There are places, and the Casanatense Library is certainly among them, where the search for an “itinerary” is a must in order not to be completely lost. An exhibition, therefore, conceived as a journey – “with several stages” suggests the etymology of the word itinerarĭus – characterized by the uncertainty of the final result and the conditioning multitude of possible findings.
Following the common thread of the history of copyright protection, from the over 400,000 volumes of the Library, a concentrated bibliographic scenario spread between the 19th and 20th centuries has gradually emerged.
Among the most significant works collected, belonging to the vast canonical-pontifical collection, there is the edict of 23 September 1826 [1], a sharp weapon of an important debate for the recognition of forms of protection for works of the mind. The edict establishes, in fact, a summary of principles that will consolidate the protection of literary and artistic property in the following century. The writing also testifies to how the papal government actively contributed to the adoption and conservation of provisions also aimed at the recognition of extraterritorial protection, including, for all, the Treaty of 22 May 1840 between the Austrian Empire and other Italian States, with which a system of mutual protection of artistic, literary and musical property was inaugurated (“ With Austria, Charles Albert signs a sacred pact on copyright, and other Peoples also subscribe to it, so that this compact nucleus of Peoples bends hostile minds” thus F. de Marchi in the Ode: The Sanction of Copyright of 1881 [2]. Subsequently, the guarantees granted in the dominions of the Holy See saw a further expansion, with the implementation of the law of 30 June 1847 published in the Lombard-Venetian Kingdom and aimed at guaranteeing literary and artistic property against arbitrary publications, reproductions or counterfeiting.
When a Congress on literary and artistic property was held in Milan in 1878, animated by the Typographical-Book Association, the question of copyright and its perpetuity was a very topical issue due to Victor Hugo’s recent declarations at the International Literary Congress in Paris.
The public debate of the time, characterized by the clash of two specular positions – according to one, literary property should belong to the human race, according to the other, it should instead be a form of perpetual property – finds evidence in the volume of the proceedings of the Congress for literary and artistic property in Milan (6 – 8 October 1878) [3]. A. Wolynski reviews the main issues addressed, up to the double vote of the Commission on the duration of rights, recognized as equal to 80 years from the publication of the work, and on the abolition of the second period of the paying public domain. The journey continues with a series of volumes from the first half of the 20th century, largely attributable to two great names: Nicola Stolfi, and his macro comparative work on intellectual property and Eduardo Piola Caselli [4]. The Casanatense collection includes a series of minor writings by the latter author, but above all the three volumes that mark the evolution of the doctrine on copyright. It goes from the work On Copyright According to Italian Law Compared with Foreign Laws, of 1907, to Treatise on Copyright and Publishing Contract in Domestic Law Compared with Foreign Law, of 1927, until arriving, at the conclusion of the proposed itinerary, at the Copyright Code: Commentary on the new law of 22 April 1941-XIX, n.633, a law still in force in Italy today.
From the recomposition of the exposed texts, it emerges how the duration of the right, the rationale for its protection and the methods of extra-territorial exploitation have represented – and still characterize – the three cornerstones of a debate that has never died out.
Proof of this, in the sign of an unresolved continuity, is the Proposal for a Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council on copyright in the Digital Single Market of 14 September 2016, which reveals from the very first considerations “the legal uncertainty regarding certain cross-border uses of works and other subject-matter in the digital environment, both for rightholders and for users”. The directive bears the signs of the weakening of the pure system of ius excluding alios, aiming to have a limited impact on the freedom of enterprise and on the freedom of expression and information, respectively established by Articles 16 and 11 of the Charter. An approach that seems to recall that of M. De Augustinis, in his 1836 volume, Della Proprietà letteraria e de’ suoi giusti confini [5], in which, in the name of a public good, and “in hatred of everything that can act as a stumbling block to progress”, to the knowledge and improvement of the human race, a vision was promoted, today back in vogue, more authentic and shared of literary property, free from forms of excluding abuse.
Yet the awareness of the quantum of the plague of the so-called value gap – deficit of value for the creative sector in the face of free riding of content operated by digital platforms -, evokes with equal insistence the reiterated requests of creators and inventors, today a new creative industry, sometimes fed only by glory, mostly late, often forgotten in a state of indigence. As a starting point for the opening of the last act of the debate on the proposed copyright directive, on the eve of the European Parliament’s vote on the text, visitors are offered the few lines of that warning addressed by De Marchi to the rulers of the time in his Ode on the sanction of copyright: “You created industrial law in favor of the inventor, you sanctioned it to the author so that he could enjoy the profits of his genius and fight victoriously without perishing in poverty!”.
[1] Vol. Misc.2647.13, On the guarantee of Scientific-Literary-Artistic Property in the Dominions of the Holy See: Laws, Declarations, Sentences. With the addition of the Law published on 30 June 1847 in the Lombard-Venetian Kingdom aimed at guaranteeing literary and artistic property against arbitrary publications, reproductions or counterfeiting , Milan, R. Privileged National Establishment of Tito by Gio. Ricordi, 1847, pp. 1-87
[2] Misc.1370.16, Francescoantonio de Marchi, The sanction of copyright: Ode, Rome, Typography of mathematical and physical sciences, 1882
[3] Vol. Misc.2951.24, Artur Wolynski, Congress for literary and artistic property in Milan (6,7,8 October 1878): Summary of the Minutes, Milan, Tipografia Bernardoni, 1878, pp. 1-20
[4] L¹. 621, Eduardo Piola-Caselli, On Copyright According to Italian Law Compared with Foreign Laws, Naples, Tip.Eugenio Marghieri, 1907
F⁴. III.20, Eduardo Piola-Caselli, Treatise on Copyright and Publishing Contracts in Domestic Law Compared with Foreign Law, Turin Unione Tipografico Editrice torinese – Naples Tip. Eugenio Marghieri, 1927.
I³. III.27, Eduardo Piola-Caselli, Copyright Code: Commentary on the new law of 22 April 1941-XIX, n.633, Turin, Unione Tipografico-Editrice torinese, 1943-XXI.
Misc. B.52.7, Eduardo Piola-Caselli On the Copyright of Portraits and Busts in Relation to the So-Called “Right to One’s Own Image”, Città di Castello, Tipografia dello Stabilimento S. Lapi, 1904 (Extract from: Foro Italiano, Year 24, file 10); Misc. B.73.5, Eduardo Piola-Caselli, Applied Works of Art and Copyright, Città di Castello, Tipografia dello Stabilimento S. Lapi, 1905 (Extract from: Foro Italiano, Year 30, file 3); L¹ . 306 Eduardo Piola-Caselli, Inventors’ Rights: A Brief Exposition of the Principles and Rules Concerning Patents for Inventions Followed by the Text of the Laws and International Conventions in Force on the Subject, Turin-Rome, Casa Editrice Nazionale, 1901
[5] Misc.102.3, Matteo De Augustinis, On Literary Property and Its Just Boundaries, S.l., s.n., 1836?