I—“AN ACT FOR THE ENCOURAGEMENT OF LEARNING ” VS. COPYRIGHT

passed by the first United States Congress in its second session. The title of the act reads as follows: An ACT for the ENCOURAGEMENT of LEARNING by securing the Copies of Maps, Charts, and Books, to the Au-thors and Proprietors of such Copies during the Times therein mentioned. (p. xx) This is, of course, the United States ’ first copyright law. Although the title’s language, which describes the Act as “for the encouragement of learning, ” is taken directly from the title of the United Kingdom’s 1710 copyright law, the Statute of Anne, the two laws are markedly different. The Statute of Anne ad-dresses learning only briefly, within a larger discussion of the problems caused by unauthorized copying. Such copying was—according to the Statute—oc-curring “without the Consent of the Authors or Proprietors of such Books and Writings, to their very great Detriment, and too often to the Ruin of them and their Families ” (p. xx). Against this backdrop, the Statute of Anne announced itself as a means “for the Encouragement of Learned Men to Compose an