Piracy: The Intellectual Property Wars from Gutenberg to Gates

Johns, Adrian

doi:10.1080/13688804.2014.949434

Cited by 69 publications

(19 citation statements)

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“…Ten years later, the Napster case looks more like a starting point for a new era of digital piracy where the copyright regime is contested from within the Western world rather than from abroad. Even though Napster eventually went legit (and failed) it was soon followed by other similar networks for illegal file sharing, and the fact that most of these networks are centered in North America or Europe -not the least in Sweden -stands as a reminder that piracy is fundamentally a Western phenomenon that has existed parallel with copyright within the European culture for more than 300 years (Johns 2009). Over the last decade semi legal sites like Kazaa, Grokster and Gnutella have turned a new page in this long history of piracy, provoking harsh resistance from media companies and copyright organizations that has resulted in occasional law suits (Hesmondhalgh 2007).…”

Section: The Napster Generationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This is indeed not the first time that copyright is publicly contested -historians have shown that intellectual property rights and piracy has been under debate many times in the past (cf. Feather 1994, Johns 2009, Rose 1993, Saint-Amour 2003, Vaidyanathan 2001, Wilf 2011. It might however be fair to say that the criticism against the expansion of intellectual property rights has a greater global impact than ever before, mobilizing a wide range of groups, from young Western netizens concerned that laws like SOPA and ACTA will kill freedom and creativity on the Internet, to human rights groups in the third world that point to the social costs of drug patents and Western exploitation on indigenous knowledge (cf.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The American pirate market was not fueled by lust for profit alone; it also thrived on a resistance against the authoritarian claims of the former colonial power. A resistance that to some extent was officially sanctioned since the American legislator's for a long time refused to grant foreign authors protection under the copyright law of the United States (Johns 2009). The Hungarian copyright historian Bodó Balázs describes the whole situation as a kind of legalized piracy: "For roughly a century, American copyright law was a clear-cut case of situational piracy -of behavior legalized under US law but widely condemned abroad" (Balász 2011, p. 408).…”

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confidence: 99%

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Copyright Culture and Pirate Politics

Fredriksson¹

2014

Cultural Studies

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This article approaches the recent debates about copyright and piracy from a cultural and historical perspective, discussing how of the problems surrounding intellectual property rights reflect cultural conflicts that are central to cultural studies. It sets out with a study of how international copyright norms developed in nineteenth-century Europe and were implemented in two different national contexts: Sweden and USA. This historical background shows how copyright has been embedded in the cultural history of Europe and intertwined with the idea of an evolving Western civilization. The examples from the past are thus used to highlight the underlying cultural implications that affect the contemporary discussions. Particular interest is paid to how the historical association between the spread of copyright and the development of civilization has affected the understanding of Asian piracy and Western file sharing today, and how a multitude of social movements both in the West and the third world simultaneously challenge the cultural legitimacy of the current system of intellectual property rights. Eventually this is also taken as an example of how law and culture intersects and how the broad, interdisciplinary field of copyright studies that has emerged over the last decade can be seen as an extension of the cultural studies tradition.

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Section: The Napster Generationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Copyright Culture and Pirate Politics

Fredriksson¹

2014

Cultural Studies

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“…A considerable body of research within media and cultural studies has sought to emphasise the broader value of unrestricted copying by showing how this has allowed consumers to realise themselves as creators and participating citizens over a longer historical period than that during which digital 'piracy' has been viewed as a problem (see Lessig, 2005;Johns, 2010). Our specific focus on musical copying in this article could be viewed as one aspect of a broader and more profound practice of 'commons-based peer production' (Benkler, 2006).…”

Section: Copying and Digital Circulation; Resistance Adaption Accepmentioning

confidence: 99%

Copying, copyright and originality: imitation, transformation and popular musicians

Negus

Street

Behr

2017

European Journal of Cultural Studies

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With copyright becoming ever more important for business and government, this article argues for a more nuanced understanding of the practices and values associated with copying in popular music culture and advocates a more critical approach to notions of originality. Drawing from interviews with working musicians this article challenges the approaches to copying and popular music that pitch corporate notions of piracy against creative sharing by citizens. It explores differing approaches to the circulation of recordings and identifies three distinct types of creative copying: i) learning through imitation, ii) copying as transformation, iii) copying for commercial opportunity. The article then considers how copying is caught between a commercial necessity for familiar musical products that must conform to existing expectations and a copyright legislative rationale requiring original sounds with individual owners. The article highlights how legacies from a long history of human copying as a means of acquiring knowledge and skills leads to a collision of creative musical practices, commercial imperatives and copyright regulation and results in a series of unavoidable tensions around originality and copying that are a central characteristic of cultural production.Keywords: musicians, copying, copyright, recording industry, originality. Yet, copying has increasingly been perceived as a problem by music industry trade organisations seeking to profit from selling commodities to consumers, whilst maintaining a legal regulatory framework premised on intellectual property. In this paper we explore the tensions as popular music practice collides with competing artistic impulses, commercial incentives and legal imperatives. We draw from interviews with professional UK based musicians working mainly within and across rock, jazz and sample based genres, and those who work with and represent musicians, in order to open up discussion about broad similarities regardless of differences of genre and cultural identity. The quotations and paraphrased issues in this paper are drawn from in-depth interviews with 21 full time working musicians (some also gaining income from giving instrumental tuition), aged between their early 20s and early 60s. We selectively approached musicians with sustained careers of releasing recordings and performing and with some degree of experience of practices relating to copying and copyright. The aim of this study was very much to explore issues in depth through qualitative research, asking musicians to articulate and to reflect upon matters that they rarely address overtly in their practice. Whilst keen to hear from practitioners working across different genres within popular music, as broadly understood, and to get a sense of how attitudes and practices may have changed over time, we did not seek a 'representative sample' of anything (aware also of the practical and philosophical problems of making any claims about any 'sample'). We did not ask musicians how they defined their class, racial o...

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“…[2] For example, in the fifteenth century, the Dutch busied themselves making counterfeit Chinese porcelain (Johns, 2009).…”

Section: The Culture and Politics Behind Ipr In Chinamentioning

confidence: 99%

History and the Debate Over Intellectual Property

Peng¹,

Ahlström

Carraher³

et al. 2017

Manag. Organ. Rev.

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This article responds to recent calls for organizational research to address larger, more globally relevant questions and to pay attention to history, by analyzing the crucial debate over intellectual property rights (IPR) between the United States and China. Despite the recent US position, the United States has not always been a leading IPR advocate. Rather, it was a leading IPR violator during the nineteenth century. An institution-based view of IPR history suggests that both the US refusal to protect foreign IPR in the nineteenth century and the current Chinese lack of enthusiasm to meet US IPR demands represent rational choices. However, as cost-benefit considerations change institutional transitions are possible. We predict that to the same extent the United States voluntarily agreed to strengthen IPR protection when its economy became sufficiently innovation-driven, China will similarly improve its IPR protection.

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Piracy: The Intellectual Property Wars from Gutenberg to Gates

Cited by 69 publications

References 3 publications

Copyright Culture and Pirate Politics

Copyright Culture and Pirate Politics

Copying, copyright and originality: imitation, transformation and popular musicians

History and the Debate Over Intellectual Property

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