for the failure of an operation is set out. At least this shows that in Babylon 4000 years ago the medical professional had advanced far enough in public esteeem to warrant the payment of adequate fees" (J. Norman [ed], Morton's Medical Bibliography 5th ed [1991] no. 1).

On 02-04-2009 I was able to access a special video and sound presentation in English on the Code of Hammurabi stele from the Louvre website at this link.

"By the fourth century, the use of parchment for books was so widespread in the West that we can speak of a general transition from papyrus to parchment in the book-making process. This was of decisive importance for the preservation of literature because only very few papyrus fragments from medieval libraries have survived, since the European climate is inimical to this material. Nonetheless, in the sixth century AD the law codes of Justinian I were distributed from Byzantium in papyrus as well as in parchment manuscripts. One of the latest western papyrus books preserved (c. saec. VII-VIII) [circa 7-8th century] is a Luxeuil codex containing works of Augustine, in which interleaved parchment leaves protect the middle and the outside of the gatherings" (Bischoff, Latin Palaeography, Antiquity and the Middle Ages [1990] 8).

In a law Concerning Jews, Heaven-Worshippers, and Samaritans, the Emperor Constantine decrees:

"We wish to make it known to the Jews and their elders and their patriarchs that if, after the enactment of this law, any one of them dares to  attack with stones or some other manifestation of anger another who  has fled their dangerous sect and attached itself to the worship of God [Christianity]  he must speedily be given to the flames and burnt together with all his accomplices.

"Moreover, if any one of the population should join  their abominable sect and attend their meetings, he will bear with them deserved penalties" (Marcus, The Jew in the Medieval World. A Sourcebook: 315-1791, rev. ed. [1999] 4).

The Babylonian Talmud is composed by the late 5th or early 6th  centuries, no later than c. 542 when the Black Plague appears in Byzantium.

The Babylonian Talmud comprises more than 1.8 million words. "To put this figure in context, it should be compared to the other major and magisterial legal compilation of the period, the Digest of the Roman emperor Justinian I, which contains roughly 800,000 words.

"Far beyond any other legal compilation of Late Antiquity, the Babylonian Talmud is marked by a salient characteristic, its continuous and unending dialogue. The debates are not haphazard. Certain authorities who were contemporaries or near-contemporaries debate all sorts of issues related to the Mishnah, issues that are sometimes only remotely relevant to them personally.

"Some statistics will give us an idea of what is happening. The Babylonian Talmud is the creation of at least seven generations of Babylonian authorities, and contains several generations of Israeli
authorities as well. However, of the hundreds of authorities mentioned by name, more than forty thousand times in toto, only a dozen or so dominate the discussion and are scattered in pairs. Chronologically, Rav and Samuel, R. Óuna and R. Óisda, R. Naòman and R. Sheshet or R. Yehuda, Abaye and Rava, R. Papa and R. Óuna b. R. Joshua, and R. Ashi overwhelmingly carry forward the debate.

"These debates are often arranged as structured discussions on a given topic, so that they appear to be stenographic records of actual debates. This appearance is literary only, however, as few of these
authorities lived in close proximity" (Yaakov Ulman, "The Babylonian Talmud in its Historical Context",  Printing the Talmud: From Bomberg to Schottenstein, 20-21, http://www.printingthetalmud.org/essays/2.html, accessed 12-05-2208).

Thinking that the curriculum is contrary to Christian teachings, Emperor Justinian I closes the last surviving classical school at Athens, causing Constantinople to become the capital of Greek culture.

About this time Justinian appointed a commission of scholars to codify 2000 volumes of legal works, some dating back about 1000 years.

This condensation formed the Corpus Juris Civilis. Known as the Code of Justinian, the Corpus Juris Civilis became the basis for civil law in western Europe.

"This code compiled, in the Latin language, all of the existing imperial constitutiones (imperial pronouncements having the force of law), back to the time of Hadrian. It used both the Codex Theodosianus and the fourth-century collections embodied in the Codex Gregorianus and Codex Hermogenianus, which provided the model for division into books that were divided into titles. These codices had developed authoritative standing."

"Justinian's Corpus Juris Civilis was distributed in the West but was lost sight of; it was scarcely needed in the comparatively primitive conditions that followed the secession of Italy from the Byzantine empire in 8th century. The only western province where the Justinianic code was effectively introduced was Italy, following its recovery by Byzantine armies (Pragmatic Sanction of 554), but a continuous tradition of Roman law in medieval Italy has not been proven. Historians disagree on the precise way it was recovered in Northern Italy about 1070: perhaps it was waiting unneeded and unnoticed in a library until the legal studies that were undertaken on behalf of papal authority that was central to the Gregorian Reform of Pope Gregory VII led to its accidental rediscovery. Aside from the Littera Florentina, a 6th-century codex of the Pandects that was preserved at Pisa, apparently without ever being publicly consulted, (and removed to Florence after Florence conquered Pisa in 1406), there may have been other manuscript sources for the text that began to be taught at Bologna, by Pepo and then by Irnerius. The latter's technique was to read a passage aloud, which permitted his students to copy it, then to deliver an excursus explaining and illuminating Justinian's text, in the form of glosses. Irnerius's pupils, the so-called Four Doctors of Bologna, were among the first of the "glossators" who established the curriculum of Roman law. The tradition was carried on by French lawyers, known as the Ultramontani, in the 13th century. 

"The merchant classes of Italian communes required law with a concept of equity and which covered situations inherent in urban life better than the primitive Germanic oral traditions. The provenance of the Code appealed to scholars who saw in the Holy Roman Empire a revival of venerable precedents from the classical heritage. The new class of lawyers staffed the bureaucracies that were beginning to be required by the princes of Europe. The University of Bologna, where Justinian's Code was first taught, remained the dominant centre for the study of law through the High Middle Ages" (Wikipedia article on Corpus Juris Civilis, accessed 01-02-2010).

The codex called the Littera Florentina or Codex Florentinus is written during these years. It is the closest survivor to an official version of the Digesta or Pandectae portion of the Corpus Juris Civilis, the digest of Roman law promulgated by Justinian I for the first time in 529, of which no copies survived. What survived was the revised edition of 533-34.

"The codex, of 907 leaves, is written in the Byzantine-Ravenna uncials characteristic of Constantinople, but which has recently been recognized in legal and literary texts produced in Alexandria and the Levant. Close scrutiny dates the manuscript between the official issuance in 533 and 557, making it an all-but contemporary and all-but official source.

"Marginal notes suggest that the codex was in Amalfi—part of the Byzantine territory in Italy governed by the Exarchate of Ravenna in the 6th century— and that it passed to Pisa in the 12th century; the codex was part of the war booty removed from Pisa to Florence after the war of 1406. The manuscript became one of Florence's most treasured possessions. It was only shown to very important persons. Scholarly access was difficult. It took more than three centuries before a reliable edition of the Littera Florentina was finally made available."

"The importance of the manuscript lies in the fact that is an almost unique witness of the original Justinian Digest. Most medieval manuscripts of the Digest have a substantially different text. Its sudden reappearance in the late eleventh or early twelfth century has been much debated by legal historians" (Wikipedia article on Littera Florentina, accessed 12-05-2008).

"A compilation of pre-classical and classical Roman law (written before 245 c.e.), the work was culled from some three thousand books of the Roman jurisconsults and comprises 800,000 words. It is important to note that many of these quotations had been altered during the nearly three centuries of their transmission from the end of the classical period in the middle of the third century. The sources of the Babylonian Talmud, transmitted orally, were also subject to changes in wording, context, and, occasionally, substance.

"The Digest was the major constituent of Justinian’s Code, which we have only in its second edition, completed in 534 by the Roman Jurist, Tribonian. Tribonian headed a committee of sixteen Byzantine law professors, and accomplished this daunting task in just three years. In addition, the Code contained the Institutes, a first-year textbook for law students who would enter the emperor’s bureaucracy trained in his version of Roman law, and the Fifty Decisions, which was supposed
to adjudicate all outstanding differences of opinion. The entire work thus runs to about one million words, and is restricted to civil, or private, law" ((Yaakov Ulman, The Babylonian Talmud in its Historical Context IN: Printing the Talmud: From Bomberg to Schottenstein, 19, http://www.printingthetalmud.org/essays/2.html, accessed 12-05-2208).

The Breviarum Alarici (Breviary of Alaric, Breviarium Alaricianum or Lex Romana Visigothorum), written in southern France in the sixth century, is one of the earliest surviving manuscript codices of Roman law. The text was compiled by order of Alaric II, King of the Visigoths, with the advice of his bishops and nobles, in 506, the twenty-second year of his reign.

"It applied, not to the Visigothic nobles under their own law, which had been formulated by Euric, but to the Hispano-Roman and Gallo-Roman population, living under Visigoth rule south of the Loire and, in Book 16, to the members of the Trinitarian Catholic Church. (The Visigoths were Arian and maintained their own clergy.)

"It comprises:

◊"sixteen books of the Codex Theodosianus;

◊"the Novels of Theodosius II, Valentinian III, Marcian, Majorian and Libius Severus

◊"the Institutes of Gaius

◊"five books of the Sententiae Receptae of Julius Paulus

◊"thirteen titles of the Gregorian code;

◊"two titles of the Hermogenian code

◊"and a fragment of the first book of the Responsa Papiniani" (Wikipedia article on Breviary of Alaric, accessed 01-03-2010).

