History+of+the+Copyright

**Roots**
Copyright law came from an array of older legal rights that have been recognized throughout history, including: - the moral rights of the author who created a work, - the economic rights of a benefactor who paid to have a copy made, - the property rights of the individual owner of a copy, - and a sovereign's right to censor and to regulate the printing industry.

In Law
1709 "Statute of Anne" - "An Act for the Encouragement of Learning, by vesting the Copies of Printed Books in the Authors or purchasers of such Copies, during the Times therein mentioned" Copyright initially only covered books, the main medium of information transfer at that time

Canada
Canada passed it's first colonial copyright statute in 1832 but was subject to imperial copyright law until 1921. (5) Canada signed on to the World Intellectual Property Organization's (WIPO) treatise on copyright in 1997 but has done nothing to introduce the tenets of this treatise into Canadian copyright law. Twice it has tried and twice, due to elections, those bills were dropped. Canada is now on the United States' watch list of countries that do not protect copyright in law. The United States did adopt the WIPO's treatise. (6)