#SaveOurInternet 4: Non Sans Droit

This Christmas may be the last one that a free Internet exists within the EU, to the detriment of many people in the creative professions. When I first went into blogging and publishing fanfiction online over five years ago, I thought this day would never come. There would be a requiem and a ban on parodies, on sharing images and stories that move us for free, on filk lyrics and fanfiction, and pirate translations of works outside the public domain... The Members of Parliament turn a deaf ear to all of us in the creative and the electronic world, and thus, next year... if we all don't come together and do something against this Article 13, everything we know and love will fall apart.
Now I know how Odin must have felt with the forebodings of Ragnarök. But who am I to be then... Odin or Enjolras? Feeling powerless against the rising tide, or not? Not only is my career as a currently unemployed translator at stake; many other creative professionals will be facing the same dire consequences - if we don't do something ourselves.
Most surely, this year's Advent Calendar will be about Save Our Internet and have to do with the history of copyright and resistance to it - maybe this very introductory article will be barred because the name of Enjolras (or any other Les Mis character) would be as encouragingly mentioned as Macbeth, if we just sit there idly instead of coming together for the cause.

Non Sans Droit - The Anglican Reformation, Stationers' Guild, and royal patronage
The Bard of Avon was sponsored by courtiers (Henry Wriothesley -pronounce Risely-, Earl of Southampton) and then by the Crown (James VI/I); other patrons could belong to the grande-bourgeoisie or, if the work in question was sacred, the Church (whether Catholic or any Protestantism). For most of human history, there has not been a need for copyright. The whole notion of distributing art for profit was completely foreign. Visual artists, literary writers, and composers worked on commission from wealthy patrons, in exchange for room and board; while performers, such as bards or carnival/circus or theatre troupes, toured the lands and performed in public spaces, whether market squares, esplanades, inns, or castle grounds.
But still the Stationers held this iron-hard censorship. It was Mary Tudor, as part of the Counter-Reformation, who restricted the right to print to universities and 21 printing companies. They had the right to confiscate and destroy, in fact, obliterate and unauthorised printing presses and their works. She encouraged the Stationers' royal monopoly financially and comercially, and in turn she managed to ensure that the Crown got its way. 
Though Shakespeare performed for the post-Mary Crown and the populace, he was not recognised as the real writer in the Stationers' records - neither was any other Tudor- or Stuart-era author. Everything was in the name of the Stationers.
In fact, the use of "pirate" in the intellectual sense (as "word-pirate") dates from the same time as Shakespeare and the King James Version.