The creative sector, including the cultural industry, is key for today’s economy. Copyright has the capacity to x the roles and tasks of the actors involved and determine the direction of cash ows within this sector. The study of the evolution of copyright helps understand and adjust the regulation and commercialization of creative labor. Augusta Dimou provides a thoroughly researched, interdisciplinary and comparative study of the historical development of copyright regimes in three countries – Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and Bulgaria. She examines the function and signi cance of copyright in the institutionalization, development, and regulation of modern culture in East Central Europe and the Balkans during the diverse political regimes of the modern era, and at the interface between the various nationalization and globalization processes of the 20th century.

Augusta Dimou specializes in the Modern History of East and Southeast Europe from a comparative, transnational perspective. She is Privatdozentin at the Institute for the Study of Culture of the University of Leipzig and has held academic positions at the University of Ioannina, Humboldt University in Berlin, IOS-Regensburg and GWZO in Leipzig. She has been a fellow at Maison des Sciences de l’ Homme (Paris), IWM (Vienna), FRIAS (Freiburg), CAS (Sofia) and New Europe College (NEC) in Bucharest.

“This book makes an original and signi cant contribution to copyright scholarship in relation to both its subject matter and its methodology. So far as its subject matter is concerned, it covers a substantial and important part of copyright history (that of Eastern and South Eastern Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries) that has been neglected in English language scholarship. Its meticulous coverage of this subject-matter tells us just how much has been missed as a result of this lacuna. Methodologically, the book opens up questions about copyright that cross over its political-economic, cultural, social and legal signi cance. The multidisciplinary approach illuminates corners of copyright history that have often been cut in the literature. In doing so, it opens up new research questions about copyright’s place, and the place of regional trajectories of copyright development, in today’s global environment.”
Fiona Macmillan, University of Roma Tre

“Augusta Dimou has delivered a broad and empirically thorough, conceptually and substantively original contribution to the history of intellectual property, the cultural economy and cultural policy in East Central and Southeast Europe. In doing so, she also opens up interesting new perspectives on Europe as a whole and its role in the globalization of cultural and economic relations and legal standards.”
Hannes Siegrist, University of Leipzig

Acronyms and Abbreviations
Preface
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Where It All Started: Translation
The Empires of East and Southeast Europe
The Expansion of Copyright in Eastern Europe: Preconditions of Development and European Comparisons Comparisons: Europe and Beyond
Orchestrated Globalization: The Expansion of Intellectual Property
Rights in Southeast and East Central Europe in the Context of World War I
Interwar Bulgaria
Interwar Yugoslavia
Interwar Czechoslovakia
Comparative Perspectives on National, Regional, International and Transnational Trajectories up to and Including the Interwar Period
Communist Copyright
Conclusions: COPYRIGHT IN EAST CENTRAL AND SOUTHEAST EUROPE—A LONG-TERM PERSPECTIVE
Sources and Bibliography
Index