The History of Intellectual Property

So, while I'm not sure how much time I'll have to do this at BJU, I am planning (plotting) a study of Intellectual Property, and whether it is really as good and just as it is cracked up to be. Since I am a writer who loves free stuff, this is a rather important question.

I shall examine the time period of the invention of the printing press, the first copyrights, and then even earlier, to what existed before the printing press, i.e. how authors/writers/poets/etc. supported themselves, whether their works were often copied, etc.

Plagiarism: whence came this taboo?
Patents.
The Effects of the Printing Press.
The First Copyrights.
"In England the King was concerned by the unfair copying of books and used the royal prerogative to pass the Licensing Act 1662 which established a register of licensed books and required a copy to be deposited with the Stationers Company. The Statute of Anne was the first real act of copyright, and gave the author rights for a fixed period. Internationally, the Berne Convention in the late 1800s set out the scope of copyright protection and is still in force to this day."

Before the Printing Press: Monks.
(other sources of Pre-printing press literature)
The Poets Laureate.
How Bards, Troubadours, and Poets made a living.

How then shall we live?

Other things:
World Intellectual Property Organization

Did forks evolve from spoons?

(warning, "slightly" jesting post ahead, with teensy bits of real, genuine thought)
(this post was written rather quickly in response to one of the random profile questions, which went "Do you believe that forks are evolved from spoons?")

Absolutely not.

In the beginning God created the spoons and the forks, and He made them to increase each after their own kind. The many varieties of spoons and forks we see today are specializations of those two original kinds. However, some of you may be aware of a certain gross violation of this divine order.

There are two beliefs concerning the origin of the spork. The first is that the spork was created by a mixing of the two kinds by some unholy alchemic means early in the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries. The resulting abominations then escaped, and would perhaps had overwhelmed the fork and spoon, had they been half as good as either of them at its tasks.

Ahem. While this could certainly be the case, and I suspect that the second alternative may have been helped along a little by certain unscrupulous sorcerers... I find it much more likely that, for the most part, some of what we see as "spoonishness" was built into the pattern of that original fork, only it did not express itself until the modern age, when forks became plentiful. It may have resulted, rather like the chihuahua, in some mad fork-breeder's cellar, as the insane practitioner bred solely those forks which expressed the most spoony qualities, and doomed the remainder to the most unsanitary of tasks.

Whether or not there was any arcane interference in the creation of the spork, man's hand has certainly been involved, and it is entirely his responsibility to care for his creation, as it could certainly not survive in the wild (much like some house dogs). As to those sporks which have also the qualities of a knife (sometimes called splades) ... well... I believe the comparison to domesticated dogs is in order here: many breeds of dog traditionally have their tails cut short, or their ears cut long... I mean... ermm... sometimes short too. It is not a difficult thing to sharpen a piece of metal, though, of course, it isn't exactly pleasant for the fork.

(Edit: apparently sporks are actually spoons with forklike tines, rather than spoony forks. For some reason, when I wrote this, I was under the distinct impression that the linked article said the latter. Phooey. Of course, wikipedia could be wrong... but I have no evidence to suggest their error.)