The criminal appropriation of the author

censorship and privileges in the 16th and 17th centuries

Abstract

The author does not appear in law, at first, as a holder of patrimonial or moral rights. Before being an owner, the author emerges as a threat, as a possible transgressor that must be controlled and eventually punished. This thesis is defended by Michel Foucault in a lecture given in 1969, in which he explores the theme of authorship and sustains the anteriority of the authors' criminal appropriation. In his view, the civil appropriation of the author only happened later, through modern copyright. In this article, we seek to assess this brief consideration of the French philosopher through further historical investigation, centered on French and English laws of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In this research, our focus will be directed on the practice of prior censorship and the system of royal privileges. We will also argue that this regulatory model, centered on repression and control by corporations and the state, faces a crisis in the eighteenth century, in the context of the emergence of disciplinary mechanisms when a new legal arrangement is built. Instead of a transgressor, the author becomes, within modern law, above all, an owner. Thus, our study, broadly speaking, confirms Foucault's thesis.