napster: civil disobedience re: copyright laws

[Steve Schear]

At 10:44 AM 6/19/2001 -0400, Trei, Peter wrote:


> > ----------
> > From:         Ken Brown[SMTP:k.brown at ccs.bbk.ac.uk]
> > Reply To:     Ken Brown
> > Sent:         Tuesday, June 19, 2001 7:01 AM
> > To:   Steve Schear
> > Cc:   Phillip H. Zakas; cypherpunks at lne.com
> > Subject:      Re: napster: civil disobedience re: copyright laws
> >
> > Steve Schear posted:
> >
> > [...]
> >
> > > ================================================
> > >  From http://webserver.law.yale.edu/censor/samuelson.htm
> >
> > [...]
> >
> > > Far more harmonious was the relationship between
> > > copyright and censorship in that era. Men burned at the stake for
> > writing
> > > texts that were critical of the Crown or of established religion. The
> > > stationers' copyright regime was part of the apparatus aimed at ensuring
> > > that these texts would not be printed or otherwise be widely accessible
> > to
> > > the public.
> >
> > Which men, in England, were burned at the stake for "burned at the stake
> > for writing
> > texts that were critical of the Crown"?
> >
> > Decapitated maybe, but not burned at the stake... definite revisionist
> > history in the making here.
> >
> > Ken
> >
>Well, there's one, but it's a bit of a stretch: William Tyndale. He was
>burned
>at the stake for publishing the New Testament in English in 1536, two
>years after Henry VIII had made himself the head of the Church of England
>with the Act of Supremacy.
>
>It can be reasonably argued that at that time the Crown and Church were
>one and the same in England, and an offense against the State Religion
>was an offense against the State.
>
>However, it's generally true that burning was reserved for religious
>offences
>(including witchcraft), the axe for acts against the Crown, and hanging for
>other criminal cases.
>
>[Just 2 years later, Henry ordered the production of an official translation
>into English, known as the "Great Bible"].

I understand a similar fate befell Guttenberg's typesetter but that (I 
believe) was in what is now Austria or Germany.

steve