Piracy: The Intellectual Property Wars from Gutenberg to Gates
Product Type: Book
Product Price: $35.00
Manufacturer: University Of Chicago Press
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Description
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. Written with a historian’s flair for narrative and sparkling detail, the book swarms throughout with characters of genius, principle, cunning, and outright criminal intent: in the wars over piracy, it is the victims—from Charles Dickens to Bob Dylan—who have always been the best known, but the principal players—the pirates themselves—have long languished in obscurity, and it is their stories especially that Johns brings to life in these vivid pages.
Brimming with broader implications for today’s debates over open access, fair use, free culture, and the like, Johns’s 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’s graceful analysis in what will be the definitive history of the subject for years to come.
Reviews
Rating: 4 / 5
Date: 2010-06-12
Summary: "Only For Serious Readers"
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.
Rating: 1 / 5
Date: 2010-05-31
Summary: "Kindle version = only $4 off the hardcover price?"
I'd like to read it - saw a nice boing boing mention - but it is too expensive for a kindle version.
Rating: 5 / 5
Date: 2010-05-10
Summary: "How to reconcile the realms of creative authorship and commercial life"
"Piracy" is on the ROROTOKO list of cutting-edge intellectual nonfiction. Professor Johns's book interview ran here as the cover feature on May 10, 2010.
Rating: 5 / 5
Date: 2010-04-05
Summary: "An important overview of the historical effects of the piracy of intellectual property"
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.
Rating: 3 / 5
Date: 2010-02-26
Summary: "Kindle text problems"
I have only downloaded a sample of the Kindle edition and I am finding it very difficult to read. The text is fully justified, which leaves gaps between some words and almost no space between other words. Also, the letter r does not always appear as it should.