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Grosheide, Willem --- "Transition from Guild Regulation to Modern Copyright Law – A View from the Low Countries" [2010] ELECD 501; in Bently, Lionel; Suthersanen, Uma; Torremans, Paul (eds), "Global Copyright" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2010)

Book Title: Global Copyright

Editor(s): Bently, Lionel; Suthersanen, Uma; Torremans, Paul

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781848447660

Section: Chapter 6

Section Title: Transition from Guild Regulation to Modern Copyright Law – A View from the Low Countries

Author(s): Grosheide, Willem

Number of pages: 24

Extract:

6. Transition from guild regulation to
modern copyright law ­ a view from
the Low Countries
Willem Grosheide*

1 INTRODUCTORY REMARKS

Since this contribution is about the transition of determining the legal
status of cultural goods by guild regulation to that by modern copyright
law, it appears appropriate to commence with some introductory remarks
about the relation between the two legal regimes. In doing so, art produc-
tion and book publishing will be taken as pars pro toto for the production
of cultural products generally, painting and writing as the general model
for authorship of cultural goods. Cultural goods will serve as the generic
term to denominate indiscriminately any creative product. The term
author will be used as the terminus technicus for those who in the course of
time will be legally protected by copyright law; the term work respectively
for the object of protection by copyright law. The term copyright itself is
used in a legal culture-independent way in order to indicate the national
and international positive law regimes which from the end of the eight-
eenth century and through the nineteenth century led to the establishment
of the Berne Convention (BC) of 1886. In what follows the focus will be on
the developments in the Low Countries during the period of reference.
It may be said then that the history of copyright law is in the end the
history of the way in which creators, that is artists and writers in whatever
capacity, managed to obtain a hearing ...