[Vespasian]

Quite some civil law countries in europe have this system. For example "droit d'auteur" in france, "derechos de autor" in spain and "Urheberrecht" in germany both named not after the work or the act (to copy it) but after the author.

[digi_owl]

I think most of them got the idea from France.

As best i recall, Germany was a latecomer to the whole copyright thing. As such, they had wide and cheap access to all kinds of texts. Both informative and entertaining.

This in turn supposedly helped them bootstrap their industrial base.