Tom W. Bell on How Writers Coped Without Copyright

What
would happen if authors and publishers could not count on copyright
to protect them from piracy? Tom W. Bell reviews a book that hints
at the answer. From the founding of the United States until well
into the 20th century, domestic copyright laws generally denied
foreign authors any form of legal redress. Yet as the legal scholar
Robert Spoo explains in Without Copyrights, writers
from other lands developed alternative strategies to recoup the
costs of writing, producing, and marketing their works.

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