The codex is preserved in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek (Clm 22501).

According to Bernhard Bischoff, the production of manuscripts and evidence of interest in books does not begin in Germany until the "last third of the eight century, just before the reign of Charlemagne. Few books written before this period were preserved in cathedral libaries. A codex written toward the year 700 for Basinus, who was perhaps the bishop of Trier, is preserved in the Biblioteca Vallicelliana. Two manuscripts of canon law, one written in South France at the time of Gregory the Great, the other wirtten about a century later in Northumbria, are still the property of the Cathedral of Colgne, to which they probably already belong in the eighth century" (Manuscripts and Libraries in the Age of Charlemagne [2007] 18).

When I accessed the website of German rare book and manuscript dealer Dr. Jörn Gunther on 06-16-2009 I found the following manuscript offered for sale under the heading, "The Oldest Western European Codex in Private Hands."

The history of the writing of this manuscript as understood through its palaeography described below, the texts which it contains, and the details of its provenance reflect significant aspects of Carolingian manuscript production, and the history of collecting medieval manuscripts. Here is Dr. Gunther's description:

"Canones conciliorum. Manuscript on vellum, written by an insular scribe. Northern Italy, c.775.

"223 x 175 mm. 94 leaves. Internally complete, lacking one gathering at the beginning and some leaves at the end. The quires are signed with Roman numbers from II-XIII.– Written space fol.1-64v:165 x 130 mm, on fol. 65-94v: 175 x 135 mm, ruled in blind for one column of 24-25 and 19-20 lines. fol. 1-60v written in half uncials and precarolingian minuscules, fol. 61-94v in precarolingian minuscules in olive grey, light brown and dark brown ink. Many capitals in uncial with simple decoration with penwork ornament, including one initial in a form of a fish.– In fine condition for a volume of such antiquity. Right upper corner on fol.70 torn away with some loss of text.– 19th-century brown morocco by the Parisian bookbinder Marcelin Lortic.

"PROVENANCE:

"1. The codex was written by an insular scribe from Ireland or Northumbria, working in Northern Italy.

2. Monastery of Reichenau in Germany (at an early date).

3. Bound in Paris by Marcellin Lortic who opened his shop in the Rue St Honoré in 1840.

4. Ms. 17.849 of the collection of Sir Thomas Phillipps (1792-1872); his oldest western manuscript and one of Phillipps's greatest treasures.

5. William Robinson Ltd., cat. 81: Precious Manuscripts, Historic Documents and Rare Books, London 1950, no. 92.

6. Dr. Martin Bodmer, Geneva, Switzerland (1899-1971).

7. Peter and Irene Ludwig, Aachen, ms.XIV 1 (1978-1983).

8. The J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu (1983-1988).

9. Now: Private collection, Europe.

"TEXT:

"fol.1-58: Canones Conciliorum– fol.58-77v: Symmachiana, so-called ‘Symmachian forgeries’– fol.77v-94v: Decretals of Siricius, Boniface I, Innocent I, Zosimus, and Celestine I; end of text missing. Following the death of Pope Gelasius I († 496) Dionysius Exiguus (c.470- c.555), a skythian monk in Rome, was commissioned by the papal court to compile the ‘Collectio Dionysiana’ which united the canons of the councils and papal decretals. This anthology was the first compilation of this kind carried out in the Western Church and forms the foundation of Western Latin canon law. The compilation of Dionysius exists in three editions of which the codex at issue represents the so-called ‘Dionysiana II’. Manuscripts of the ‘Dionysiana II’ are rare uncombined with other texts, while only one codex preserved as a complete book is of an earlier date: ms.fol.v.II.3 in St Petersburg (Rossijskaja Nacionalnaja Biblioteka), a Burgundian codex dating from the 7th century (CLA 11 no.1061). Apart from this manuscript only a fragment in the Biblioteca Amploniana in Erfurt (Ampl.2°74) can be dated earlier having been written during the second half of the 6th century, presumably in Italy.

"After the Canones Conciliorum there follows as an insert, which cannot be found in this form in comparable collections, the so-called ‘Symmachian forgeries’, dating from thetime of Pope Symmachus (498-514; see Landau 1998). He was elected pope after the death of Anastasius II by a certain faction; a second faction declared the archpriest Laurence as pontiff. As a result of the turmoil which followed the elections, the ‘Symmachian forgeries were written, which strove to demonstrate by means of fictitious papal case files that the pope would not be subject to a human court of justice, but solely to the judgment of God.

"The third component of the book comprises decretals compiled under the pontificate of Pope Hormisdas (514-523) and contains the complete corpus of the old canon law, which consisted of the decrees of the Middle Eastern, Greek, African and Roman councils as well as those of the popes. The compilation is known as the Sanblasianus edition, because it was edited on the basis of a manuscript which first belonged to St. Blasien in the Black Forest and then to St. Paul in Lavanttal (Stiftsbibliothek, cod.7/1). Only seven manuscripts of this edition are preserved, three of which are older than the present codex (Paris, BN, lat. 3836, dating from the second half of the 8th century; Cologne, Dombibliothek, ms.213 dating from the first third of the 8th century and the Sanblasianus, which also dates from the mid-8th century). The oldest manuscript within the group (Cologne, Dombibliothek, ms.213) was written in Northumbria and brought to Cologne in the 8th century.

"The Canones conciliorum gained such an importance in subsequent decades that the text was duplicated again and again in the Frankish empire and from this later period over 100 manuscripts are preserved in the Frankish area alone. The codex was written by three different scribes. The main scribe (fol.2-60v) wrote the Canones conciliorum as well as the opening of the ‘Symmachian forgeries’. Palaeographic analysis reveals that this scribe came to the continent from an insular scriptorium and finally settled in northern Italy. It is not ascertainable, however, in which northern Italian scriptorium the manuscript was written. The palaeographic indications cannot be used to date the manuscript to a specific year, but it is very likely that it was executed in the years around 775, making the present manuscript contemporary with the famous copy of the Canones compilation, the so-called Dionysio-Hadriana,which was presented to the Frankish ruler Charlemagne (768-814) by Pope Hadrian I (772-795) in Rome in 774. After the presentation, the wording of the statute book was made compulsory for the Frankish empire, and numerous transcripts of the codex, originally kept in Aachen and now lost, were produced."

Note: I reformatted the description somewhat for this database, and left out the bibliographical references cited at the end of Dr. Gunther's description. The web page, which may be accessed at the link under Dr. Gunther's name at the beginning of this database entry, also reproduces three images of the manuscript. The hyperlinks are my additions.

According to the Codices Latini Antiquiores, 264 manuscript books or fragments survive of texts written in Latin before 800 CE.

"Of these 264 only a tenth (26) are secular works, and most of these of a technical nature. Eight of them are legal texts, 8 are medical, 6 are works of grammar, 1 is a gromatic text. It is clear from the historical evidence that the basic arts of life went on; education, law, medicine and the surveying necessary to administration and the levying of taxes still required manuals and works of reference, and these needs are duly reflected in the pattern of manuscript survival" (Reynolds, Texts and Transmission [1983] xvi).

In January 1215 a group of English barons demanded a charter of liberties and protection against arbitrary behavior by King John.

In May the barons took up up arms and captured London.

"By 10 June both parties met and held negotiations at Runnymede, a meadow by the River Thames. The concessions made by King John were outlined in a document known as the 'Articles of the Barons', to which the King's great seal was attached, and on 19 June the barons renewed their oaths of allegiance to the King. Meanwhile the royal chancery produced a formal royal grant, based on the agreements reached at Runnymede, which became known as Magna Carta (Latin for 'the Great Charter')."

Four copies of the original Magna Carta grant survive. Two from the library of Sir Robert Cotton are preserved in the British Library. The others are in the cathedral archives at Lincoln and Salisbury. According to contemporary chronicles, copies were sent out from the royal chancery to bishops, sheriffs and others throughout the land, but the exact number of copies distributed is unknown.

• The original text of Magna Carta was first printed from one of the Cottonian copies roughly 500 years later, in 1733, perhaps to safeguard the text. In 1731 one of Cotton's copies had been damaged in a fire which destroyed other manuscripts from Cotton's library then stored at Ashburnham House. The first edition was engraved and printed on vellum as a facsimile of the original by John Pine, an engraver and publisher of prints and illustrated books.

• You can view a virtual copy of Magna Carta at the British Library website at this link (accessed  05-17-2009).

One of the first prose works in the Low German (Middle Saxon) language, The Sachsenspiegel ("Saxon Mirror"),  is the most important law book and legal code of the German Middle Ages. "Written ca. 1220 as a record of existing law, it was used in parts of Germany until as late as 1900, and is important not only for its lasting effect on German law, but also as an early example of written German prose, as the first large legal document to be written in German, instead of Latin. A Latin edition is known to have existed, but only fragmented chapters remain."

"Four (of the original seven) illuminated manuscript copies are still extant. They are named after their present locations: Heidelberg, Oldenburg, Dresden, and Wolfenbüttel, and date from about 1300 to 1370."

