Open educational resources in the Netherlands: a fascinating history of the ban on privileges and exclusion from protection for schoolbooks (1625-1881)

One of the earliest accounts in Dutch history where it was explicitly acknowledged that schoolbooks were granted no protection by way of privileges are the resolutions adopted by the States of Holland and West-Frisia in relation to the 1625 School Order. This School Order aimed to improve the use of textbooks in schools by prescribing which books – mostly Roman classics in Latin – could be used for educational purposes. When publishers petitioned for privileges to print these textbooks, the States of Holland and West-Frisia initially granted them, but soon decided to no longer confer any privileges on these books. The reason for this general ban was not grounded in educational or enlightenment ideals, but was political. As the School Order applied across the country, the States could not agree which printers in which cities they would bestow with the printing monopoly.

Interestingly, the 1625 School Order remained essentially unchanged until the nineteenth century, and so did, at least at first glance, the norm that schoolbook were excluded from protection. Various subsequent regulations, including the 1660 'Fixed and Indissoluble' Contract of the Guild of Printers and Booksellers in Leiden and the 1715 Order on the Petitioning and Obtaining of Book Privileges, repeated the principle that schoolbooks are free from protection. In practice, however, the situation was murkier, because several schoolbooks were nonetheless granted a privilege. Even so, also after 1795, when book privileges were abolished and replaced with copyright laws, schoolbooks were still excluded from protection, as the 1814 and 1817 Copyright Acts clearly corroborate. Only in 1881 the general exclusion from protection for schoolbooks was removed from the Copyright Act.

Examining the history of the ban on privileges and on copyright protection for schoolbooks in the Netherlands, this paper aims to deepen understanding of the underlying rationales behind this exclusion, also in light of the essential exchange of knowledge through schoolbooks.