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    2 years ago

    @Openmastering

    Copyright started when French composers noticed people were using their music and they didn’t get anything from it.

    i don’t know where you got that information from. according to University of Georgia School of Law professor L. Ray Patterson’s “Copyright and ‘the Exclusive Right’ of Authors” (link), the first copyright law was the Charter of the Stationers’ Company, created in 1556. it granted the Stationers’ Company the power to seize and burn presses and books, thus implementing a powerful tool for the government to censor subversive literature. the first copyright law was not about credit or getting paid, it was an authoritarian crackdown on literature

    • @Openmastering@lemmy.ml
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      22 years ago

      You’re entirely right, I mixed things up. It’s the SACEM, the french royalties collecting company which has been started this way.