"The Sachsenspiegel is believed to have been compiled and translated from Latin by the Saxon administrator Eike von Repgow at the behest of his liege lord Graf Hoyer von Falkenstein in the years 1220 to 1235. Where the original was compiled is unclear. It was thought to have been written at Burg Falkenstein, but Peter Landau, an expert in medieval canon law recently suggested that it may have been written at the monastery of Altzelle (now Altzella).

"The Sachsenspiegel served as a model for law books in German (Middle High German) like the Augsburger Sachsenspiegel, the Deutschenspiegel, and the Schwabenspiegel. Its influence extended into Eastern Europe, the Netherlands, and the Baltic States." (quotations from the Wikipedia article on the Sachsenspiegel, accessed 11-23-2008).

Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II bans the use of paper for notarial  documents, believing it to be less permanent than parchment or vellum.

Its use in the chanceries was mainly restricted to drafts, registers, minutes.

Bernhard Bischoff, Latin Palaeography: Antiquity and Middle Ages (1990) 12.

King James I of Spain promulgates a "sumptutary law" forbidding certain groups of the population from wearing "estampados" or printed fabrics.

This is the earliest documentation that printed textiles existed in Europe.

Carter, Invention of Printing in China 2nd ed (1955) 198, footnote 8.

Henry de Bracton (or Bretton or Bratton) writes De legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliae (On the Laws and Customs of England). 

"The outstanding common-law treatise of the Middle Ages, it is remarkable for its use of actual court decisons for illustrative purposes. It appears to have been written by a number of authors in the 1250's, with the last work being done on it by Henry de Bracton when he was a judge of the King's Bench."

Bracton's original manuscript did not survive.

"There are approximately 49 surviving manuscripts of Bracton, many fragmentary or abridged. All date from the c14 or very late c13, and none is closer than third generation from the original." (quotations from Harvard Law School Library Bracton Online, accessed 12-30-2008).

Bracton's De Legibus was first published in print by Richard Tottel, London, 1569.

Henry III establishes the Domus Conversorum (House of the Converts), a building and institution in London for Jews who convert to Christianity.

The building provided a communal home and low wages needed by Jews because all Jews who converted to Christianity forfeited all their possessions.

With the expulsion of the Jews by Edward I (Longshanks) in 1290, the Domus Conversorum became the only way for Jews to remain in England. At that stage there were about eighty residents, out of a former Jewish population in England estimated at 3000. By 1356, the last of these converts died. Between 1331 to 1608, only 48 converts were admitted. The warden of the facility was also Master of the Rolls.

The Domus Conversorum was in Chancery Lane. No records for converts/residents exist after 1609, but, in 1891, the post of chaplain for the facility was abolished by Act of Parliament and the location, which had been used to store legal archives, became the Public Record Office.

The English law, "De Scandalis Magnatum", prohibits the distribution of "any false News or Tales, whereby discord, or occasion of discord or slander may grow between the King and his People, or the Great Men of the Realm." [3 Edw. 1, ch. 34 (1275)]. Although this might at first sound like a reasonable way of protecting officials from slander, in fact, the application of 'De Scandalis' established the principle that even those who made negative comments about the King or government could be called before a select group of officials without need for any warrant or other legal proceeding even if the comments were truthful. Known as the Star Chamber [since 1422] because of the decor of the room in which they held their proceedings, this tribunal had the power to confer any punishment they pleased for the crime of 'endangering the public peace' by criticizing a monarch or other official" (http://www1.assumption.edu/ahc/1770s/ppressfree.html, accessed 01-04-2010).

The earliest surviving statute concerning the regulation of the book trade in Paris by the University occurred on this date. 

"Libraires represented a serious potential danger to the university, because they controlled the supply of books without which the university would be crippled. Therefore, the university's regulations of libraires concentrated first and foremost on the selling of 'used' university texts, attempting by a variety of means to ensure that the libraire did not swindle either the seller or the buyer, and that he took only a modest commission. The libraires had to guarantee their compliance by posting a bond. . . .

"In addition to regulating the sale of existing books, the university also regulated the rental of examplars from which students and masters could copy, or hire someone to copy, new manuscripts of their own. In this the university initially must simply have put its stamp of approval on a process already informally in operation. To judge from the wording of surviving regulations through the years, the university evinced concern primarily with rental price and correct texts. In 1323 the stationers were forbidden to withdraw an examplar from circulation without  first informing the university. . . ." (Richard A. Rouse and Mary A. Rouse, Manuscripts and their Makers. Commercial Book Producers in Medieval Paris 1200-1500 [2000] 76-77).

Spectacles, so essential for reading and writing, and an important factor in the spread of literacy, are thought to have been invented in thirteenth century Europe; however, their inventor is unknown. Various unsubstantiated theories were proposed over the centuries concerning possible inventors—none supported by satisfactory evidence. Some of the theories are mentioned in the Wikipedia article on Glasses.

Other contenders and snippets of evidence regarding possible inventors are listed on the London College of Optometrists web page on the Invention of Spectacles. Even though the name of the inventor or inventors of spectacles may never be confirmed, there is sufficient reason to believe that spectacles were invented toward the end of the thirteenth century, and that they became more widely used as the fourteenth century advanced.

"Venice was a major centre of glass production, and by the end of the thirteenth century eyeglasses had certainly become an object of general use there, as we can tell from an ordinance dated 2 April 1300 aimed at makers of glass and crystal. It prohibited them from perpetrating a fraud that must have become widespread: 'acquiring or causing to acquired, and selling or causing to be sold, ordinary lenses of colourless glass, under the pretense that they are crystal, for example buttons, handles, discs for kegs and for the eyes ('roidi de botacelis et da ogli'), tablets for altar pictures and crosses, and magnifying glasses ('lapides ad legendum'). The penalty was a fine and the smashing of the fraudulent object. The precise distinction made in the document between eyeglasses and magnifying glasses establishes clearly just what each of the named objects is, and since words preserve their own past like fossils preserved in amber, I note that the term Brille, which means eyeglasses in German, is derived from berillium, the medieval latin word for crystal (Frugoni, Inventions of the Middle Ages [2007] 7 and footnote 25).

The "Writers of Court and Text Letter" or "Writers of the Court Letter" deliver a petition to the Mayor and Aldermen of the City of London, to establish a monopoly of their profession by forming a corporate body whose members are governed and protected. 

"They were first mentioned, with the limners and barbers, as an accepted professional class as early as 1357. Seven years later, in 1364, the Writers doubtless considered that the general direction for the good government of all the crafts in the City of London applied to them because a copy of the enrollment of that article is the second entry in their records" (http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=35888, accessed 02-28-2009).

♦ In 1617 group secured a Royal Charter from James I as the Worshipful Company of Scriveners.

Henry VI grants the earliest known English patent for invention to Flemish-born John of Utynam through an open letter marked with the King's Great Seal called a Letter Patent.

The patent gave John a 20-year monopoly for a method of making stained glass that had not previously been known in England,  for creating the stained glass windows of Eton College.

Though English patent system is the world's oldest continuously operating system of patents, the first English patent was not the oldest patent, as Venice was granting patents to glass makers in the 1420s.

Johann Fust, a merchant and money-lender, files a lawsuit against Johannes Gutenberg to recover money that he had advanced to Gutenberg beginning in 1450. This is one of the few extant documents that may imply Gutenberg's place in the history of printing by moveable type, though nothing concerning printing is specifically mentioned in the document. It is also possible, according to Paul Needham, that the document may be Gutenberg's personal copy, endorsed in his hand.

Fust's total claim against Gutenberg was 2026 gulden with interest. As a result of the lawsuit Gutenberg most probably paid back Fust's investment plus interest. Whether Fust gained possession of Gutenberg’s press and equipment, used for what the document calls the "Work of the Books," is unclear. Gutenberg seems to have resumed printing before 1460.

The record of this lawsuit, preserved at the Niedersächische Staats- und Universitäts Bibliothek Göttingen, is formally known as the The Helmasperger Notarial Instrument.

"Ulrich Helmasperger, clerk of the Bishopric of Bamberg, royal notary and certified public recorder at the Court of the Archbishop of Mainz wrote the Instrument which bears his name. This is the only contemporary account of the business relations between Gutenberg and Fust and of Gutenberg's invention, the "Work of the Books". This account of the legal proceedings documents that the citizen of Mainz, Johannes Fust, swore the following under oath: He had lent Gutenberg the sum of 1550 guilders which he himself had had to borrow at an interest rate of 6%. In his view the money he lent Gutenberg which was not used for their mutual benefit for the Work of the Books was a loan and thus he demanded that the interest on this loan be refunded to him. The Instrument briefly discusses the first legal complaint - the demand for repayment of the money - and describes the judgement which was unfavorable for Gutenberg. The Instrument does not mention the final judgement - Fust's demand that the partnership with Gutenberg be dissolved and the consequences of this" (http://www.gutenbergdigital.de/gudi/eframes/index.htm, accessed 01-17-2010).

♦ You can view a digital facsimile of the document, in whole, and in enlarged parts with transliterations and English translations, from the Niedersächische Staats- und Universitäts Bibliothek Göttingen website at this link: http://www.gutenbergdigital.de/gudi/eframes/index.htm, accessed 01-17-2010).

Needham, The Invention and Early Spread of European Printing as Represented in the Scheide Library (2007) 8.

The Venetian Senate grants the German printer Johannes de Spira (Speyer) a five-year monopoly on printing in the city.

