I wanna talk about my copyright assignment

One of the classes I'm taking this term is called the History and Future of the Book. One of the major assignments in the class comes in 4 parts: a presentation, short essay, tiktok/short video, and blog post on a chosen topic. This is my blog post for that assignment. I'll talk a little about what I learned, but I mostly want to share what my learning process has been like for this assignment.

I picked the topic of the invention of copyright, and researching it was certainly an experience. I started by acquiring about 13-14 different sources to read through, including 11 physical books. In order to get most of these books I had to find the Law Library on my Campus, and from there had to navigate to the Stacks to find majority of the books I needed. I'm very thankful for the librarian who helped me locate the Stacks hidden in the basement of the building. As a whole, finding my sources required a good amount of effort!

That's to say nothing of reading my sources. Given that most of the books I used were from the Law Library, I found that the texts expected me to already be familiar with copyright and some of its history, which was challenging. In the end, I narrowed my sources down to 7, and spent an entire day reading them thanks to my procrastination. My goal for my presentation was to develop a sort of timeline regarding the invention of copyright, and that was a little more challenging than I had anticipated. I had to piece together chunks of history from many sources in order to get a clear sense of the events. As my knowledge stands now, this is my simplified timeline (emphasis on simplified!):

15th century (1400's)- Printing Press takes off

1487- Court of Star Chamber established in England for to control the press

1530- Henry VIII's proclamation for a licensing system

1556- London booksellers establish Stationer's Company

1557- Royal Charter gives SC control over book trade

1637- CSC attempts to codify its laws

1643- first of many Licensing Acts, based on CSC's laws

1662- every printed item must be registered with SC

1695- Licensing Act expires, booksellers lobby for protection

1710- Statute of Anne invents copyright

1774- Donaldson v. Becket ends argument for perpetual copyright 

To sum up centuries worth of developments, here are the absolute basics: if you wanted to print a book, you either had to get permission from the Crown or register with the Stationer's Company, who would then get the legal rights to the copying and publication of the book. The Stationer's Company was allowed to run its monopoly because it centralized the book trade, which made censorship by the Crown easier. 1710's Statute of Anne is the first time that authors get copyright, but it's wording is super vague and things continue as before until 1774. Publishers argued that they should have perpetual copyright, rather than the 21 years allowed to them by the SoA, since you don't lose the rights to a piece of land after a certain amount of time. This argument is demolished in the Donaldson v. Becket case.  

We are also asked to include at least one image in our post, and so I figured I'd use the image of the Statute of Anne. I found this on Wikipedia, here is the link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Anne 

If for some reason you find yourself interested in the invention of copyright, I'll list the sources I used below. My recommendations are the Ross article and the book by Birrell, even though it is very old (copyright from 1899!)

Works Cited

Edited Bently, Lionel; Suthersanen, Uma; Torremans, Paul. Global Copyright: Three Hundred

Years Since the Statue of Anne, From 1709 to Cyberspace. Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd.,

2010.

Edited Porsdam, Helle. Copyright and Other Fairy Tales: Hans Christian Andersen and the

Commodification of Creativity. Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd., 2006.

Birrell, Augustine. Seven Lectures on the Law and History of Copyright in Books. Cassel and

Company, Ltd., 1899.

Loewenstien, Joseph. The Author’s Due: Printing and the Prehistory of Copyright. University of

Chicago Press, 2002.

Rose, Mark. Authors and Owners: The Invention of Copyright. Harvard University Press, 1993.

Ross, Trevor. “Copyright and the Invention of Tradition.” Eighteenth-Century Studies, Vol. 26,

No. 1, 1992, Pp. 1-27.

Slauter, Will. Who Owns the News?: A History of Copyright. Stanford University Press, 2019.

Teilmann-Lock, Stina. The Object of Copyright: A Conceptual History of Originals and Copies

in Literature, Art and Design. Routledge, 2016.

J

We were asked to write a childhood memoir for my English class, and I'm actually ok with how this one turned out. 

