Question

The traditional narrative of copyright history heralds the Statute of Anne (1710) as a triumph of authorial rights, characterizing it as the moment English law first recognized an author's inherent property in their intellectual creation. Prior to 1695, the English book trade was governed by the Stationers' Company, a booksellers' guild holding a perpetual, royal monopoly over publishing. When the licensing system underpinning this monopoly lapsed, the resulting piracy crisis prompted booksellers to repeatedly petition Parliament. According to the traditional view, Parliament, skeptical of reinstating a guild monopoly, rejected these initial petitions but eventually passed the Statute by rhetorically shifting the beneficiary of protection to the author.

However, critical historians argue this shift was a legislative sleight of hand. Recognizing that appeals to guild privileges were politically untenable, booksellers strategically co-opted the language of authorial rights. Because most authors lacked the capital to print and distribute their own work, they were compelled to assign their newly minted statutory rights immediately to booksellers for a flat fee. Consequently, the practical economic structure of the trade remained undisturbed. For these historians, the Statute of Anne did not emancipate authors; rather, it provided a politically palatable juridical foundation for the very monopoly it ostensibly dismantled, merely substituting statutory time limits for perpetual operation.

Based on the passage's discussion of the critical historians' perspective, which one of the following can be most reasonably inferred regarding what the booksellers' ultimate success in securing legislative protection depended on?