This was the first monopoly on printing granted by a European government.

Speyer initiated printing in Venice in 1469, issuing Cicero's Epistolae ad familiares in an edition of 100 copies (ISTC no. ic00504000). "Four months" later he issued a second edition of 300 copies (ISTC no. c00505000). He also published the first edition of Pliny's Historia naturalis in a printing of 100 copies (ISTC no. ip00786000). From the text of the decree it appears that the Venetian Senate granted the monopoly to Speyer as a way of supporting his ongoing work, which they much admired.

The manuscript of the grant is preserved in the Venetian State Archives (ASV, NC, reg. 1, c.55r). It is reproduced in color and translated in  Primary Sources on Copyright (1450-1900), eds L. Bently & M. Kretschmer, www.copyrighthistory.org, from which I quote:

"The art of printing books has been introduced into our renowned state, and from day to day it has become more popular and common through the efforts, study and ingenuity of Master Johannes of Speyer, who chose our city over all the others. Here he lives with his wife, children and whole household; practices the said art of printing books; has just published, to universal acclaim, the Letters of Cicero and Pliny's noble work On Natural History, in the largest type and with the most beautiful letter-forms; and continues every day to print other famous volumes so that [this state] will be enriched by many, famous volumes, and for a low price, by the industry and fortitude of this man. Whereas such an innovation, unique and particular to our age and entirely unknown to those ancients, must be supported and nourished with all our goodwill and resources and [whereas] the same Master Johannes, who suffers under the great expense of his household and the wages of his craftsmen, must be provided with the means so that he may continue in better spirits and consider his art of printing something to be expanded rather than something to be abandoned, in the same manner as usual in other arts, even much smaller ones, the undersigned lords of the present Council, in response to the humble and reverent entreaty of the said Master Johannes, have determined and by determining decreed that over the next five years no one at all should have the desire, possibility, strength or daring to practice the said art of printing books in this the renowned state of Venice and its dominion, apart from Master Johannes himself. Every time that someone shall be found to have dared to practice this art and print books in defiance of this determination and decree, he must be fined and condemned to lose his equipment and the printed books. And, subject to the same penalty, no one is permitted or allowed to import here for the purpose of commerce such books, printed in other lands and places. . . ."

"Scholars and writers too went more readily to Venice than to any other city, in their search for publishers, attracted by the excellence of the local paper stock and typography as much as relatively liberal atmosphere in the city. In contrast to other early modern states where censorship and state regulation took on early to encourage and protect the nascent trade, in Venice, the trade was left virtually uncontrolled in the first years of its development. It was only in 1515 when Andrea Navagero was appointed for the task of the official revision of books that the state began to exercise a degree of control over what was printed. Even then, this literary censorship was primarily concerned with the quality of printed books to secure commercially successful correct editions. Thus the natural play of economic forces had left printers free to establish their printing enterprises and compete against each other in an open market. In other words, Venice was an ideal place from which to begin the 'printing revolution.'

"The rapid expansion of the printing industry leaves no doubt that Venice was the first city in the world to feel the full impact of printing, and to experience the most important revolution in human communications, and a favourable territory in which the system of copyright could develop. This, however, did not make Venice into a champion of literary property. It would take a long time before the copyright holder was identified with the moral or aesthetic personality of the writer.

"The best-known explanation for the emergence of author's rights is a technological one, viewing the need to protect literary production as a consequence of the invention of printing. In a manuscript culture, texts were treated as common property, and copying another man's work was often considered more of a favour than an injury. . . .

"It is not so much printing as the existence of a market in books and ideas that introduced concepts of intellectual property. As the literary market increased in importance, authors, who might well be writing for a living and competing for recognition, began to stress the distinctiveness of their products, in other words their intellectual or literary originality. Printing encouraged the development of such a market and expanded the concept of a book as a commodity (selling object). However, the concept of a book as a particular category of commodity - the work of the mind - was slow to develop" (Primary Sources on Copyright (1450-1900), eds L. Bently & M. Kretschmer, www.copyrighthistory.org, accessed 07-24-2009).

Peter Schöffer of Mainz issues the first edition of the Codex Justinianus with the commentary of Franciscus Accursius. ISTC no. ij00574000. This is the first part of the Corpus Juris Civilis (Body of Civil Law) originally issued from 529-534 by the Byzantine Emperor Justinian I.

"Justinian's Corpus Juris Civilis was lost in the West, where it was scarcely needed in the primitive conditions that followed the collapse of Odoacer's sub-Roman kingdom. Historians disagree on the precise way it was recovered in Northern Italy about 1070: perhaps it was waiting unneeded and unnoticed in a library until the legal studies that were undertaken on behalf of papal authority that was central to the Gregorian Reform of Pope Gregory VII led to its accidental rediscovery. Aside from the Littera Florentina, a 6th-century codex of the Pandects that was jealously preserved at Pisa, since 1406 at Florence, there may have been other manuscript sources for the text that began to be taught at Bologna, by Pepo and then by Irnerius, whose technique was to read a passage aloud, which permitted his students to copy it, then to deliver an excursus explaining and illuminating Justinian's text, in the form of glosses. Irmerius' pupils, the "Four Doctors" were among the first of the "Glossators" who established the curriculum of Roman law."

"The merchant classes of Italian communes required law with a concept of equity and which covered situations inherent in urban life better than the primitive Germanic oral traditions. The provenance of the Code appealed to scholars who saw in the Holy Roman Empire a revival of venerable precedents from the classical heritage. The new class of lawyers staffed the bureaucracies that were beginning to be required by the princes of Europe. The University of Bologna, where Justinian's Code was first taught, remained the dominant center for the study of law through the High Middle Ages."

The Venetian Senate grants a privilege to the humanist Marco Antonio Sabellico for the printing of his Decades rerum Venetarum.

This document, preserved in the Venetian State Archives (ASV, NC, reg. 11, c.55r) was the first recorded privilege granted to an author, recognizing the right of Sabellico to authorize the publication of his work, and to secure protection against unauthorized printings. This has been called the first known author's copyright.

"Sabellico's privilege set the precedent for the custom of granting privileges not just to the printers but also directly to the authors. Such privileges are best understood as an extension of the traditional patronage system and as a form of reward rather than ownership. Sabellico's privilege was an exceptional arrangement in the sense that it was a form of reward for a literary work which promoted the public interest, rather than an assertion of the inherent rights of the author" (Primary Sources on Copyright (1450-1900), eds L. Bently & M. Kretschmer, www.copyrighthistory.org, which also reproduces an image of the document, an English translation, and commentary).

Sabellico's work was first published in print in Venice the following year by Andreas Torresanus, de Asula. ISTC no. is00005000.

After their explusion from Spain David and Samuel ibn Nahmias travelled to Constantinople as a result of Sultan Bayezid II's offer of refuge. There they established the first Hebrew printing press in the Ottoman Empire. The first book the Nahmias brothers printed was Jacob ben Asher's fourteenth century Arbaah Turim (Four Orders of the Code of Law) completed on 4 Tevet 5254 (13 December 1493). This was the first book printed in the Ottoman Empire, not only in Hebrew but in any language.

Previously the Nahmias brothers had attempted to set up a printing shop in Naples. The type they used in Constantinople is similar to Hebrew type used in Spain and Italy. The paper on which their edition of ben Asher was printed in Constantinople is of northern Italian origin.

As Jews, the Nahmias brothers were allowed to practice the printing trade forbidden to Muslims. Jacob ben Asher's work was the only book that the Nahmias brothers issued in Hebrew from Constantinople during the 15th century.

Lehrstuhl für Türkische Sprache, Geschichte und Kultur, Universität Bamberg, The Beginnings of Printing in the Near and Middle East: Jews, Christians and Muslims (2001) 9. ISTC no. ij00000300.

The Venetian Senate grants Ottaviano Petrucci a twenty-year patent for the double-impression technique of printing polyphonic music for voices, organ, and lute using moveable type.

This was the "first known record of a privilege granted for music printing. It is also one of the early records of patents for invention and improvement in the mechanism of printing, showing that there was no legal distinction between books and printed music or other works of art produced through the press" (Primary Sources on Copyright (1450-1900), eds L. Bently & M. Kretschmer, www.copyrighthistory.org, reproducing an image of the document, and providing a translation and an extremely detailed, and thoroughly documented commentary).

Printer and publisher Alessandro Minuziano of Milan issues P. Cornelii Taciti libri quinque noiter inventi atque cum religuis eius operibus editi.

This was an unauthorized reprint of the first complete edition of Tacitus, edited by humanist Filippo Beroaldo, the Younger, first published in Rome in 1515. Beroaldo was appointed secretary to Cardinal Giovanni de' Medici, (Pope Leo X from 1513 to his death). Cardinal de' Medici had the opportunity in 1508 to purchase a manuscript of the "lost" first books of Tactitus's Annals, which Beroaldo edited and eventually had published in 1515. Beroaldo's edition was the first to include Books I-VI of the Annals, and also the first to include the "Annotationes" of the jurist and legal humanist Andrea Alciato (Alciati).

