Yo, Ho, Ho, and a Digital Scrum; Chronicle of Higher Education, 2/21/10

Jeffrey Young, Chronicle of Higher Education; Yo, Ho, Ho, and a Digital Scrum:

History shows that intellectual property is more complex than either its creators or copiers care to admit, says a Chicago scholar

"The history of publishing is swimming with pirates—far more than Adrian Johns expected when he started hunting through the archives for them. And he thinks their stories may hold keys to understanding the latest battles over digital publishing—and the future of the book.

Johns, a historian at the University of Chicago, has done much of his hunting from his office here, which is packed so high with books that the professor bought a rolling ladder to keep them in easy reach. He can rattle off a long list of noted pirates through the years:

Alexander Pope accused "pyrates" of publishing unauthorized copies of his work in the 18th century. At the beginning of the 19th century, a man known as the "king of the pirates" used the then-new technology of photolithography to spread cheap reprints of popular sheet music. In the 1950s, a pirate music label named Jolly Roger issued recordings by Louis Armstrong and other jazz greats from LP's that the major labels were no longer publishing. A similar label put out opera recordings smuggled from the Soviet bloc.

Along with the practice itself, "pirates" in publishing just keep resurfacing, and Johns argues that the label is no accident. He sees it as the pirates' attempt to evoke romantic notions of seafaring swashbucklers. Sure, the copying done by culture pirates may be technically illegal, but they have long claimed the moral high ground, arguing that they are not petty thieves, but principled heroes rightfully returning creative work to a public commons by making free or cheap copies available.

"There is an association with a certain kind of liberty—living perhaps alongside the law rather than in direct opposition to it," Johns says. "What the pirate community can represent is a kind of alternative that has its own virtues."

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.

The codified rules and laws allowing an author or publisher to claim exclusive rights to a literary work—what we now call "copyright"—did not develop until the 18th century, long after the printing press was invented. And since then the notion has been challenged again and again—sparking controversy long before the latest disputes over the pirating of music, movies, and other material over high-speed digital networks."

http://chronicle.com/article/Learning-From-Culture-Pirates/64294/

Pirates vs. University Presses, Inside Higher Ed, 2/24/09

Via Inside Higher Ed: Pirates vs. University Presses:

"Princeton University Press has emerged as something of an expert on the issue -- a distinction the press wishes it didn't have. Over the summer, an author the press declined to identify informed the publisher that his book was being made available for downloading in its entirety on one of these Web sites. For several months, Princeton had a staffer focused on identifying piracy sites with its books, and following up with "take down" notices that threaten legal action for keeping the books up. Some of the Web sites take the books down, but then others pop up. Most of these sites operate outside the United States and take advantage of countries with relatively loose copyright laws, at least as applied to digital publishing...

Some of the pirate sites themselves are proud of their role.

Peter Sunde, one of the founders of the Pirate Bay, a Swedish operation that is at the center of these disputes, said via e-mail that he doesn't care if university presses are bothered by his organization's actions. "If I say the world is flat, does that make it true?" he asked.

He said copyright was irrelevant because "we're letting anyone share whatever they want with whomever they want. That's it.... Blaming us for what people do is like blaming the people who build roads for helping people rob banks, for God's sake.""

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/02/18/pirate

Cinema 'cops' deploy night vision devices, Sydney Morning Herald, 11/26/08

Via Sydney Morning Herald: Cinema 'cops' deploy night vision devices:

"In response to an increase in pirated movie recordings coming out of Australia, the copyright police are patrolling cinemas with night vision devices - and it's not just commercial pirates they're after.

Movie studios are providing the scopes to cinema ushers across the country and training them in how to spot people illegally taping films using camcorders and even mobile phones."

http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/biztech/cinema-cops-deploy-night-vision-devices/2008/11/26/1227491597572.html