Dear book pirate,
I was just reading in a marvellous little book,
Against Intellectual Monopoly (can be legally downloaded
here), and I just felt that I
had to quote this page in full:
Quote:
At the turn of nineteenth century, the music industry was different from the one we are familiar with today. No CDs, no mass concerts, and no radio or television. The core source of revenue was the sale of printed sheet music, which was carried out worldwide and on a very large scale. We learn, for example, that in Britain alone about 20 million copies were printed annually. The firms carrying out this business were not large multinationals as today, but family-owned companies, such as Casa Ricordi in Milan, which, nevertheless, managed to reach also foreign countries. Apparently these “majors” managed to collude quite efficiently among themselves. The records show that the average script sold in the United Kingdom for about a fourteen pence. Then “piracy” arrived, as a consequence of two changes: the development of photolithography and the spread of “piano mania,” which increased the demand formusical scripts by orders of magnitude. “Pirated” copies were sold at two pence each.
Naturally the “authorized” publishers had a hard time defending their monopoly power against the “pirates,” enforcement costs were high, and the demand for cheap music books was large and hard to monitor. Music publishers reacted by organizing raids on “pirate” houses that were aimed to seize and destroy the “pirated” copies. This started a systematic and illegal “hit and destroy” private war, which led, in 1902, to the approval of a new copyright law. The latter made violation of copyright a matter for the penal code, putting the police in charge of enforcing what, until then, was protected only by the civil code.
The South Park portrayal herein of the “copyright police” storming the house to arrest children for sharing files exaggerates the current situation.
In the early twentieth century, however, the hit squads of the authorized publishers did indeed burn down entire warehouses filled with “pirated” copies of sheet music – so perhaps South Park should remind us of what might be if Congress continues in its current direction.
At least in the case of sheet music, the police campaign did not work.
After a few months, police stations were filled with tons of paper on which various musical pieceswere printed. Being unable to bring to court what was a de facto army of illegal music reproducers, the police stopped enforcing the copyright law.
The eventual outcome? The fight continued for a while, with “regular” music producers keen on defending their monopoly and restricted sales strategy, and “pirates” printing and distributing cheap music at low prices and very large quantities. Eventually, in 1905, the king of the “pirates,” James Frederick Willett, was convicted of conspiracy. The leader of one of the music publishers’ associations, and the man who had invented the raids, launched the Francis, Day &Hunter’s new sixpennymusic series. Expensive sheet music never returned.
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Moral of the story: Watch out. They're coming. ;-)