"According to the well-known story, the codex containing the six books by Tacitus (the so-called 'Mediceo primo" [Laurentianus Mediceus 68.1] had been stolen from the monastery of Corvey in Westphalia. In 1508 it was in the hands of Francesco Soderini from whom it was acquired by Cardinal Giovanini de' Medici (the future Leo X). In 1515, after becoming pope, Leo X granted Beroaldo the exclusive rights to the printing of the book. One of the printed books Leo sent to the Abbey of Corvey, together with a plenary indulgence, as a replacement for the 'borrowed' manuscript. Much to the annoyance of Leo X, the Milanese scholar and publisher Alessandro Minuziano ignored the  paper privilegio and reprinted Beroaldo's edition of Tacitus word-for-word. Minuziano wa duly summoned to Rome to answer directly to the Pope. His detailed apology, however, appeared Leo X's anger and, with a papal letter of absolution, Minuziano was permitted to publish the work, provided he came to terms with Filippo Beroaldo" (Witcombe, Copyright in the Renaissance: Prints and the Privilegio in Sixteenth-Century Venice and Rome (2004) 48-49).

Landau and Parshall, The Renaissance Print 1470-1550 (1994) see the story a little bit differently:

"In the meantime in Rome the issue of privileges had suddenly been brought to the attention of Leo X when it was discovered in 1515 that the Milanese publisher Alessandro Minuziano had found a loophole in the privilege granted to Filippo Beroaldo for his Storie. Minuziano did not copy the whole book once it had appeared, but page after page (obtained illegally) while it was being printed. The main reason the Pope was so exceeding angry was that he had paid the vast sum of 500 ducats for the manuscript. . . .(pp. 301-02).

Because the case was resolved in Minuziano's favor while his edition was in production Minuziano added in an appendix the key documents pertaining to the case. These included the original papal privilege, Minuziano's letter explaining the situation and pleading to be allowed to finish his edition, and the papal letter of pardon which permitted Minuziano to publish his by then authorized edition.

Italian jurist Giovanni Nevizzano issues Inventarium librorum in utorque iure hactenus impressorum in Lyons.

This small work of 38 pages was the first bibliography specifically restricted to works on the law. "It was also intended to aid lawyers in obtaining these books from the bookseller" (Breslauer & Folter, Bibliography: Its History and Development [1984] no. 11).

To check the spread of the Protestant Reformation, the Catholic Queen Mary and King Philip grant a royal charter to the Worshipful Company of Stationers of London, thereby concentrating the entire printing business in the hands of the members of the Stationers Company.

"The Stationers' charter, establishing a monopoly on book production, ensured that once a member had asserted ownership of a text (or "copy") no other member would publish it. This is the origin of the term 'copyright'. Members asserted such ownership by entering it in the "entry book of copies" or the Stationers' Company Register."

The Stationers Company charter was confirmed two years later by Queen Elizabeth, but this time with the goal of suppressing Catholicism.

The Star Chamber issues a decree consolidating and amplifying the regulation of printing in England.

Galileo publishes Difesa di Galileo Galilei ... contro alle calumnie & imposture di Baldessar Capra.

This booklet published the transcript of the trial resulting from the lawsuit that Galileo successfully brought against Baldessar Capra for copying the proportional and military compass that Galileo had invented. It was among the first, if not the very first, record of litigation over an invention, and most certainly the first litigation in the history of computing.

Abolition of the Star Chamber court removes the machinery of censorship in England.

This resulted in an outpouring of publications on topics which previously had been suppressed. 2000 titles were published in England in 1642, and 3500 in 1643-- "more titles in a single year than at any time before the eighteenth century" (A. Hessayon, "Incendiary texts: book burning in England, c.1640 – c.1660", Cromohs, 12 [2007] 1-25. http://www.cromohs.unifi.it/12_2007/hessayon_incendtexts.html, accessed 01-04-2010).

Having abolished the Star Chamber court which had provided the mechanism for censorship in England, the British government attempts to re-establish censorship through a Licensing Order passed on this date which would require the licensing of publications before printing.

In response to the British Government's attempt to re-establish censorship through the Licensing Order passed in 1643, John Milton publishes Areopagitica: A Speech for the Liberty of Unlicense'd Printing, to the Parliament of England, arguing against the order for licensing books, and defending the freedom of the press.

"I deny not, but that it is of greatest concernment in the Church and Commonwealth, to have a vigilant eye how Bookes demean themselves, as well as men, and thereafter to confine, imprison, and do sharpest justice on them as malefactors: For Books are not absolutely dead things, but doe contain a potencie of life in them to be as active as that soule was whole progeny they are; nay they do preserve as in a violl the purest efficacie and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. I know they are as lively, and as vigorously productive, as those fabulous Dragons teeth; and being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men. Yet on the other hand, unlesse warinesse be us'd, as good almost kill a Man as kill a good Book; who kills a Man kills a reasonable creature, Gods Image; but hee who destroyes a good Booke, kills reason it selfe, kills the Image of God, as it were in the eye. Many a man lives a burden to the Earth, but a good Book is the pretious life-blood of a master spirit, imbalm'd and treasur'd up on purpose to a life beyond life" (Milton, Areopagitica).

Lecturer in law in Halle and Jena, Ahasaver Fritsch publishes Tractatus de typographis, bibliopolis chartariis et bibliopegis (Treatise on Book Printers, Booksellers, Paper Manufacturers and Bookbinders).  This treatise on the book trade focused on  specifically on statutes, ordinances, liberties, disputes, censorship and inspection of printing offices and bookshops.

"Fritsch is one of the first writers on the subject to explicitly define an author's exclusive right to permit new editions of his work. The first publisher, however, has a right of priority to the publication of the new edition, provided that he offers the author terms which are as good as those promised by competing publishers (p.47). In Fritsch's view, however, the author's right is not meant to produce profit, but only honour. Quoting the Jena law professor Johannes Gryphiander (1580-1652), he states on page 37f.: 'The works of authors are sold to book printers and book sellers for a certain price, but in such a way, though, that the latter have the profit, whereas the honour goes to the former.' Fritsch' s views on authors' rights to new editions and his notion that the author may expect to gain honour but not profit, are probably based on his own experiences and hopes as an author and lecturer. However, when he presents a detailed justification of book privileges, Fritsch proves himself to be a judicious political theorist: privileges do not fall into the general category of monopolies which are to be rejected. He gives three reasons for arguing thus: (i) the demands of natural justness ('natürliche Billigkeit'), whereby the first publishers have to be protected, so that they may recoup their investment; (ii) publishers are encouraged ('angefrischet') by the award of privileges to have valuable new books printed at their expense; (iii) privileges are granted only for a limited term, so that they cannot seriously harm the public in any way. These three aspects sound quite modern: a special protection is justified on the grounds of the natural right not to suffer unjust damages and to recoup what one has invested. Furthermore, such special protection is justified as the means of providing an incentive for further publishing ventures. Nevertheless, such exemptions from the general rejection of monopolies are only to be allowed for a strictly limited term" (Primary Sources on Copyright (1450-1900), eds L. Bently & M. Kretschmer, www.copyrighthistory.org, referring to the anonymous German translation of 1750).

In his book on medieval documents, De re diplomatica libri sex, Benedictine monk Jean Mabillon founds the formal study of palaeography and diplomatics.

During the Middle Ages, the production of spurious charters and other documents was common, either to provide written documentation of existing rights or to bolster the plausibility of claimed rights.  In 1675 the Jesuit Daniel van Papenbroeck (Papebroch) proved that a charter guaranteeing certain privileges to the Benedictines, supposedly issued by the Merovingian king Dagobert in 646, was a forgery.

"The French Benedictine order, which had recently been revived under the title of the Congregation of Saint Maur and was devoting itself to various scholarly enterprises, treated van Papenbroeck's work as a challenge. One of its most able members, Dom Jean Mabillon (1632-1707), spent several years in studying charters and manuscripts, drawing up in a systematic way for the first time a series of criteria for testing the authenticity of medieval documents. The result was De re diplomatica (1681), to which we owe the word diplomatic, normally used as the technical term for the study of legal and official documents. Mabillon's work dealt also to a lesser extent with manuscripts, but was resticted to Latin. It was immediately recognized as a masterpiece, even by van Papenbroeck, who had a cordial exchange of letters with Mabillon, acknowledging that his attempt to prove the spuriousness of all Merovingian charters was an excess of skepticism. On the other hand his thesis about the charter of 646 was upheld" (Reynolds & Wilson, Scribes and Scholars 3rd ed [1991] 189).

Boyle, Medieval Latin Palaeography: A Bibliographical Introduction (1983) no. 72.  Carter & Muir, Printing and the Mind of Man (1967) no. 158.

King George II donates the 'Old Royal Library' of the sovereigns of England to the British Museum. With that gift the British Museum obtained the privilege of acquiring books by copyright receipt.

English papermaker Matthias Koops is granted English patent no. 2392 for Extracting Ink from Paper and Converting such Paper into Pulp.

Within the patent Koop described his process as "An invention made by me of extracting printing and writing ink from printed and written paper, and converting the paper from which the ink is extracted into pulp, and making thereof paper fit for writing, printing, and other purposes."

This was the first patented process for recycling paper, and it is also possibly the first patent received for a recycling process that was— much later— widely used.

