Cornish, William --- "The Statute of Anne 1709–10: Its Historical Setting" [2010] ELECD 497; in Bently, Lionel; Suthersanen, Uma; Torremans, Paul (eds), "Global Copyright" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2010)

Book Title: Global Copyright

Editor(s): Bently, Lionel; Suthersanen, Uma; Torremans, Paul

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781848447660

Section: Chapter 2

Section Title: The Statute of Anne 1709–10: Its Historical Setting

Author(s): Cornish, William

Number of pages: 12

Extract:

2. The Statute of Anne 1709­10:
its historical setting
William Cornish*

1 QUEEN ANNE: A LIMITED MONARCH

This keynote address to the Congress should be heard in a celebratory key,
a key with rich and lasting sonorities: E Flat major perhaps. The Statute of
Anne has sounded many striking chords in its long history as a model for
copyright. Some of them are harmonious, some discordant; but as most
people have appreciated, even before the knell of post-modernism, we hear
what we are disposed to hear. Whatever the impression of the Statute on
each of us, it has its distinctive timbre. Hence today's act of homage.
The Statute is set out in the appendix of this Volume for easy refer-
ence in much that was discussed in the First Session of the Congress and
is found in the first part of this volume.1 Why copyright experts have
come to regard this piece of Parliamentary legislation as `the Statute of
Anne' is obscure. The British do not talk of the Copyright Act 1842 as the
Statute of Victoria, or the Imperial Copyright Act of 1911 as the Statute of
Edward (VII). Nor in Anne's own reign do we regard the truly fundamen-
tal Act of Union joining Scotland to England as another `Statute of Anne',
though nationalist Scots may condemn it as a Statute of Anne-xation. The
Act on Copy-right (9 Anne c.21) is named after the monarch in the obtuse
way that ...