I was talking about US law, where the purpose was 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." but even that very first copyright law written saw the need for the "Encouragement of Learned Men to Compose and Write useful Books"
The US law, and the British law it was modeled after, were both trying to solve an existing problem of theft. You’re right that the rationale did include the notion that granting protection would be good for society and encourage creation of new work (because the alternative they witnessed in practice was to make money copying someone else). You’re right that this was part of the purpose, but the stated purpose from the very beginning was in fact to protect authors’ and publishers’ rights to make money. Not only was that always the primary point, but it is also the very mechanism by which they promoted new work: the only incentive to create new work is that you have legal protection from copiers for some time so you can make money. This is why these two reasons are inseparable, right?
> The US law, and the British law it was modeled after, were both trying to solve an existing problem of theft.
No, it wasn’t. Creation of novel property rights is never to solve a problem of theft, because theft only exists in the context of existing property rights.
> but the stated purpose from the very beginning was in fact to protect authors’ and publishers’ rights to make money
The original British copyright law did not apply to authors at all, but to printers only. As D f goodzw
> theft only exists in the context of existing property rights
Of course the law didn’t exist before it was written, but copying others’ content was viewed as stealing, which is why there was a push to turn it into real, legal theft. Apologies for using shorthand. What words would you have chosen? Maybe you can make my point better than I can, because the law was in fact written in response to an actual problem people had of being able to recoup their investments.
I don’t agree that ‘theft’ requires existing legal property rights to exist, that is not the definition of the word, so your claim is inaccurate. Theft is the act of stealing, which is taking something without permission. It can be one-sided from the perspective of the person who was taken from, and still be theft.