Koops's patent was first published in print in London in 1856. Prior to this time English patents were recorded only on the Patent Rolls and were not published in print until the Patent Law Amendment Act of 1852 proposed that an Office of the Commissioners of Patents be set up, and under its first Superintendent of Specifications, Bennet Woodcroft,  the Office set about publishing newly deposited specifications and also all earlier patents beginning in 1617. 

Hunter, The Literature of Papermaking 1390-1800 (1925) 48. Hunter, Papermaking: The History and Technique of an Ancient Craft (1947) 333; see also 332-35.

Alexander Graham Bell invents the telephone, and applies for the patent. In his invention of the telephone Bell was preceded by Philip Reis, who perfected his device in 1861, and numerous other inventors played lesser or greater roles. However, Bell was the first to create a telephone that could reproduce intelligible speech at the receiving end, and was also the first to patent the telephone. Because of the numerous other inventors involved there was unusually extensive and historic litigation over the telephone patents, culminating in Bell's victory. Among the controversies was the question of the priority of Elisha Gray in the invention.

As the well-known story goes, on March 10, 1876 Bell spoke the first words through the instrument to his assistant, Thomas A. Watson, in the next room. Bell said, "Mr. Watson— come here— I want to see you." (See Reading 5.3

Bell presented his first report on the telephone to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences on May 10, 1876. His report, "Researches in telephony," was published in Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, new series 4 (whole series 12) (1877) 1-10.  Bell's telephone did not become commercially viable until 1878.

Hook & Norman, The Haskell F. Norman Library of Science & Medicine (1991) no. 164.

The Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, an international agreement governing copyright, is ratified in Berne, Switzerland.

"The Berne Convention was developed at the instigation of Victor Hugo of the Association Littéraire et Artistique Internationale. Thus it was influenced by the French "right of the author" (droit d'auteur), which contrasts with the Anglo-Saxon concept of "copyright" which only dealt with economic concerns. Under the Convention, copyrights for creative works are automatically in force upon their creation without being asserted or declared. An author need not "register" or "apply for" a copyright in countries adhering to the Convention. As soon as a work is "fixed", that is, written or recorded on some physical medium, its author is automatically entitled to all copyrights in the work and to any derivative works, unless and until the author explicitly disclaims them or until the copyright expires. Foreign authors are given the same rights and privileges to copyrighted material as domestic authors in any country that signed the Convention."

Pres Eckert and John Mauchly state that their conception of the ENIAC is complete.

Eckert wrote a letter to other members of the project asking them to state written claims to inventions on the project. None was received.

Pres Eckert and John Mauchly learn from a patent lawyer that John von Neumann’s First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC is a publication barring their patenting the ENIAC because it was issued more than a year before they planned to apply for a patent.

Pres Eckert and John Mauchly apply for the broad ENIAC patent, essentially a patent on the stored-program electronic digital computer, basing their description of the machine to a large extent on the government report they issued on November 30, 1945. (See Reading 8.10.)

Pres Eckert and John Mauchly apply for a U.S. patent on the mercury acoustic delay-line electronic memory system. This was the "first device to gain widespread acceptance as a reliable computer memory system." (Hook & Norman, Origins of Cyberspace [2002] 1191). The patent 2,629,827 was granted in 1953.

Sperry Rand agrees to cross-license patents with IBM, thereby turning over strategic technology.

John Horty at the Health Law Center, University of Pittsburgh, pioneers computer-assisted legal research by having the texts of relevant statutes keyed into punched cards and then transferred to computer tapes where they can be searched and retrieved by “key words in combination” (KWIC).

Widely considered the first software patent, "Prater-Wei" was about calculating temperatures for petroleum fractionation.  This patent, originally filed by Mobil Oil Corporation in 1960, addressed computerized spectographic analysis. It had many method and apparatus claims that could be performed either on an analog or digital computer, or with pencil and paper. At the time, software was not patentable, so the authors described a non-computer method of choosing the temperatures, using matrix inversion.  However, the description in the patent application used linear algebra notation similar to that of textbooks published late in the 19^th century to disguise the more obvious matrix notation that was invented much later. (adapted from Henry Gladney, Digital Document Quarterly 4.2, and Digital Document Quarterly 7.3, accessed 01-01-2009).

"A Court of Customs and Patent Appeals (CCPA) decision is famous because the question "whether computer programs could contain patentable subject matter" was also before the CCPA.  See Application of Charles D. Prater and James Wei, U.S. CCPA, 415 F.2d 1378, November 20, 1968." (Henry Gladney, Digital Document Quarterly 7,3, accessed 01-01-2009).

Pres Eckert and John Mauchly receive patent no. 3,120,606 for the ENIAC, a general patent on the stored-program electronic computer. Sperry Rand Univac, owner of the patent, charged a 1.5 percent royalty for all electronic computers sold by all companies except IBM, with which it had previously cross-licensed patents.

Data Corporation contracts with the Ohio Bar Automated Research Corporation to create a full-text, interactive research service for Ohio statutes.

Mead Corporation purchases Data Corporation.

Gilbert Hyatt files a patent application entitled Single Chip Integrated Circuit Computer Architecture based on work begun in 1968.

Hyatt's patent was the first general patent on the microprocessor. Twenty years later, in 1990, the U.S. Patent Office awarded the patent, but was overturned in 1995.

Mead Data Central introduces Lexis and NAARS services.

"LEXIS provides the full text of Ohio and New York codes and cases, the U.S. code, and some federal case law. NAARS is the National Automated Accounting Research Service, a tax database from the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants."

Pres Eckert and John Mauchly’s ENIAC patent — a patent on the stored-program electronic digital computer — is ruled invalid in the case of Honeywell Inc. v. Sperry Rand Corporation et al. (See Reading 8.12.)

The first of the three Cohen-Boyer recombinant DNA cloning patents is granted, leading to the foundation of the biotechnology industry.

The Federal Government’s antitrust suit against IBM goes to trial.

The complaint for the case U.S. v. IBM was filed in U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York on January 17, 1969 by the Justice Department. The suit alleged that IBM violated the Section 2 of the Sherman Act by monopolizing or attempting to monopolize the general purpose electronic digital computer system market, specifically computers designed primarily for business.

William Henry Gates III (Bill Gates), in his role as "General Partner Micro-Soft", writes An Open Letter to Hobbyists making the distinction between proprietary and open-source software.

"The concepts of frequency reuse and handoff as well as a number of other concepts that formed the basis of modern cell phone technology are first described in U.S. Patent 4,152,647 , issued May 1, 1979 to Charles A. Gladden and Martin H. Parelman, both of Las Vegas, Nevada and assigned by them to the United States Government.

"This is the first embodiment of all the concepts that formed the basis of the next major step in mobile telephony, the Analog cellular telephone. Concepts covered in this patent (cited in at least 34 other patents) also were later extended to several satellite communication systems. Later updating of the cellular system to a digital system credits this patent" (Wikipedia article on Mobil phone, accessed 04-11-2009).

Mead Data Central introduces the NEXIS service, providing online texts of various print publications.

After thousands of hours of testimony (testimony of over 950 witnesses, 87 in court, the remainder by deposition) and the submission of tens of thousands of exhibits, the anti-trust case U.S. v. IBM is withdrawn on the grounds that the case is "without merit."

30,000,000 pages of documents were generated in the course of this anti-trust case.

Japanese software engineer Ryoichi Mori invents a digital products distribution system called superdistribution, incorporating one of the earliest forms of digital rights management.

Mori's  "Software Service System (SSS) took the form of a peer-to-peer-architecture with the following components:

◊"a cryptographic wrapper for digital products that cannot be removed and remains in place whenever the product is copied

◊"a digital rights management system for tracking usage of the product and assuring that any usage of the product or access to its code conforms to the terms set by the product's owner.

◊"an arrangement for secure payments from the product's users to its owner" (Wikipedia article on Superdistribution, accessed 01-03-2010).

The Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 (TCPA) is passed by the United States Congress and signed into law by President George H. W. Bush as Public Law 102-243, amending the Communications Act of 1934.

"The TCPA is the primary law in the US governing the conduct of telephone solicitations, ie. telemarketing. The TCPA restricts the use of automatic dialing systems, artificial or prerecorded voice messages, SMS text messages received by cell phones, and the use of fax machines to send unsolicited advertisements. It also specifies several technical requirements for fax machines, autodialers, and voice messaging systems -- principally with provisions requiring identification and contact information of the entity using the device to be contained in the message" (Wikipedia article on Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991, accessed 10-31-2009).

One of the first U.S. cases related to Cyberspace law is decided: Cubby v. CompuServe, 776 F. Supp. 135 (1991). It "suggested that online companies would not be liable for the acts of their customers. CompuServe exerted no control whatsoever over the presumably false and defamatory statements which were the subject of the suit; their forum sysops were independent entrepreneurs. Prior to this decision, the liability risk was largely undecided."

Villanova Law Review Symposium: The Congress, The Courts, and Computer-Based Communications Networks: Answering Questions About Access and Content Control is "perhaps the first law review symposium dedicated to cyberspace."

John Perry Barlow, lyricist for The Grateful Dead, publishes in Wired an article entitled The Economy of Ideas. A framework for patents and copyrights in the Digital Ages. (Everything you know about intellectual property is wrong.)

This or a very similar text was also issued under the title of: Selling Wine Without Bottles: The Economy of Mind on the Global Net.

