Z:gnu-www-ja-copyright-versus-community-2000--36626e-There was a continuum. On the/en

There was a continuum. On the one hand you might have somebody, say, writing a play. Then you might have, on the other extreme, just somebody making copies of books, but in between you might have say, somebody, who say, copies part of a book, but writes some words of his own, or writing a commentary, and this was very common, and definitely respected. Other people would copy some bits from one book, and then some bits from another book, and write something of their own words, and then copy from another book, quoting passages of various lengths from many different works, and then writing some other works to talk about them more, or relate them. And there are many ancient works&mdash;now lost&mdash;in which part of them survived in these quotations in other books that became more popular than the book that the original quote [came from].