Copyright started with a dispute between Scottish and English
publishers, and the first copyright law, 1709's Statute of
Anne, conferred the exclusive right to publish new editions of a
book on the copyright holder. It was a fair competition statute,
and it was silent on the rights that the copyright holder had in
respect of his customers: the readers. Publishers got a legal
tool to fight their competitors, a legal tool that made a distinction
between the corpus — a physical book — and the spirit —
the novel writ on its pages. But this legal nicety was not
"customer-facing." As far as a reader was concerned, once she
bought a book, she got the same rights to it as she got to any
other physical object, like a potato or a shovel. Of course, the
reader couldn't print a new edition, but this had as much to do
with the realities of technology as it did with the law. Printing
presses were rare and expensive: telling a 17th-century reader
that he wasn't allowed to print a new edition of a book you sold
him was about as meaningful as telling him he wasn't allowed
to have it laser-etched on the surface of the moon. Publishing
books wasn't something readers did.