The Unites States Court of Appeals decides Steve Jackson Games v. U.S. Secret Service,36 F.3d 457 (5th Cir. 1994).

"The narrow issue before us is whether the seizure of a computer, used to operate an electronic bulletin board system, and containing private electronic mail which had been sent to (stored on) the bulletin board, but not read (retrieved) by the intended recipients, constitutes an unlawful intercept under the Federal Wiretap Act, 18 U.S.C. s 2510, et seq., as amended by Title I of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986, Pub.L. No. 99-508, Title I, 100 Stat. 1848 (1986). We hold that it is not, and therefore AFFIRM."

LexisNexis online services exceed one billion documents.

At a Diplomatic Conference on Certain Copyright and Neighboring Rights Questions, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) adopts the WIPO Copyright Treaty.

In Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union all 9 Justices of the United States Supreme Court vote to strike down anti-obscenity provisions of the Communications Decency Act (the "CDA"), finding they violate the freedom of speech provisions of the First Amendment. Two Justices concur in part and dissent in part to the decision. This is the first major Supreme Court ruling regarding the regulation of materials distributed via the Internet.

The Court rules that "223(a)(1)(B), §223(a)(2), §223(d) of the CDA are unconstitutional and unenforceable, except for cases of obscenity or child pornography, because they abridge the freedom of speech protected by the First Amendment and are substantially overbroad. The Internet is entitled to the full protection given to media like the print press; the special factors justifying government regulation of broadcast media do not apply.

"The CDA was an attempt to protect minors from explicit material on the Internet by criminalizing the 'knowing' transmission of "obscene or indecent" messages to any recipient under 18; and also the knowing sending to a person under 18 of anything 'that, in context, depicts or describes, in terms patently offensive as measured by contemporary community standards, sexual or excretory activities or organs' " (Wikipedia article on Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union).

The U.S. Congress passes the Digital Millenium Copyright Act.

The U. S. Supreme Court rules that Internet domain names are property.

The Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (also known as Truth in Domain Names Act), is enacted into U.S. law as is part of A bill to amend the provisions of title 17, United States Code, and the Communications Act of 1934, relating to copyright licensing and carriage of broadcast signals by satellite (S. 1948). The act makes people who register domain names that are either trademarks or individual's names with the sole intent of selling the rights of the domain name to the trademark holder or individual for a profit liable to civil action.

"In order for a trademark owner to bring a claim under the ACPA, the owner must establish

• the trademark owner’s mark is distinctive or famous;
• the domain name owner acted in bad faith to profit from the mark; and
• the domain name and the trademark are either identical or confusingly similar (or dilutive for famous trademarks)" 

(Wikipedia article on Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, accessed 11-24-2008).

The Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act was enacted in part because the domain whitehouse.com went online in 1997 as an "adult entertainment" site, leading to this letter from a Whitehouse consel:

"The following is a December letter from a White House counsel to the operator of the "whitehouse.com" adult site regarding the use of the domain and the names and images of the White House, President Clinton, and Hillary Clinton on the site:

"The White House

"Washington

"December 8, 1997

"Mr. Dan Parisi

"Secaucus, New Jersey

"Dear Mr. Parisi:

"It will come as no surprise to you that the White House Counsel's Office is aware of your Internet Web site, "www.whitehouse.com," and that we object to your use of the names and images of the White House, the President, and the First Lady on that Web site to sell memberships in an adult video club. We also recognize that you undoubtedly will use this letter as an object of humor and as an invitation to advance the claim that you are merely exercising your rights under the First Amendment.

"We too believe in the First Amendment--and in humor, although we see nothing humorous in your use of the White House domain name to draw children and other unwitting Internet users to your Web site. However distasteful your business may be, we do not challenge your right to pursue it or to exercise your First Amendment rights, but we do challenge your right to use the White House, the President, and the First Lady as a marketing device. For adult internet users, that device is, at the least, part of a deceptive scheme. For younger Internet users, it has more disturbing consequences. As your own online disclaimer implicitly acknowledges, the foreseeable result of your use of the White House domain name is that children will access your Web site inadvertently. Your customers will understand that such a result is unconscionable, and so, we submit, should you.

Sincerely,

Charles F.C. Ruff

Counsel to the President" (http://news.cnet.com/2009-1023-207800.html, accessed 06-15-2009).

Lawrence Lessig publishes Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace, in which he argues:

"that cyberspace changes not only the technology of copying but also the power of law to protect against illegal copying (125-127). He explores the notion that computer code may regulate conduct in much the same way that legal codes do. He goes so far as to argue that code displaces the balance in copyright law and doctrines such as fair use (135). If it becomes possible to license every aspect of use (by means of trusted systems created by code), then no aspect of use would have the protection of fair use(136). The importance of this side of the story is generally underestimated and, as the examples will show, very often, code is even (only) considered as an extra tool to fight against 'unlimited copying'."

Credit Default Swaps,  invented in 1997 by a team working for JPMorgan Chase, become legal, and illegal to regulate, with the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000. The Senate and House versions of this bill are introduced and rushed through congress on the last day before the Christmas holiday. The 11,000 pages long bill is never debated in the House or the Senate. Less than a week after it is passed by congress, President Clinton signs it into Public Law (106-554) on December 21, 2000. (adapted from the Wikipedia article on Credit Default Swap).

The 19th Session of the National People's Congress of China adopts the Decision of the Standing Committee of NPC Regarding the Safeguarding of Internet Security.

Lawrence Lessig publishes The Future of Ideas: The fate of commons in a connected world, in which he argues that while

" copyright helps artists get rewarded for their work, . . .a copyright regime that is too strict and grants copyright for too long a period of time (i.e. the current US legal climate) can destroy innovation, as the future movements by corporate interests to promote longer and tighter protection ofintellectual property in three layers: the code layer, the content layer, and the physical layer. . . .In the end, he stresses the importance of existing works entering the public domain in a reasonably short period of time, as the founding fathers intended."

The Ninth Circuit Court issues an injunction ordering Napster to prevent the trading of copyrighted music on its network..

Creative Commons, founded in 2001, releases as its first project, a set of copyright licenses free for public use.

"Taking inspiration in part from the Free Software Foundation’s GNU General Public License (GNU GPL), Creative Commons has developed a Web application that helps people dedicate their creative works to the public domain — or retain their copyright while licensing them as free for certain uses, on certain conditions. Unlike the GNU GPL, Creative Commons licenses are not designed for software, but rather for other kinds of creative works: websites, scholarship, music, film, photography, literature, courseware, etc. We hope to build upon and complement the work of others who have created public licenses for a variety of creative works. Our aim is not only to increase the sum of raw source material online, but also to make access to that material cheaper and easier. To this end, we have also developed metadata that can be used to associate creative works with their public domain or license status in a machine-readable way. We hope this will enable people to use our search application and other online applications to find, for example, photographs that are free to use provided that the original photographer is credited, or songs that may be copied, distributed, or sampled with no restrictions whatsoever. We hope that the ease of use fostered by machine- readable licenses will further reduce barriers to creativity."

"The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 (15 U.S.C. 7701, et seq., Public Law No. 108-187, was S.877 of the 108th United States Congress), signed into law by President George W. Bush establishes the United States' first national standards for the sending of commercial e-mail and requires the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to enforce its provisions.

"The acronym CAN-SPAM derives from the bill's full name: Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing Act of 2003. This is also a play on the usual term for unsolicited email of this type, spam. The bill was sponsored in Congress by Senators Conrad Burns and Ron Wyden.

"The CAN-SPAM Act is commonly referred to as the "You-Can-Spam" Act because the bill explicitly legalizes most e-mail spam. In particular, it does not require e-mailers to get permission before they send marketing messages. It also prevents states from enacting stronger anti-spam protections, and prohibits individuals who receive spam from suing spammers. The Act has been largely unenforced, despite a letter to the FTC from Senator Burns, who noted that "Enforcement is key regarding the CAN-SPAM legislation." In 2004 less than 1% of spam complied with the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003.

"The law required the FTC to report back to Congress within 24 months of the effectiveness of the act.[4] No changes were recommended. It also requires the FTC to promulgate rules to shield consumers from unwanted mobile phone spam. On December 20, 2005 the FTC reported that the volume of spam has begun to level off, and due to enhanced anti-spam technologies, less was reaching consumer inboxes. A significant decrease in sexually-explicit e-mail was also reported.

"Later modifications changed the original CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 by (1) Adding a definition of the term "person"; (2) Modifying the term "sender"; (3) Clarifying that a sender may comply with the act by including a post office box or private mailbox and (4) Clarifying that to submit a valid opt-out request, a recipient cannot be required to pay a fee, provide information other than his or her email address and opt-out preferences, or take any other steps other than sending a reply email message or visiting a single page on an Internet website" (Wikipedia article on CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, accessed 01-19-2010).

Lawrence Lessig launches Code 2.2 wiki:

"Lawrence Lessig first published Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace in 1999. After five years in print and five years of changes in law, technology, and the context in which they reside, Code needs an update. But rather than do this alone, Professor Lessig is using this wiki to open the editing process to all, to draw upon the creativity and knowledge of the community. This is an online, collaborative book update; a first of its kind.

"Once the project nears completion, Professor Lessig will take the contents of this wiki and ready it for publication. The resulting book, Code v.2, will be published in late 2005 by Basic Books. All royalties, including the book advance, will be donated to Creative Commons."

