The Statute of Anne is traditionally seen as "a historic moment in the development of copyright", and the first statute in the world to provide for copyright. Craig Joyce and Lyman Ray Patterson, writing in the "Emory Law Journal", call this a "too simple understanding ignores the statute's source", arguing that it is at best a derivative of the Licensing Act. Even considering this, however, the Statute of Anne was "the watershed event in Anglo-American copyright history ... transforming what had been the publishers' private law copyright into a public law grant". Patterson, writing separately, does note the differences between the Licensing Act and the Statute of Anne; the question of censorship was, by 1710, out of the question, and in that regard the Statute is distinct, not providing for censorship.