184a3df6_Soviet_Union___Mincov_Law_Blog__Quote_from_Patry_s_book
[Page] 38 [My Comments] That may be true, but this argument is based on the selective reference to pre-existing laws. If we are discussing what the laws should be, regardless of what they are, there is no reason why we should pay much attention to what the laws had been when they were first introduced. That in the eighteenth century England authors were treated as slaves does not mean that we should be doing the same in the twenty-first century. [Quote from Patry’s book] 
Copyright was an author’s right only in the sense of selling those rights on the cheap to booksellers: the great copyright dispute in England in the eighteenth century over whether copyright was a perpetual right was for good reason called the Battle of the Booksellers, and not the Battle of the Authors.
How Not To Fix Copyright - My Response to William Patry - Socialist copyright law - Soviet Union | Mincov Law Blog
Quote from Patry’s book