The printing press was introduced in England in 1476, and with it sprang up a literate public. It was then that authors began the tradition of selling their works to publishers, who in turn printed "copies." The first laws governing this trade were a means for the Crown to control "dissident tracts" and required registry with the Stationer’s Company. This policy of censorship created essentially a monopoly of the book trade in England, and an elite, specialized class of book publishers and sellers emerged.3 Even when royal censorship waned, they controlled what books were published because they held the rights to make copies, and so they controlled the ideas circulating in the public sphere and for how much those ideas were bought and sold.
Authors then, like the authors of today, retained some rights. The publisher could not add or subtract text, change the words, etc. However, the small number of publishers holding perpetual copyrights dictated what was publicly disseminated and their price control limited the number of people who could gain access to it. Effectively, their power amounted to a kind of censorship similar to that of the British monarchy's. It was generally in the publishing cartel’s interest to publish work that sold, even if the work presented ideas that were controversial. Yet, if work was not making it out and onto the shelves, how would the public know what was lost?

By implementing the Statute of Anne in 1709, British Parliament tried to limit the monopoly power of booksellers and limited copyright to fourteen years duration, with a possible renewal by the author for an additional fourteen years. Copyright was also extended by twenty-one years for works that were then already in circulation. As the twenty-one year extension neared its end, a copyright war of sorts ensued. Known as the "Battle of the Book Sellers," London publishers sought to retain their copyright in perpetuity. The publishers presented their struggle in terms of protecting the author's rights to proprietary ownership of their work. They argued that authors should have the right not only to own, but also to sell their rights to their work in perpetuity, thus protecting the publisher’s rights to copy in perpetuity. The argument was fraught with personal tragedies where "pirates" stole works from upstanding businessmen.4

In the end, the Statute of Anne prevailed and copyright terms were limited to a set amount of time, after which works would transfer into the public domain. This meant that an author would always be regarded as the creator, but publishers small and largecould make copies of that work as long as they could afford the printing press technology.

For the consumer, the expiration of copyright drastically reduced the cost of books, especially popular ones. In essence, the copyright limits greatly broadened the pool of those gaining access to knowledge. The decision broke the monopoly power of the booksellers, but also struck a balance between an author"s rights (and by extension a publisher’s rights) to profit from their creation while recognizing that knowledge is a public good. By offering a limited monopoly, publishers could profit for a time and then the works became public, more affordable, and more likely to benefit society as a whole.

In America, the Constitution gave "Congress the power to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." In order "to prevent the concentrated power of publishers," the framers of the Constitution supported "a structure that kept copyrights away from publishers and kept them short," at least for the first two hundred or so years (Lessig, 2004, p.130-131).5

3. Halbert, D. Intellectual Property in the Information Age. Connecticut and London: Quorum Books, 1999.
4. Ibid, p. 5-7.
5. Lessig, L. Free Culture. New York: Penguin Press, 2004