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Medieval Copy Protection

Posted by samzenpus on from the thou-shall-write-your-own-book dept.

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.'"

12 of 226 comments (clear)

  1. That's not copy protection by XanC · · Score: 5, Insightful

    That's theft protection. Copyright infringement != theft, remember?

    1. Re:That's not copy protection by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Slashdot: where we don't bother reading the summary, let alone the article, when writing the headline.

    2. Re:That's not copy protection by commodore64_love · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Precisely.

      The need to curse thieves of expensive hand-written Bibles disappeared when the printing press appeared, and Bibles became as plentiful as leaves to wipe your arse. Then nobody cared if you took it from the church (it was easily replaced). Some even started giving bibles away, in order to educate the masses. And of course the bible is not and never has been copy-protected.

      --
      "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
  2. FBI warning by donnyspi · · Score: 4, Funny

    They should put message at the beginning of movies instead of the stupid FBI warning thing.

    1. Re:FBI warning by HermDog · · Score: 5, Funny

      If you illegally copy "Twilight" you're cursed with a copy of "Twilight"

      --
      JADBP
  3. Equally Effective by pwnies · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I see that the effectiveness of DRM hasn't changed in 800 years.

    1. Re:Equally Effective by mackai · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The copyright lobby would be more likely want an additional fee added to the purchase of every pen based on the amount of text you could potentially copy before the ink ran out. This fee would be provided to book publishers to offset the losses they might encounter should you decide to copy portions of the book instead of purchasing an additional copy of the book.

  4. No wonder by boristdog · · Score: 5, Funny

    No wonder my crops failed and there was a rain of toads on the farm after I downloaded "Superman III".

  5. Famously.... by mattdm · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The Book of Revelation ends like this:

    [18] For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book: [19] And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book. [20] He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus.

    Not copy-protection, but an "invariant section" definition as in the GFDL. The translation is medieval, but the original and therefore clearly the practice is much older. Since there was no government-provided copyright law with which to enforce this, threatening eternal damnation is pretty much the only resort available. (Right?)

    (Sidenote: of course, this was written before that book was commonly bound into a single-volume manuscript, but that doesn't stop people from assuming that they were meant to apply to the entire bible in its current form.)

  6. Re:::facepalm:: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    You're just upset because Moses yelled at you for building the golden calf.

  7. Re:Slashdot's categories are broken. by JesseMcDonald · · Score: 4, Informative

    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
  8. Up your Colophon by sgarrigan · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Medieval scribes wrote book curses in the "colophon" at the end of the book; here are two favorites:

    Whoever steals this book let him die the death; let him be frizzled in a pan; may the falling sickness rage within him; may he be broken on the wheel and be hanged.

    For him that stealeth, or borroweth and returneth not, ... let it change into a serpent in his hand and rend him. Let him be struck with palsy, and all his members blasted. Let him languish in pain crying out for mercy, & let there be no surcease until he sing in dissolution. Let bookworms gnaw his entrails. ... Let the flames of Hell consume him forever.
    — San Pedro monastery, Barcelona

    ... and one a bit older (from Asurbanipal's library in Assyria 650 BCE):

    Clay tablet of Ashurbanipal, King of the World, King of Assyria, who trusts in Ashur and Ninlil. Your lordship is without equal, Ashur, King of the Gods! Whoever removes [this tablet], writes his name in place of my name, may Ashur and Ninlil, angered and grim, cast him down, erase his name, his seed, in the land.