Beth Noveck, director of New York Law School's Institute for Information Law and Policy, issues “Peer to Patent” (PtoP): A Modest Proposal in her blog. The proposal "would shift the patent-application process away from individual examiners to an internet-based, peer-review method."

In response to copyright problems Google announces a moratorium on the scanning of copyrighted books for its Google Print Library Project.

Microsoft announces that it is joining the Open Content Alliance.

IBM, the largest patent holder in the U.S., announces that it "will publish its patent filings on the Web for public review as part of a new policy that the company hopes will be a model for others."

The Authors Guild, the Association of American Publishers (AAP), and Google announce a groundbreaking settlement agreement "on behalf of a broad class of authors and publishers worldwide that would expand online access to millions of in-copyright books and other written materials in the U.S. from the collections of a number of major U.S. libraries participating in Google Book Search. The agreement, reached after two years of negotiations, would resolve a class-action lawsuit brought by book authors and the Authors Guild, as well as a separate lawsuit filed by five large publishers as representatives of the AAP’s membership. The class action is subject to approval by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

"If approved by the court, the agreement would provide:

• More Access to Out-of-Print Books – Generating greater exposure for millions of in-copyright works, including hard-to-find out-of-print books, by enabling readers in the U.S. to search these works and preview them online;
• Additional Ways to Purchase Copyrighted Books – Building off publishers’ and authors’ current efforts and further expanding the electronic market for copyrighted books in the U.S., by offering users the ability to purchase online access to many in-copyright books;
• Institutional Subscriptions to Millions of Books Online – Offering a means for U.S. colleges, universities and other organizations to obtain subscriptions for online access to collections from some of the world’s most renowned libraries;
• Free Access From U.S. Libraries – Providing free, full-text, online viewing of millions of out-of-print books at designated computers in U.S. public and university libraries; and
• Compensation to Authors and Publishers and Control Over Access to Their Works – Distributing payments earned from online access provided by Google and, prospectively, from similar programs that may be established by other providers, through a newly created independent, not-for-profit Book Rights Registry that will also locate rightsholders, collect and maintain accurate rightsholder information, and provide a way for rightsholders to request inclusion in or exclusion from the project."

Solid Oak Software Inc, developer of CyberSitter, alleged that an Internet-filtering program called Green Dam Youth Escort produced in China and mandated by the Chinese government, contains stolen portions of the company's code.

"Solid Oak Software, the developer of CyberSitter, claims that the look and feel of the GUI used by Green Dam mimics the style of CyberSitter. But more damning, chief executive Brian Milburn said, was the fact that the Green Dam code uses DLLs identified with the CyberSitter name, and even makes calls back to Solid Oak's servers for updates" (http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2348705,00.asp, accessed 06-13-2009).

Solid Oak Software Inc. said it will try to stop PC makers from shipping computers with the software.

"Solid Oak said Friday that it found pieces of its CyberSitter filtering software in the Chinese program, including a list of terms to be blocked, instructions for updating the software, and an old news bulletin promoting CyberSitter. Researchers at the University of Michigan who have been studying the Chinese program also said they found components of CyberSitter, including the blacklist of terms.

"Jinhui Computer System Engineering Co., the Chinese company that made the filtering software, denied stealing anything. "That's impossible," said Bryan Zhang, Jinhui's founder, in response to Solid Oak's charges.

"The allegations come as PC makers such as Dell Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Co. are sorting through a mandate by the Chinese government requiring that all PCs sold in China as of July come with the filtering software. Representatives of the two big U.S. companies said they are working with trade associations to monitor new developments related to the Chinese software" (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124486910756712249.html, accessed 06-13-2009).

"In George Orwell’s '1984,' government censors erase all traces of news articles embarrassing to Big Brother by sending them down an incineration chute called the 'memory hole.'

"On Friday, it was '1984' and another Orwell book, 'Animal Farm,' that were dropped down the memory hole — by Amazon.com.

"In a move that angered customers and generated waves of online pique, Amazon remotely deleted some digital editions of the books from the Kindle devices of readers who had bought them.

"An Amazon spokesman, Drew Herdener, said in an e-mail message that the books were added to the Kindle store by a company that did not have rights to them, using a self-service function. 'When we were notified of this by the rights holder, we removed the illegal copies from our systems and from customers’ devices, and refunded customers,' he said.

'Amazon effectively acknowledged that the deletions were a bad idea. 'We are changing our systems so that in the future we will not remove books from customers’ devices in these circumstances,' Mr. Herdener said" (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html, accessed 07-25-2009).

"Books in the real world are covered by a notion of copyright called the 'first sale' doctrine, which allows a purchaser to do pretty much whatever he or she wants with the book–including reselling it or lending it to a friend.

"But digital books–especially if they’re sold as part of access to a networked system such as Amazon’s Kindle Store and Google’s online books collection–don’t necessarily fall under those same rules. 'We have not matured our understanding of copyright to work in a digital environment in way that provides a set of protections and meets people’s expectations for how we use digital content,' said Brantley" (http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/07/17/an-orwellian-moment-for-amazons-kindle/, accessed 07-25-2009).

Sergey Brin, co-founder and technology president of Google publishes an Op-Ed piece regarding the Google Book Search program in The New York Times entitled, perhaps overly optimistically, "A Library to Last Forever," from which I quote without implied endorsement:

".  . .the vast majority of books ever written are not accessible to anyone except the most tenacious researchers at premier academic libraries. Books written after 1923 quickly disappear into a literary black hole. With rare exceptions, one can buy them only for the small number of years they are in print. After that, they are found only in a vanishing number of libraries and used book stores. As the years pass, contracts get lost and forgotten, authors and publishers disappear, the rights holders become impossible to track down.

"Inevitably, the few remaining copies of the books are left to deteriorate slowly or are lost to fires, floods and other disasters. While I was at Stanford in 1998, floods damaged or destroyed tens of thousands of books. Unfortunately, such events are not uncommon - a similar flood happened at Stanford just 20 years prior. You could read about it in The Stanford-Lockheed Meyer Library Flood Report, published in 1980, but this book itself is no longer available.

"Because books are such an important part of the world's collective knowledge and cultural heritage, Larry Page, the co-founder of Google, first proposed that we digitize all books a decade ago, when we were a fledgling startup. At the time, it was viewed as so ambitious and challenging a project that we were unable to attract anyone to work on it. But five years later, in 2004, Google Books (then called Google Print) was born, allowing users to search hundreds of thousands of books. Today, they number over 10 million and counting.

"The next year we were sued by the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers over the project. While we have had disagreements, we have a common goal - to unlock the wisdom held in the enormous number of out-of-print books, while fairly compensating the rights holders. As a result, we were able to work together to devise a settlement that accomplishes our shared vision. While this settlement is a win-win for authors, publishers and Google, the real winners are the readers who will now have access to a greatly expanded world of books.

"There has been some debate about the settlement, and many groups have offered their opinions, both for and against. I would like to take this opportunity to dispel some myths about the agreement and to share why I am proud of this undertaking. This agreement aims to make millions of out-of-print but in-copyright books available either for a fee or for free with ad support, with the majority of the revenue flowing back to the rights holders, be they authors or publishers.

"Some have claimed that this agreement is a form of compulsory license because, as in most class action settlements, it applies to all members of the class who do not opt out by a certain date. The reality is that rights holders can at any time set pricing and access rights for their works or withdraw them from Google Books altogether. For those books whose rights holders have not yet come forward, reasonable default pricing and access policies are assumed. This allows access to the many orphan works whose owners have not yet been found and accumulates revenue for the rights holders, giving them an incentive to step forward.

"Others have questioned the impact of the agreement on competition, or asserted that it would limit consumer choice with respect to out-of-print books. In reality, nothing in this agreement precludes any other company or organization from pursuing their own similar effort. The agreement limits consumer choice in out-of-print books about as much as it limits consumer choice in unicorns. Today, if you want to access a typical out-of-print book, you have only one choice - fly to one of a handful of leading libraries in the country and hope to find it in the stacks." (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/09/opinion/09brin.html?scp=2&sq=sergey%20brin&st=cse, accessed 10-09-2009).

The Amazon Kindle is hacked, allowing for all purchased content to be transferred off the device via a PDF file. 

"Kindle e-books are sold as .AZW files which have DRM that stops users from transferring the purchased books to other devices that are not Kindles.

"That should no longer be a problem thanks to Israeli hacker "Labba" who has cracked the DRM. A second hacker, 'I <3 cabbages,' has released the 'Unswindle' program, which will reformat digital content downloaded and stored on the Kindle for PC app, converting it to easily movable formats, such as PDF.

" 'Cabbages' did note that Amazon's DRM process was tough to crack, although ultimately Amazon's work was in vain. 'Amazon actually put a bit of effort behind the DRM obfuscation in their Kindle for PC application. And they seem to have done a reasonable job on the obfuscation. Way to go Amazon! It's good enough that I got bored unwinding it all and just got lazy with the Windows debugging APIs instead,' he said" (http://www.afterdawn.com/news/archive/20989.cfm#comments, accessed 01-02-2010).

Amusingly perhaps, or following the belief that all publicity is good publicity, Amazon.com had two advertisements for the Kindle on the web page publishing the above story.