[1] H. Sandison writes: "The roots of American isolationism are from the 1790 Copyright Act which protected books only if their authors were citizens or residents of the United States".

[3] This hurt the market for American books for 100 years and was only partly remedied in 1891, when the United States passed a limited international copyright law.

[4] Although the United States was not alone in denying copyright protection to nonresident foreigners, by waiting until 1988 to join the Berne Convention, the United States was one of the last industrial countries, having been "the only non-Unionist Western country", to join.

[5]: 3 By ratifying the Berne Convention, the United States Congress signaled that it was taking a "minimalist approach to compliance" (emphasis original).

[7] Furthermore, some copyright formalities, like requiring that a copy of the work be "deposited" at the Library of Congress, were preserved.