napster: civil disobedience re: copyright laws

[Trei, Peter]

> ----------
> 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"].

Peter Trei