There has been an explosion of interest in recent years regarding the origin and of intellectual property law. The study of copyright history, in particular, has grown remarkably in the last twenty years, with a flurry of activity in the last ten. This Handbook takes stock of the field of copyright history as it stands today, as well as examining potential developments in the future. The contributions feature copyright and history experts from across the UK, Australia, the United States, France, Spain and Italy. Covering European, US and international copyright history and traversing from the 16th Century to the early 20th century, this book offers a broad survey of the field and a solid foundation for future research. Students and scholars of copyright law, authorship, art, and the book and music trades will find this book to be an invaluable resource. It will also be of use to practising lawyers and judges with an interest in the doctrinal history of copyright law. Contributors: I. Alexander, J. Bellido, C. Bond, K. Bowrey, O. Bracha, E. Cooper, I. Gadd, J.C. Ginsburg, H.T. Gomez-Arostegui, B. Lauriat, N.A. Mace, H. MacQueen, A.J. Mann, S. Ricketson, F. Rideau, C. Seville, M. Woodmansee

This open access book explores the intertwined histories of mapmaking and copyright law in Britain from the early modern period up to World War 1, focusing chiefly on the 18th and 19th centuries. Taking a multidisciplinary approach and making extensive use of the archival record, this is the first detailed, historical account of the relationship between maps and copyright. As such, it examines how the emergence and development of copyright law affected mapmakers and the map trade and how the application of copyright law to the field of mapmaking affected the development of copyright doctrine. Its explorations cast new light on the circulation of geographical knowledge, different cultures of authorship and creativity, and connections between copyright law, print culture, technology, and society. The book will be of interest to legal historians, intellectual property scholars, and historians of the map and print culture, as well as those interested in the history of knowledge and how legal control over data has been exerted over time. It takes the reader back to the earliest attempts to establish who can own and control geographical information and its graphic representation in the form of a map. In so doing, it establishes a long history of tension between the interests of private enterprise, government, and the public. The book’s investigations end in the first decades of the 20th century, but the tensions it identifies persist in the 21st century, although today paper maps have been largely replaced by web-based mapping platforms and digital geospatial data. The eBook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by the Australian Research Council.

Burning at Europe's Borders: An Ethnography on the African Migrant Experience in Morocco draws a close lens on our global migrant and refugee crisis and the world's largest population of migrants and refuges. The author examines the process of "the burning" among those who have fled violent conflict and extreme poverty across the African continent and now find themselves trapped under brutal conditions at Europe's southernmost borders in North Africa. "Hrig," the Arabic term for "illegal immigration," translates to "burning." It signifies migrants' physical burning of identification papers, in order to avoid repatriation if arrested on their long journeys north, but also the symbolic burning of their past lives in hopes of reaching a better future on European shores. This book exposes the political agreements that have led to Europe's control over African borders and the illicit practices that continue to mold Morocco, Algeria, and Libya into holding cells for the world's most vulnerable. The creative mixed-methods project design included over three years of ethnographic research in African smuggling rings, hidden migrant camps, and EU-funded detention centers; a large-scale demographic survey of the region; oral history and what the author terms "oral future" collection; and community filmmaking practices. Burning at Europe's Borders introduces new ways of engaging in anthropological research in the modern era, weaving individual human stories and images into the analysis of global migration flows at our world's most critical border crossings. Burning at Europe's Borders is a volume in the series ISSUES OF GLOBALIZATION: CASE STUDIES IN CONTEMPORARY ANTHROPOLOGY, which examines the experiences of individual communities in our contemporary world. Each volume offers a brief and engaging exploration of a particular issue arising from globalization and its cultural, political, and economic effects on certain peoples or groups.

Copyright law is commonly described as carrying out a balancing act between the interests of authors or owners and those of the public. While much academic work, both historical and contemporary, has been done on the authorship side of the equation, this book examines the notion of public interest, and the way that concepts of public interest and the rhetoric surrounding it have been involved in shaping the law of literary copyright. Historical examinations of copyright have focused on the 18th century, but this book's main concern is with the period after 1774 in Britain. The 19th century was the period during which the boundaries of copyright, as it is known today, were drawn, and ideas of "public interest" were integral to this process, but in different and complex ways. The book engages with this complexity by moving beyond debates about the appropriate duration of copyright, and considers the development of other important features of copyright law, such as the requirement of legal deposit, the principle that some works will not be subject to copyright protection on the grounds of public interest, and the law of infringement. While the focus of the book is on literary copyright, it also traces the expansion of copyright to cover new subject matters, such as music, dramatic works, and lectures. The book concludes by examining the making of the 1911 Imperial Copyright Act, the statute upon which the law of copyright in Britain, and in all former British colonies, is based. The history traced has considerable relevance to debates over the scope of copyright law in the present day. It emphasizes the contingency and complexity of copyright law's development and current shape, as well as encouraging a critical approach to the justifications for copyright law.