For the Encouragement of Learning: The Origins of Canadian Copyright Law
Document Type
Book
Publication Date
4-2023
Keywords
copyright; legal history; book history; 19th century Canada
Abstract
For the Encouragement of Learning addresses the contested history of copyright law in Canada, where the economic and reputational interests of authors and the commercial interests of publishers often conflict with the public interest in access to knowledge. It chronicles Canada’s earliest copyright law to explain how pre-Confederation policy-makers understood copyright’s normative purpose.
Using government and private archives and copyright registration records, Myra Tawfik demonstrates that the nineteenth-century originators of copyright law intended to promote the advancement of learning in schools by encouraging the mass production of educational material. The book reveals that copyright laws were integral features of British North American education policy and highlights the important roles played by teachers, education reformers, and politicians in the emergence and development of the laws. It also explains how policy-makers began to consider the relationship between copyright and cultural identity formation once British interference into domestic copyright affairs increased, and as Canadian Confederation neared. Using methodologies at the intersection of legal history and book history, For the Encouragement of Learning embeds the copyright legal framework within the history of Canada’s book and print culture.
ISBN
9781487545253
Recommended Citation
Tawfik, Myra. (2023). For the Encouragement of Learning: The Origins of Canadian Copyright Law.
https://scholar.uwindsor.ca/lawpub/170