The permission to print and distribute — “copy” — words did not exist before the advent of the printing press. After the power to publish was democratized, governments cared more about their own standing than the rights of the publishers. Britain’s first Copyright Act of 1709 gave exclusive power to print books to a government-sponsored company, ensuring that any publication deemed seditious or otherwise against the interests of the government would have a short and inglorious life. A copyright act involving the actual authors came about only later, in the U.S.

On this day, May, May 31, in 1790, Congress approved the Copyright Act in 1790, setting a term of 14 years for authors to have exclusive control over their work, an almost exact copy of Britain’s 1709 Statute of Anne copyright act with a wholly different focus.

The need for a copy right was built into the U.S. Constitution, which in Article I Section 8 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”. Many interpreted that clause to mean Congress would give individual protections on a case-by-case basis as opposed to a general law, so the early Congress was swamped by petitions for protections by authors of history books, atlases and manuals. Many fewer works of fiction made that list.