Are licensed database publishers similar to the Stationers Company in assuming total control by monopolizing the access and dissemination of the information found in electronic publications? During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, several European countries enacted printing privileges with the intent to limit access and censure what they deemed to be sacrilegious or contrary to the accepted beliefs of that time. Simultaneously, these countries did not afford any protection to the creators of the "heretical" works. In essence, the printing privileges serve as an interesting paradox as a precursor to copyright, because the final objective was to limit access to information by controlling the distribution of works , while the U.S. copyright law today strives to do the opposite by protecting the publishing interests of the creators and limiting censorship. However, information in the digital world is moving in a direction of contracts and licenses threatening the disappearance of the public domain as well as the first sale doctrine. A closer glimpse into the history of copyright and the first sale doctrine will reveal how society once again utilizes technology to restrict access to information, as did the Stationers Company in Medieval England.