Since the rise of Napster and other file-sharing services in its wake, most of us have assumed that intellectual piracy is a product of the digital age and that it threatens creative expression as never before. The Motion Picture Association of America, for instance, claimed that in 2005 the film industry lost $2.3 billion in revenue to piracy online. But here Adrian Johns shows that piracy has a much longer and more vital history than we have realized - one that has been largely forgotten and is little understood. "Piracy" explores the intellectual property wars from the advent of print culture in the fifteenth century to the reign of the Internet in the twenty-first. Brimming with broader implications for today's debates over open access, fair use, free culture, and the like, Johns' book ultimately argues that piracy has always stood at the center of our attempts to reconcile creativity and commerce - and that piracy has been an engine of social, technological, and intellectual innovations as often as it has been their adversary. From Cervantes to Sonny Bono, from Maria Callas to Microsoft, from Grub Street to Google, no chapter in the story of piracy evades Johns' graceful analysis in what will be the definitive history of the subject for years to come.
Piracy
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"Adrian Johns's learned and witty book Piracy is... a compelling cultural history of the paired ideas of piracy and property from the seventeenth century to the present.... The best history takes readers from a familiar present to a strange past, and delivers them back to a present that can be seen in new ways. Piracy is that sort of history." (Nature) "Piracy shows us how the very notion of intellectual property - and its sharp division into the fields of patent and copyright - was created in response to specific pressures and so could be modified dramatically or even abolished." (Times Higher Education) "Invaluable.... Johns concludes in this challenging, richly detailed, and provocative book, that the choices we make about how to balance property, creativity and privacy will define 'the contours of creative life' for the twenty-first century." (Washington Post) "Johns's research stands as an important reminder that today's intellectual property crises are not unprecedented, and offers a survey of potential approaches to a solution." (Publishers Weekly)"
About the Author
Adrian Johns is professor of history and chair of the Committee on Conceptual and Historical Studies of Science at the University of Chicago. He is the author of The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making, also published by the University of Chicago Press.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
In normal usage, a pirate is a blackguard who attacks ships and kills at will. But there is another way in which the word is used, someone who copies a book or product for personal gain. That is why we have laws protecting authors (copyright) and inventors (patents), so that they may be encouraged to write or develop a new product or process. In this magisterial book by Johns, the author traces the history of piracy of books and products through the ages, but especially from the revolutionary development of printing by Gutenberg in about 1450. Before him, books were handwritten by scribes and were very expensive, but after, they became cheaper, and printed books heralded a new age of knowledge. With popular books, the question of reprinting cropped up, and who owned the right to reprint a work. In Britain, the right came to be owned by the bookseller, and a system of registration evolved with The Stationers Hall, one of the guilds of the City of London. The monopoly was broken effectively by extensive piracy of books in the Ireland and Scotland, followed by the new United States. Indeed, the USA pirated not just books, but industrial products as it tried to build a flourishing manufacturing base. Such amazing but forgotten topics are dealt with in forensic detail by Johns, who is clearly a master of the subject. Copyright theft was widespread during the Victorian period, as a result of the second revolution in printing, the use of the steam-powered printing press, which produced books at a fraction of previous prices. Authors like Charles Dickens suffered at the hands of the pirates in the USA, who often edited the original text in unusual ways, not approved by the author.
After agreement on an international system of copyright in the late Victorian period, matters were stabilized.... Read more ›
After agreement on an international system of copyright in the late Victorian period, matters were stabilized.... Read more ›
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
3.7 out of 5 stars
9 reviews
17 of 18 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
An important overview of the historical effects of the piracy of intellectual property
5 April 2010
By Gkiely
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Kindle Edition
Adrian Johns' PIRACY is a wide-ranging and expansive view of a subject that is of intense interest as books, music and movies shift to digital dissemination. Johns' great gift is his ability to present the historical context of the piracy of intellectual property and he offers a sweeping narrative that's full of really interesting tidbits. Ultimately, Johns positions today's piracy of digital media within the context of a never-ending struggle between commerce and creativity. A great book that will be read and argued for many years.
15 of 16 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Only For Serious Readers
12 Jun 2010
By David S. Wellhauser
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
Dry as dust but extremely informative and leaves the reader with a solid historical foundation of Piracy. A little conservative but when dealing with Piracy I'm inclined to agree. Worth your time...but like all University of Chicago texts this one will test your commitment to the process.
Highly recommended for the committed reader and amateur historians.
Highly recommended for the committed reader and amateur historians.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
A lot of information that I did not know
22 Jan 2012
By Steve Strickland
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
This book has a lot of information in it that I did not know. For instance, Gutenberg freely publishes books that have lost their copyrights and tells people that they can do whatever they want with them (sell them, change them, put their name as the author, whatever). I found some good information in this book but it is hard to follow because it drones on and one.
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3.7 out of 5 stars
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