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Medieval Copy Protection
An anonymous reader writes "In medieval times a 'book curse' was often included on the inside cover or on the last leaf of a manuscripts, warning away anyone who might do the book some harm. Here's a particularly pretty one from Yale's Beinecke MS 214: 'In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen. In the one thousand two hundred twenty-ninth year from the incarnation of our Lord, Peter, of all monks the least significant, gave this book to the [Benedictine monastery of the] most blessed martyr, St. Quentin. If anyone should steal it, let him know that on the Day of Judgment the most sainted martyr himself will be the accuser against him before the face of our Lord Jesus Christ.'"
Ahem... that one _is_ one of God's laws: "Thou shalt not steal". Written in stone, no less.
In these days, it was common practice to copy books. It was even encouraged to spread knowledge and share it with others. This protection is against theft and is just as (in)effective as today's copy protection techniques.
Yeah...because god, the creator and lord of all things, is going to enforce human laws.
Actually, yes, according to the Bible, breaking human laws is wrong, unless it contradicts God's law.
Romans 13:1
Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God.
No, there is no "-1 I'LL NEVER ADMIT BEING WRONG!!!" mod.
I don't think I'd mind nearly as much if Idle's comments page wasn't so broken....
Agreed. Fortunately, there is a workaround: change the "idle" part of the hostname to some other word. Any story can be served from any subdomain; only the page layout changes. It doesn't even have to be a normal /. host; for example, here's this story in the asdf subdomain.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
No, by the time of Shakespeare there had arisen a sentiment among authors that only they had the right to disseminate copies of their works. Poets of, say, the Roman era didn't care that their works were transcribed from recitals, mass-copied by amanuenses and sold in the agora without any money going back to them. The only time they complained was when people put their own names on the work -- plagiarism, not copyright violation (Martial composed a witty epigram to this effect). Playwrights of Shakespeare's era, however, jealously guarded their scripts and tried to put a stop to the unauthorized copies made by audience members.
Well, in Germany I don't (with pressed DVDs). I've once selected English language directly when starting a several-language DVD, so I know the spot this is about. But it's easy to avoid even if I want to see the DVD in English, by simply selecting German initially and then switching to English as soon as the main menu appears. I've then tried other languages on that DVD as well, but IIRC the German version was the only one without the spot (one language, I don't remember which, did use a different spot, however).
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
That story - or one very similar - is in the book "How the Irish saved civilization" by Thomas Cahill (chapter 6), where a monk named Columcille made an unauthorized copy of a psalter that belonged to the Bishop Finian of Clonard. The dispute as to whether he could keep the unauthorized copy was resolved by the King Diarmait, whose decision in history’s first copyright case was logical: "To every cow her calf; to every book its copy". However, for some reason the RIAA must have existed in some medieval variant, and Columcille was forced to return the copy to Finian, and the story ends with Columcille's not-so-pacifistic followers defeating Diarmait’s soldiers in battle, and the copied psalter, henceforth known as the “Cathach” or Warrior, returning to Columcille, which I guess is one way to resolve copyright disputes!
The Bible was copy protected, with a prejudice, by the Roman Catholic Church. Smashing printing presses and burning heretics at the steak were quite common ways of making sure only the Priestly caste had access to the Bible.
This is basic Church history learn it love it then leave it.
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