Mark Rose
Without printing technology there would be no need for copyright. Anglo-American
copyright has its roots in early booksellers’ practices which in 1710
were incorporated into the Statute of Anne. Several decades later in 1735 the
provisions of this statute were copied in a new piece of legislation for the
protection of engravings. However “Hogarth’s Act” protected
only those engravings which involved original designs and thus, implicitly,
made a distinction between artists and mere craftsmen. Soon, however, Parliament
was persuaded to extend protection to all engravings. The history of Hogarth’s
Act foreshadowed the logic whereby a century later protection was extended first
to special and then to ordinary photographs. Together these instances of copyright
extension raise the question of to what degree similar patterns are at work
in the continuing expansion of copyright today.