Cultural and Intellectual Heritage and the Issue of Property Rights: Concepts and Trends

Abstract

The invention of the printing press by Gutenberg in 1450 allowed the dissemination of works on a larger scale and democratized access to manuscripts. In return for the prior censorship of published content, the laws granted printers the exclusive right to exploit published works, a "privilege", valid for a specific place and period, which allowed the holder to exercise a certain control over the publication. During the Enlightenment, intellectual property was associated with the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, notably in Articles 2 and 17, where the objective of any political society is to preserve the natural rights of man [...] These rights are liberty, property, security and opposition to oppression (Article 2). Property being an inviolable and sacred right, no one can be deprived of it, except in cases of public necessity [...] and on condition of fair compensation (Article 17). On this basis, Diderot, Voltaire, Kant and Fichte [...] laid the foundations of legal individualism specific to the dissemination of ideas. However, another aspect of the Enlightenment philosophy has been largely ignored, namely that Enlightenment societies attached importance to knowledge, recognizing that it was necessary to encourage the production and dissemination of useful knowledge to achieve their goal. At that time, it was believed that the more educated people were, the more society progressed economically, which led to its civilizational advancement. The printed book was thus an essential reference in terms of knowledge and the ideal means for disseminating knowledge. Therefore, copyright law between the 18th and 20th centuries was a "book law", aimed at encouraging production and distribution. The general formulation of the legislation aimed to guarantee readers' access to the most recent knowledge. Most intellectual property and copyright laws have partially achieved this objective by protecting the interests of authors and publishers. But this legislation also sought to impose limits on any potential monopoly in order to ensure universal access to knowledge. Although public property was the rule in the minds of legislators, copyright and publication rights remained the exception.