Z:gnu-www-ja-copyright-versus-community--f03875-Now in the early centuries of/en

Now in the early centuries of printing, and still I believe in the 1790s, lots of readers wrote copies by hand because they couldn't afford printed copies. Nobody ever expected copyright law to be something other than an industrial regulation. It wasn't meant to stop people from writing copies, it was meant to regulate the publishers. Because of this it was easy to enforce, uncontroversial, and arguably beneficial for society.