re Armand Mattelart’s Networking the World:

“The Real Reason for Germany’s Industrial Expansion?” by Frank Thadeusz, Spiegel Online, 18 AUG 2010. URL: http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,710976,00.html

Indeed, only 1,000 new works appeared annually in England at that time — 10 times fewer than in Germany — and this was not without consequences. Höffner believes it was the chronically weak book market that caused England, the colonial power, to fritter away its head start within the span of a century, while the underdeveloped agrarian state of Germany caught up rapidly, becoming an equally developed industrial nation by 1900.

Even more startling is the factor Höffner believes caused this development — in his view, it was none other than copyright law, which was established early in Great Britain, in 1710, that crippled the world of knowledge in the United Kingdom.”