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ltamote · 02-22-2010, 10:22 PM

The Chronicle of Higher Education had an article yesterday - "Yo, Ho, Ho, and a Digital Scrum" - providing an overview of a new book on the history of intellectual property piracy and its author, Adrian Johns. At this point, the article seems to be available to the public (many of their articles are subscriber-only). Some excerpts:

Johns has collected these and other pirate lessons in a new book, Piracy: The Intellectual Property Wars From Gutenberg to Gates (University of Chicago Press). The weighty work, more than 550 pages, covers hundreds of years of history of copyright and intellectual property in the West, focusing on the stories of those angling to disrupt prevailing practices.

...

It is packed with previously obscure but colorful characters, though. Like the so-called "pirate king" of England from the early 1900s, James Frederick Willetts. Well, that might have been his real name—he also went by several aliases....

The pirate king's argument: The country was experiencing a piano boom at the time, so a lot more families needed sheet music. But the major publishers catered to clientele who could pay 18 pence per song, while Willetts charged just two pence. Because the rightful owners had no hope of selling to the new audiences at those prices, Willetts testified, he did no harm to their businesses with his efforts—while bringing high culture and educational benefits to all. "Indeed, piracy might even increase the sales of the legitimate publishers, since it amounted to free advertising," Johns writes, summarizing the pirate's logic.

...

The comparison is not lost on Johns, and his book briefly covers our digital era as well, which is where an enemy of sorts does emerge.

This nemesis is a shadowy collective rather than a person. Johns calls it "the intellectual-property defense industry," and says it emerged in the 1970s or so, in the form of trade associations and entities like the Interpol Intellectual Property Action Group.

...

Johns recently bought a Sony Reader, after several people asked him what he thought of e-reading devices.

"What it's really good for, it turns out, is reading 17th-century pamphlets," he says, showing off a copy of Gerrard Winstanley's "The Law of Freedom in a Platform" on his gadget.

"I can now have dozens of 17th-century tracts in here, and I can flip between them all very fast," he says. "And I think in some sense the casualness of that may get one closer to what it was like to be in a 17th-century coffeehouse where, spread out on the table in front of you, would be half a dozen different newspapers, a couple of pamphlets, a poem or two, and one or two manuscripts, and you would read them in a fugitive manner.

Incidentally, the University of Chicago Press, which published this book, offers a free electronic book each month. The electronic version of this book by Johns was given away on February 1 (one day only!); their current free offer is another book by Johns, The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making, which is referenced in the article. For those interested in registering, the link is: http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ebooks/free_ebook.html.

I didn't see that this article had been linked yet, so forgive me if I overlooked it.

02-22-2010, 10:22 PM	#1
ltamote Member Posts: 11 Karma: 1018 Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Rural Texas Device: Sony PRS-505 (500 dead); PRS-600; Kindle 2; PRS-300; Kindle 3	Chronicle of Higher Ed: History of Intellectual Property Piracy The Chronicle of Higher Education had an article yesterday - "Yo, Ho, Ho, and a Digital Scrum" - providing an overview of a new book on the history of intellectual property piracy and its author, Adrian Johns. At this point, the article seems to be available to the public (many of their articles are subscriber-only). Some excerpts: Johns has collected these and other pirate lessons in a new book, Piracy: The Intellectual Property Wars From Gutenberg to Gates (University of Chicago Press). The weighty work, more than 550 pages, covers hundreds of years of history of copyright and intellectual property in the West, focusing on the stories of those angling to disrupt prevailing practices. ... It is packed with previously obscure but colorful characters, though. Like the so-called "pirate king" of England from the early 1900s, James Frederick Willetts. Well, that might have been his real name—he also went by several aliases.... The pirate king's argument: The country was experiencing a piano boom at the time, so a lot more families needed sheet music. But the major publishers catered to clientele who could pay 18 pence per song, while Willetts charged just two pence. Because the rightful owners had no hope of selling to the new audiences at those prices, Willetts testified, he did no harm to their businesses with his efforts—while bringing high culture and educational benefits to all. "Indeed, piracy might even increase the sales of the legitimate publishers, since it amounted to free advertising," Johns writes, summarizing the pirate's logic. ... The comparison is not lost on Johns, and his book briefly covers our digital era as well, which is where an enemy of sorts does emerge. This nemesis is a shadowy collective rather than a person. Johns calls it "the intellectual-property defense industry," and says it emerged in the 1970s or so, in the form of trade associations and entities like the Interpol Intellectual Property Action Group. ... Johns recently bought a Sony Reader, after several people asked him what he thought of e-reading devices. "What it's really good for, it turns out, is reading 17th-century pamphlets," he says, showing off a copy of Gerrard Winstanley's "The Law of Freedom in a Platform" on his gadget. "I can now have dozens of 17th-century tracts in here, and I can flip between them all very fast," he says. "And I think in some sense the casualness of that may get one closer to what it was like to be in a 17th-century coffeehouse where, spread out on the table in front of you, would be half a dozen different newspapers, a couple of pamphlets, a poem or two, and one or two manuscripts, and you would read them in a fugitive manner. Incidentally, the University of Chicago Press, which published this book, offers a free electronic book each month. The electronic version of this book by Johns was given away on February 1 (one day only!); their current free offer is another book by Johns, The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making, which is referenced in the article. For those interested in registering, the link is: http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ebooks/free_ebook.html. I didn't see that this article had been linked yet, so forgive me if I overlooked it.