Does a book belong to its author or its readers? Five centuries of tension between copyright and the freedom to read

April 23 is World Book and Copyright Day, established by UNESCO in 1995. The date was chosen because of a curious coincidence in 1616: it is traditionally considered the date of death of two literary giants, William Shakespeare and Miguel de Cervantes. In reality, the coincidence is more apparent than real: at the time, England had not yet adopted the Gregorian calendar (it would do so only in 1752), so Shakespeare died on April 23, 1616, according to the Julian calendar—May 3, 1616, in the Gregorian calendar.

Books and copyright are therefore celebrated together—something that seems obvious, just as it seems obvious that literary creation is protected and that books are widely available and easily accessible tools for spreading knowledge. Yet the history of copyright and the spread of books has not always moved in step.

Before the introduction of movable-type printing, the only books available in Europe were manuscripts, and the circulation of a work required a long and costly process. Recent studies estimate that when Johannes Gutenberg printed his first book, there were between 10 and 20 million manuscripts in all the libraries of Europe. Between 1455 and 1500, about 30,000 editions were produced in Europe, and it is reasonable to assume that between 300 and 500 copies of each were printed. In less than 50 years, between 9 and 15 million “new” books became available—roughly the same number produced throughout the ancient and medieval periods combined. These figures represent a true revolution: books suddenly became available on the market at far more affordable prices and at a pace never seen before. At the same time, from the late fifteenth to the late sixteenth century, major libraries were founded—such as the Malatestiana Library (1452), the Biblioteca Marciana (1468), and the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek (1558)—demonstrating how the increased availability of books also encouraged the creation of institutions dedicated to preserving and organizing this remarkable output.

By the end of the fifteenth century, a new need had emerged: the legitimate desire of printers to protect the economic value of their work. First in Venice—then the leading center of printing—and soon elsewhere, legal innovations began to appear to safeguard publishers’ labor and profits: so-called “printing privileges,” licenses granted by local authorities giving printers exclusive rights to print and sell a particular work, usually for a period of ten years.

With the English “Copyright Act” of 1709, for the first time a right was also granted to authors, although limited and subordinate to that of publishers. From that point on, and especially after the Enlightenment, authors’ rights—both moral and economic—were increasingly recognized. This process culminated in twentieth-century reforms, which established that copyright protection extends up to 70 years after the author’s death, allowing heirs to benefit as well.

While this development clearly protects creators, it also introduces a constraint on the circulation of works, particularly in an era when reproducing texts has become technically simple. The tension that has existed from the beginning—between books, their social and cultural value, and copyright—remains very much alive today.

Perhaps it is no coincidence that UNESCO has decided to celebrate both books and copyright, and that the places where these celebrations take center stage are libraries—that is, institutions where copyright protection and access to books find their ideal balance: “The public library is the only thing that isn’t for profit. If it were proposed today, it would be called communism,” according to Kurt Vonnegut’s famous definition.