 :::

J

            I had a best friend at the age of 7, although the role has a new actor now. Back then, she was played by a girl the same age, with chubby cheeks and glossy, dark brown ringlets. She was essentially a life vest that floated herself over to me, when I was thrown over the side of the boat into the waters of second grade at a new school, in a new town. Things didn’t end neatly and peacefully, but I owe her my gratitude for reaching out to a shy, new girl.

            The friendship was lovely at first. Our first argument was over who would get to play the princess at recess, both insisting that the other was more deserving. Playdates abounded then, on a kid’s snowmobile in our pasture or out on her grandparent’s farm. Shyness dissolved into unbridled joy, her family became mine and mine hers.

            Back at the beautiful beginning, I remember a formative playdate. Fall at her grandparent’s farm, the chill that precedes the first snowfall hanging in the air. We sat in the dark, linoleumed basement, watching YTV’s The Next Star on a tiny old box of a TV, fascinated by the tweenage Canadians competing to be the next Shania or Avril. Inspired by the episode in which they wrote their own songs, we clambered upstairs to the wooden dining table.

            With leftover paper and her grandma’s kitchen pens, we sat down to compose our own songs. The first song I ever wrote was with pen on borrowed paper in someone else’s home, the outline of her hand in pencil on the corner of the page. Pens were forbidden in elementary school, and we were both very excited to get to use them for the first time. Now I make a point to use pencil writing songs, as it’s easier to correct mistakes, to change my mind. Perhaps it’s fitting, however, that such a formative experience used ink. There is no eraser that can scrub the experience from my memory.

            We tried our best to recreate the pop songs of the 2000’s we heard on the local radio or Disney Channel. As far as songs go, it was terrible. As is to be expected of a second-grader, and to be expected of anyone’s first creative endeavour. At least a third of my lyrics were ‘ooh’s, ‘oh’s, or ‘yeah’s, Hannah Montana’s influence evident. To be technical, it was actually two songs, on one page, distinct to me despite the identical melody. We performed to each other in the living room, the other pretending to be a panel of judges from the show. I think this was followed by a trip to the trampoline outside the front window, but I’m not certain.

            I say often, now, that my memory is terrible, and I’m afraid it’s the truth. A small piece of me, to my surprise, feels guilty that I don’t remember any of her song. I spent years memorizing August 10^th, to not forget her birthday, I remember so many parts of our friendship I no longer have use for, but I’m struggling to remember a formative part of my own childhood to achieve a mark in a university English class. I feel a sadness, as if I’m forgetting my own self in doing so, never mind any complicated feelings trying to rise in the background as if I haven’t buried my emotions regarding that friendship.

            Inspired by how Taylor Swift used her songs as therapy, I returned to song writing as elementary school progressed. It was how I charted and dissected my own overwhelming feelings, and I’d like to think that over time, I did get better. Pages and pages of my songbook have been dedicated to the collapsing of our best-friendship. Even now, in my comparatively old age (21, I’m truly over the hill), I return to that friendship to mine it for fool’s gold, feelings to put into words to soothe myself.

            When I went to yet another new school, song writing had become such an important part of my identity that it was how I introduced myself to new people. From this passion grew my interest in creative writing and music, which I now pursue an education in. Writing songs was a lifeline through almost all my years of schooling, all my tumultuous emotions, until it stopped working.

            Now, the pages of my songbook are like my little secret I keep close to my chest. Far from introducing myself as a songwriter, I refuse to bring it up to my musical peers. I know they don’t write songs how I did, and I can’t trust anyone so skilled with something so terribly important to me, lest it receive unsolicited critique. I don’t wish to be good at writing songs. At this point, I wish for the ability to simply write a song, work through my emotions, feel better, back.

