Z:gnu-www-ja-copyright-versus-community-2000--fa1e4a-So originally in England copyr/en

So originally in England copyright was partly intended as a measure of censorship. People who wanted to publish books were required to get approval from the government but the idea began to change and it a different idea was expressed explicitly in the US constitution. When the US constitution was written there was a proposal that authors should be entitled to a monopoly on copying their books. This idea was rejected. Instead, a different idea of the philosophy of copyright was put into the constitution. The idea that a copyright system could be&hellip; well, the idea is that people have the natural right to copy things but copyright as an artificial restriction on copying can be authorised for the sake of promoting progress.