| Abstract: |
We study copyright law and its relationship with cultural conceptions of
authorship and technicalconstraints on the economics of publishing in the US.
Because American copyright law was first developed in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries, we focus on that time period. And because magazines were
the primary forum for literary expression in America during this time, we
study the magazine industry. Both technical and cultural factors created
opportunities for magazines and imposed constraints on them, but most effects
of copyright law were mediated by cultural, not technical, factors. Lack of
copyright protection for foreign authors allowed magazines reprint foreign
authors’ work for free. However, copyright law was not used by magazines to
protect domestic work: very few claimed copyright over the original material
they published and none of those claims were adjudicated by courts. Therefore,
magazines reprinted work from domestic sources, including other magazines.
Nevertheless, copyright law had constitutive effects on the literary market:
it spurred the emergence of a cultural conception of the
author-as-paid-professional; in turn, this cultural shift fostered the market
for literature, as magazines began to pay authors for their work and compete
intensely over the work of the most popular authors. |