            I still have the paper I took home that day, tucked into the back of my old songbook. It’s one of the most important things I would want to save from a house fire. I kept diaries, but I think that songbook is the truest chronicle of my childhood, multicoloured ductape holding the spine together and all. Nothing fancy, or polished, or anywhere near perfect. So private, yet occasionally publicly performed. The pages where I learned to question my role in the falling out between me and the girl who started me on this whole journey.

            I have no answers to any questions, not that any were explicitly posed. Despite the feeling that my back is curving over like my grandmother’s spine curved over her walker, I know I’m not that old. I’m sure one day I’ll look back on my twenties with the same bleary memory I look back with on second grade. There is no neat end to that friendship, there is no neat end to my days of writing songs. I hope that an end to one does not contain the end to the other. 

 

-T

 

The snow is brown. Well, the snow is white, and the sand is brown, laying unusable on the ground, the rust from the underside of my truck box long gone. My bumper sits atop the snow at the side of the shop, the latest addition to the pile of junk— pardon me, parts— leaning against the outer wall. Past the ugly green snowplow, the little Ford tractor, the rusty 38, I find an opening in the fir trees. To my left is the gas tank from Red, propped up against our recently deceased freezer, and to my right, the pull-behind mower I broke twice in the same day. The snow pile where the garden used to be is so ugly, the sky is barely a different grey than the ground, and we don’t even have the car that hood and roof belong to anymore, but despite the appearances, please know this isn’t a junkyard. It’s just debris from the projects started on a warmer day. Six months ago, there were zucchinis growing where that tractor sits, and the sickle mower was out in the ditches off of the #3. Seven years ago I was out here with a big stick— pardon me, a staff— and a wand and a friend who wanted to tell the same fairy tale I did. We were climbing those fir trees and shooting arrows into those straw bales and we were sure we could save the world from that evil wizard, because you can do anything you want in middle school. She’s a mother now, and I’m stuck at home taking a class I started two years ago, and my toes are so cold from being stuck in the snow like the rest of this junk. My father calls me to feed a bale, and maybe I am junk, but at least I can open a gate. Spring will come, parts will become projects again, and I'll grow up too.

:::

I'm taking a creative writing class again. I've gotten so rusty, but at least I was able to submit my junk on time. Take what you can get, I guess. 

#escapril 15 - "Perfume"

It's not april, and it's definitely not the year I started it on. But who said time was linear anyways?

 

 my cursor is blinking at me, and i have to do something, that's why i came here, but i don't know what it is so i blink back at it. the furnace is loud and strong. the enemy of my recordings is a welcome, familiar comfort tonight. familiar yet but not a comfort is the sensation of shock. i knew it would catch us one day. it may be here. 

i kinda can't believe it's not me. 

why are the easy things so hard to do? open the document. type the words. you love writing, don't you? didn't i? 

it's a shower. you step in, get wet, wash, rinse, and get out. why can't you do it?

my feet are sore. it's nice to have them up. i was looking forward to a break from working, but if we're going to miss two weeks, that may have to change. i checked my chequing tonight.

god. i hope this isn't it.

doing

 what am i doing?

i came down

to type away

type away i do

not what i'm supposed to

what is she doing?

she came down

turned off the lights

didn't notice me here

it'd be hard not to

what is he doing?

we called but he went out

work to do

work he does

what else can he do?

what are we doing?

they said stay home

keep watch 

watch what?

what do we do?

-T

Dark Green Glue

My heart is held together with dark green glue

For every bit that dried up and broke off

You were there to pick it up for me

If I were

Say

To one day

Slit a wrist

I’d bleed hunter green

If I am made of strands

I am made of strands from you

You are a sneakily central part of my identity

And not one I’d ever dream of evicting

It hurts to keep pumping this blood through this heart

But I don’t want to pull the knife out of my chest

Because if it came from you it belongs there

You are me

I like that

It doesn’t hurt bad enough to even consider changing that

I am you

I am here because of you

In the realest sense I owe my life to you

So I spend every day mourning you

They’ve hollowed out the home I carry in my chest and it kills

But no one can make me get over you