[ Thanks to Brendan Scott for this
link. ]
“The Statute of Anne (1709) has about 2,500 words in
it. It took roughly 200 years to reach 7,500 (in our 1905 Act). For
your reference, the NSW Conveyancing Act 1919 No6 (which actually
does deal with property) has about 82,000 words (ie about the
number of words added to the Copyright Act in the last 10 years).
We might speculate whether there will be enough paper in the world
to even print the Act in 20 years’ time…“It is hard to see any relationship between the amount of
legislation and the reported rate of piracy (which seems to be in a
long term, albeit slow, decline). To the extent there is a
relationship, the reported rate seems to lead changes in
legislation.”