 Books were hand written  Books were very expensive  Books weren’t protected  Authors weren’t protected

 Printing Press was invented  Printed stuff became easily accessible  Not all of the public was literate

 England made a form of censorship  England required a copy of each book to be submitted  Books found hostile to the government were removed  Lasted until 1695

 British Parliament passed first “copyright  It established that authors owned their work  Once you bought a book you weren't restricted by copyright

 Connecticut passed a copyright statute  It was called “An Act for the Encouragement of Literature and Genius”.  Dr. Noah Webster advocated it

 James Madison suggested that the Constitution secured literary authors their copyrights for a limited time

 A federal bill was submitted to congress regarding copyrights

 Books, charts, and maps were protected for 14 years  They could be renewed for 14 more years  Registration was held in the US district Court that the author was at

 “The Philadelphia Spelling Book” was the first book to be copyrighted in America  It got registered in the US District Court of Pennsylvania

 The Copyright Act started to protect historical and other prints

 Extended copyrights to musical compositions  Extended the copyright to 28 years with a 14 year renewal

 Copyrights were extended to dramatic works

 Photographs and Photographic negatives started being protected by copyrights

 The copyright law was revised again  Art was protected under it  Deposit and registration was centralized in the Library of Congress  Authors started to be able to change or dramatize what they had a copyright on  Registrations started to be indexed

 The International Copyright Act became a Law  Authorized copyright relations with foreign countries

 The first video was deposited to be copyrighted  It was sent as a series of pictures instead of film

 President Grover Cleveland passed the Printing Act of 1895  It centralized Governmental printing  Stopped the copyrighting of any government document

 An act was passed to stop performances of copyrighted music that wasn’t authorized

 The copyright office split from the library of congress  The register of copyrights was appointed

 The copyright act was revised again  It was broadened into “all the writings of an author”  The renewal term was turned up to 28 years

 The Townsend Amendment of 1912 made videos a separate category; they were previously put in as pictures

 The US and certain Latin American nations noticed the other nation’s copyright acts

 Poetry, novels, and textbooks were added to the copyright act

 The US became a member of the Universal Copyright Convention

 The congress put in a series of nine acts that extended the term for which existing works could be renewed.

 Sound recordings were added to the copyright act

 The fourth revision of the copyright law was signed

 The provisions of the copyright law were set into action  The term of protection changed to the life of the author and 50 years after

 Computer software was added to the copyright law

 The US adhered to the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works

 Architectural works were added to the copyright act

 Renewing a copyright became optional  Copyrights between 1964 and 1977 were automatically renewed

 Copyrights were extended to the authors life and 70 years after death

 President Clinton signed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act  This implemented treaties made at the world intellectual property organization

 The TEACH act allowed copyrighted things made by accredited nonprofit educational institutions to be used in distance education

 To learn more go to