The Case for Copyright Reform by Christian Engström, Rick Falkvinge Read Free Book Online Page B

across
Europe for a ban on this technology which wrestled control of the populace from
them.
     
    Many arguments were used to justify this effort, trying to win the
hearts of the people for going back to the old order. One notable argument was
“How will the monks get paid?”.
     
    The Catholic Church would eventually fail in this endeavor, paving the
way for the Renaissance and the Protestant movement, but not before much blood
had been spilled in trying to prevent the accurate, cheap and quick
distribution of ideas, knowledge and culture.
     
    This attempt culminated in France on January 13, 1535, when a law was
enacted at the request of the Catholic Church, a law which forced the closure
of all bookshops and stipulated death penalty by hanging for anybody using a
printing press.
     
    This law was utterly ineffective. Pirate print shops lined the country’s
borders like a pearl necklace and pirate literature poured into France through
contraband distribution channels built by ordinary people hungry for more
things to read.
     
    1500s: Bloody Mary Invents Copyright
    On May 23, 1533, the 17 year old girl who would later become Mary I of
England was formally declared a bastard by the archbishop. Her mother,
Catherine, who was a Catholic and the Pope’s protégé, had been thrown out of
the family by her father Henry, who had converted to Protestantism just to get
rid of Catherine. This was an injustice Mary would attempt to correct all her
life.
     
    King Henry VIII wanted a son to inherit the Throne of England for the
Tudor dynasty, but his marriage was a disappointment. His wife, Catherine of
Aragon, had only borne him a daughter, Mary. Worse still, the Pope would not
let him divorce Catherine in the hope of finding someone else to bear him a
son.
     
    Henry’s solution was quite drastic, effective and novel. He converted
all of England into Protestantism, founding the Church of England, in order to
deny the Pope any influence over his marriage. Henry then had his marriage with
Catherine of Aragon declared void on May 23, 1533, after which he went on to
marry several other women in sequence. He had a second daughter with his second
wife, and finally a son with his third wife. Unlike the bastard child Mary, her
younger half-siblings — Elizabeth and Edward — were Protestants.
     
    Edward succeeded Henry VIII to the throne in 1547, at the age of nine.
He died before reaching adult age. Mary was next in the line of succession,
despite having been declared a bastard. Thus, the outcast ascended to the
Throne of England with a vengeance as Mary I in 1553.
     
    She had not spoken to her father for years and years. Rather, hers was
the mission to undo her father’s wrongdoings to the Faith, to England, and to
her mother, and to return England to Catholicism. She persecuted Protestants
relentlessly, publicly executing several hundred, and earning herself the
nickname Bloody Mary.
     
    She shared the concern of the Catholic Church over the printing press.
The public’s ability to quickly distribute information en masse was dangerous
for her ambitions to restore Catholicism, in particular their ability to
distribute heretic material. (Political material, in this day and age, was not
distinguishable from religious material.) Seeing how France had failed
miserably in banning the printing press, even under threat of hanging, she
realized another solution was needed. One that involved the printing industry
in a way that would benefit them as well.
     
    She devised a monopoly where the London printing guild would get a
complete monopoly on all printing in England, in exchange for her censors
determining what was fit to print beforehand. It was a very lucrative monopoly
for the guild, who would be working hard to maintain the monopoly and the favor
of the Queen’s censors. This merger of corporate and governmental powers turned
out to be effective in suppressing free speech and political-religious dissent.
     
    The monopoly was