Z:gnu-www-ja-copyright-and-globalization--83c46c-Now because of this technology/en

Now because of this technology, because it didn't force copies to be identical, there wasn't in the ancient world the same total divide between copying a book and writing a book. There are things in between that made sense. They did understand the idea of an author. They knew, say, that this play was written by Sophocles but in between writing a book and copying a book, there were other useful things you could do. For instance, you could copy a part of a book, then write some new words, copy some more and write some new words and on and on. This was called &ldquo;writing a commentary&rdquo; &mdash; that was a common thing to do &mdash; and these commentaries were appreciated.