Part 3: How the Photocopier Changed the Way We Worked €”and Played

Decades before 3-D printers brought manufacturing closer to home, copiers transformed offices, politics and art…

And now the fandom/copyright angle:

“This same force catalyzed the world of alternative culture: Fans of TV shows, sci-fi or movies began to produce zines, small publications devoted to their enthusiasms. The Riot Grrrl movement of young feminist musicians in the ’90s, appalled by mainstream media’s treatment of women, essentially created their own mediasphere partly via photocopiers. “Beyond its function as an ‘office tool,’ the copier has, for many people, become a means of self-expression,” said the authors of Copyart, a 1978 guide to DIY creativity.

But all that copying worried traditional authors: Surely they were losing sales if someone could copy a chapter from a book, or an article from a magazine, without paying for the original. Libraries and universities were hotbeds of so much duplication that publishers eventually took their complaints to the courts—and, in the ’70s, lost. The courts, and Congress, decided that making copies for personal use was fine.“It was really a great moment in the late ’70s when it was a wonderful loosening of copyright,” says Lisa Gitelman,  professor of English and media studies at New York University.

These days, Congress is working hard­—often at the behest of movie studios or record labels—in the opposite direction, making it harder for people to copy things digitally. But back in the first cultural glow of the Xerox, lawmakers and judges came to the opposite conclusion: Copying was good for society…..”