History of Copyright.
Reading more and more history these days - looking for (and finding) linkages between technological change and business/production model shifts. Here's a great example (bolding mine):
"...Central to the evolution of western copyright is the evolution of the printing press and with this, the system of privileges by which authors were remunerated. Privileges had been granted from the sovereign to the booksellers following the invention of printing, to regulate the book trade and to protect printers against piracy. By the seventeenth century it had become customary for publishers to offer honours to the writers for the works they conceded to print.
But institutions in honorarium, gave authors a mere acknowledgement. Consequently, the writer was not afforded value for his/her work.
The invention of the printing press, and the possibility of printing multiple copies of books cheaply resulted in a wider market for books which had previously been available only to the most privileged members of society.
The printers and publishers soon forged powerful guilds and petitioned the authorities for protection against unfair competition from printers who copied their editions. Unfettered competition, with freedom for any printer to copy another�s editions, led in all the major European countries to a situation in which "piracy was born, so to speak, with the art itself."
These privileges were in time used as an instrument of censorship by the authorities.
These prohibited printing unless the book was first licensed. Printing was prohibited without the consent of the owner. Authors complained, and were concerned with moral rights mainly and objecting to publication without consent, false attribution of authorship and modifications to the text which were harmful to their reputation."
Link's from here.