Obviously. Yes, the law didn’t exist, but copying others’ content was viewed as stealing, which is why there was a push to turn it into real, legal theft. Apologies for using shorthand. What words would you have chosen? Maybe you can make my point for me, because the law was written in response to am actual problem people had of being able to recoup their investments.
I don’t agree that ‘theft’ requires existing legal property rights to exist, that is not the definition of the word, so your claim in inaccurate. Theft is the act of stealing, which is taking something without permission. It can one-sided from the perspective of the person who was taken from, and still be theft.
But the first copyright laws in Britain gave no rights at all to creators.
They weren’t about moral rights founded in creation of works, the basis of rights was the capital investment of setting up to print the work.
No, it wasn’t. Creation of novel property rights is never to solve a problem of theft, because theft only exists in the context of existing property rights.
> but the stated purpose from the very beginning was in fact to protect authors’ and publishers’ rights to make money
The original British copyright law did not apply to authors at all, but to printers only. As D f goodzw