ERC Starting Grant · 2021
Before Copyright: Printing Privileges and the Politics of Knowledge in Early Modern Europe
BE4COPY examines the long-term history of printing privileges from a cross-disciplinary and European perspective. These privileges provided exclusive rights for the production of books and images: they can be considered one of the precursors of what we now call ‘copyrights’. Introduced around 1470, shortly after the invention of the printing press, privileges were abolished around 1789, when new notions of ownership emerged alongside new ideas about political representation. The BE4COPY project studies the changing nature of the printing privilege over the course of these turbulent 300 years. The intimate relationship between legal frameworks and the politics of knowledge is the primary…
From the public funding record at EU CORDIS. Describes the funded project, not the reviews below.