Credit, financial or reputational, has been an economic concern for centuries.
Copyright is commonly thought to have begun with the British Statute of Anne in 1710, which made it illegal to copy books without permission for 14 years after publication. The United States passed its own copyright law as early as 1790, and the length of protection was steadily extended until today’s standard of 70 years beyond the author’s life. Like length of time, the breadth of copyright has grown, from books to music to paintings to photographs to software.
But near-infinite reproducibility of digital products and frictionless web communications is stretching the limits of copyright, as tech-policy journalist Glyn Moody told me: “It is fundamentally incompatible with the internet.”
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