Copyright's Roots Literally Lie in Censorship; Queen Mary Created the Stationer's Company in 1557 to Control the Press and What Information the People Could Access

What about copyright? The roots literally lie in censorship. It was easy for State and church to control thought by controlling the scribes, but then the printing press came along, and the authorities worried that they couldn’t control official thought as easily. So Queen Mary created the Stationer’s Company in 1557, with the exclusive franchise over book publishing, to control the press and what information the people could access.When the charter of the Stationer’s Company expired, the publishers lobbied for an extension, but in the Statute of Anne (1710) Parliament gave copyright to authors instead. Authors liked this because it freed their works from State control. Nowadays they use copyright much as the State originally did: to censor and ban books.

--Stephan Kinsella, "How Intellectual Property Hampers the Free Market," The Freeman 61, no. 5 (June 2011): 17.