The Saint Pirate

One of the earliest cases of the fight against copyright and intellectual property dates back to the sixth century AD. The pirate turned out to be a Columba saint, a famous Irish monk and preacher. According to legend, for several nights he quietly copied a book that belonged to another saint, Finian. Back then, all books were copied by hand, so it was quite a laborious task. But the book was also very rare and valuable. Historians speculate that it may have been one of the rare translations of the Psalter.

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3 comments

I don't think books were copyrighted back then.
- It's one of the most common biases for historians: anachronicity, it's about looking to people in the past with the goggles from the present (current biases, and/ or values). Furthemore, priests copying books by hand was extremely common before the invention of the printing press.
  
  I wonder if this case is special for its time (the first copyist?) or book (was it protected by any hierarchy?).. Other than that, I agree and fail to see a salient connection to "our" piracy.
  
  I'd rather keep the origins on musical pieces, probably classical music. Which is difficult to get even to this days (too niche, some popular pieces have scanned PDFs tho)
- Sure, but I think Venerable Jorge would have 100% approved of copyright laws and violently enforcing them, somehow.