What can and can’t be copied is a matter of law, but also of aesthetics, culture, and economics. The act of copying, and the creation and transaction of rights relating to it, evokes fundamental notions of communication and censorship, of authorship and ownership - of privilege and property. This volume conceives a new history of copyright law that has its roots in a wide range of norms and practices. The essays reach back to the very material world of craftsmanship and mechanical inventions of Renaissance Italy where, in 1469, the German master printer Johannes of Speyer obtained a five-year exclusive privilege to print in Venice and its dominions. Along the intellectual journey that follows, we encounter John Milton who, in his 1644 Areopagitica speech ‘For the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing’, accuses the English parliament of having been deceived by the ‘fraud of some old patentees and monopolizers in the trade of bookselling’ (i.e. the London Stationers’ Company). Later revisionary essays investigate the regulation of the printing press in the North American colonies as a provincial and somewhat crude version of European precedents, and how, in the revolutionary France of 1789, the subtle balance that the royal decrees had established between the interests of the author, the bookseller, and the public, was shattered by the abolition of the privilege system. Contributions also address the specific evolution of rights associated with the visual and performing arts. These essays provide essential reading for anybody interested in copyright, intellectual history and current public policy choices in intellectual property. The volume is a companion to the digital archive Primary Sources on Copyright (1450-1900), funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC): www.copyrighthistory.org . As with all Open Book Publications the entire work is available free to read online, while printable digital editions of the volume together with additional resources can be downloaded from the publisher’s website: www.openbookpublishers.com Daniel Chodowiecki’s allegorical copper plate of 1781 shows unauthorized reprinters and original publishers, respectively as highwaymen and their victims while the Goddess of Justice is asleep. The full title reads: ‘Works of Darkness. A Contribution to the History of the Book Trade in Germany. Presented Allegorically for the Benefit of and as a Warning to All Honest Booksellers.’ The identities of most of the characters have been identified: the bandit chief is the Austrian publisher Johann Thomas von Trattner (1717-1798) who made a fortune by reprinting books from other Germanspeaking territories. His victims are the publishers Friedrich Nicolai (in the centre), and Philipp Erasmus Reich (fleeing into the background). The small bat-like monster hovering overhead (a position normally reserved for angels in religious paintings!) is modelled on Gerhard van Swieten (1700-1772), an influential adviser and doctor of Maria Theresa of Austria who eased censorship regulations but encouraged the reprinting of foreign books in Austria. Nicolai’s right arm extends the bat monster’s line of gaze and points to the head of the Goddess Justitia, sleeping as if drugged by the poppy blossoms above her head. Apart from a scriptural-theological aspect (equating reprints with ‘works of darkness’) and a more juridical one (comparing reprinting to robbery), the title, by describing the etching as a ‘warning to all honest booksellers’, also evokes moral principles in civil society. The ‘honest’ bookseller is one who does not deal in reprints. Ironically, Christian Friedrich Himburg, the Berlin publisher of the copper print was himself to be branded a pirate for a 1777 two-volume Goethe edition which in turn was soon reprinted by two other publishers: in 1778 by Schmieder in Karlsruhe and by Fleischhauer in Reutlingen. Lionel Bently and Martin Kretschmer are joint project directors of the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funded digital archive: Primary Sources on Copyright (1450-1900), www.copyrighthistory.org