The first modern copyright law was enacted by the British
Parliament in 1709 and came into force in 1710. This was the Statute of Anne:
an
"Act for the Encouragement of Learning, by Vesting the Copies of
Printed Books in the Authors or Purchasers of such Copies..."
The
Act proved to be a catalyst and was soon followed by other copyright
legislation, the most influential being the French droit d’auteur decrees
passed in 1791 and 1793. For more than a century all efforts remained focussed
at a national level, but increasingly this territorial approach became a
problem.
Consequently, the International Literary and Artistic
Association (ALAI) was founded in Paris in 1878, with Victor Hugo as its
honorary chairman. Its main objective was to promote an international agreement
to protect authors of literary, scientific and artistic works. The association
achieved this with the adoption on September 9th, 1886, of the Berne Convention
for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works. This was the culmination of
175 years of modern copyright laws. The Convention recognised and developed
legal principles that were first forged under national systems. In essence this
is still the copyright system as we know it.
This Congress celebrates the tercentenary of modern copyright
law. We will be exploring the various principles set out in the Statute of
Anne, such as the right of printing and publishing, the notion of libraries as
repositories of knowledge, the right of authors to control the importation of
books, and the question of formalities. We will also examine the ways in which
these historic issues manifest themselves in the era of Cyberspace: online
digital libraries, illegal downloading and distribution of protected works,
authors’ contracts and the economic impact of copyright. Moreover, these issues
are compounded in the current globalised context and the conference will pay
special attention to trans-national litigation strategies.