Abstract :
E&T on such controversial legal issues as ownership of thoughts, ´physical objects´ and our own bodies. The world´s first copyright notice appeared almost exactly 500 years ago. At the dawn of the 16th century, Albrecht Durer scored a success with The Life of the Virgin, a series of woodcut prints that took him the best part of a decade to complete. Much to his annoyance, almost as soon as he released his works, an Italian artist, Marcantonio Raimondi, turned out multiple near-perfect copies. He included Durer´s monogram ´AD´ and sold his versions as originals. Durer lodged a complaint with the Doge´s Court in Venice. Its ruling set a tone that we still recognise today: one of confusion between ownership of a physical object and the intellectual rights behind it. The court ruled that Durer was the author of his own work, but did not physically own Raimondi´s copies. Raimondi simply dropped the ´AD´ from his prints and carried on selling them without further hindrance from the authorities. In 1511, Durer added a note to his book-bound issue of the Virgin series. ´Hold! You crafty ones, strangers to work and pilferers of other men´s brains. Think not rashly to lay your thievish hands upon my works. Beware!´ Give or take a word or two, this same curse is found everywhere today, from books and DVDs to the installation dialogue boxes in software. The Diirer-Raimondi affair had a prescient conclusion. Traditional painters and draftsmen felt threatened by the printmakers, with their new and seemingly unlimitable technologies for mass replication, but the artists soon decided that their best hope was to embrace what they could not prevent. Raimondi made alliances with famous artists, and sold engravings based on their original paintings. His versions lacked the colour and fine brushwork of the originals, yet they brought
