alt Hacker News> "Philosophical Transactions is the world’s first and longest-running scientific journal. It was launched in March 1665 by Henry Oldenburg (c.1619-1677), the Society’s first Secretary, who acted as publisher and editor. "
My bad. I edited out a "probably" I shouldn't have, and was writing based on the intuition that there were people working as authors writing plays and the like before you had people working as scientists.
> there were people working as authors writing plays and the like before you had people working as scientists
Indeed, the entire history of humanity is that of creation and sharing and teaching - of ideas, stories, songs, poems. Copyright is a mere three centuries old. And somehow people have come to believe that without it, creation will cease. Even while simultaneously correctly understanding that virtually every person who writes, sings, raps, dances, etc will never be able earn anything but trival sums from doing so even under the current legal regime.
It's worth going to read Macaulay's speeches from the early nineteenth century to see how little what copyright supporters claim as the intent of copyright was seen as such at the time these ideas were being rendered into law.
https://ia601406.us.archive.org/34/items/in.ernet.dli.2015.2... beginning at p 156/pdf page 180