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Democracy of Sound: Music Piracy and the Remaking of American Copyright in the Twentieth Century

Democracy of Sound: Music Piracy and the Remaking of American Copyright in the Twentieth Century

Author: Alex Sayf Cummings
Publisher: Oxford University Press USA
ISBN: 9780190675110

Published In: May 2017
Format: Paperback , 272 pages
Jurisdiction: U.S. ? Disclaimer:
Countri(es) stated herein are used as reference only
Hardback Edition ISBN: 9780199858224

List Price: HKD 441.87

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Description
Contents
Author
Reviews

Details

Provides a political and historical perspective on the rise of the "information economy."
Discusses rare and little-known unreleased songs by the Beatles, which are potentially controversial because of their racial content.
Shows how piracy has been integral to the music industry through much of its history and how pirates have influenced copyright law.

Democracy of Sound is the first book to examine music piracy in the United States from the dawn of sound recording to the rise of Napster and online file-sharing. It asks why Americans stopped thinking of copyright as a monopoly-a kind of necessary evil-and came to see intellectual property as sacrosanct and necessary for the prosperity of an "information economy." Recordings only became eligible for federal copyright in 1972, following years of struggle between pirates, musicians, songwriters, broadcasters, and record companies over the right to own sound. Beginning in the 1890s, the book follows the competing visions of Americans who proposed ways to keep obscure and noncommercial music in circulation, preserve out-of-print recordings from extinction, or simply make records more freely and cheaply available. Genteel jazz collectors swapped and copied rare records in the 1930s; radicals pitched piracy as a mortal threat to capitalism in the 1960s, while hip-hop DJs from the 1970s onwards reused and transformed sounds to create a freer and less regulated market for mixtapes. Each challenged the idea that sound could be owned by anyone. The conflict led to the contemporary stalemate between those who believe that "information wants to be free" and those who insist that economic prosperity depends on protecting intellectual property. The saga of piracy also shows how the dubbers, bootleggers, and tape traders forged new social networks that ultimately gave rise to the social media of the twenty first century. Democracy of Sound is a colorful story of people making law, resisting law, and imagining how law might shape the future of music, from the Victrola and pianola to iTunes and BitTorrent.

Readership: Readers interested in legal history, media studies, cultural history, music history, and the 20th century United States; intellectual property professionals; readers interested in the history of jazz and hip-hop

Introduction
Part One: The Birth and Growth of Piracy, 1877-1955
Ch. 1: Music, Machines, and Monopoly
Ch. 2: Collectors, Con Men, and the Struggle for Property Rights
Ch. 3: Piracy and the Rise of New Media
Part Two: The Legal Backlash, 1945-1998
Ch. 4: Counterculture, Popular Music, and the Bootleg Boom
Ch. 5: The Criminalization of Piracy
Ch. 6: Deadheads, Hip Hop, and the Possibility of Compromise
Ch. 7: The Global War on Piracy
Conclusion: Piracy as Social Media
Notes
Index

Alex Sayf Cummings, Assistant Professor of History, Georgia State University

"Offers a detailed narrative account of how [copyright] issues became so complicated - and how, in the face of corporate pressure, they're becoming brutally simple... Cummings has provided a usable, musical past." --Jim Cullen, History News Network

"Valuable... Cummings' book makes clear that piracy will continue, and that that is far from being a bad thing." --Reason

"From Supreme Court battles over player piano rolls to the music industry's $75 trillion lawsuit against Limewire, Democracy of Sound shows how we arrived at today's debates about music ownership and piracy. Cummings is not only a skilled historian, but also a lively story-teller who can explain complex copyright issues with admirable clarity. For anyone with an opinion about the politics, economics, and ethics of music copying, this book offers essential perspective." --David Suisman, author of Selling Sounds: The Commercial Revolution in American Music

"Piracy may be the dominant issue troubling musicians and the culture industries today, but as Alex Cummings shows, struggles over appropriation, sharing, and theft have long shaped the entire history of recorded sound and the music business. Combining legal, cultural, and business history, Democracy of Sound elegantly and impartially illuminates how Americans made music into a thing, while fighting bitterly over who would gain access to that music. Anyone with any interest in the future of copyright or in our cultural past should read this important book." --Charles F. McGovern, author of Sold American: Consumption and Citizenship, 1890-1945

"Beautifully crafted, intelligently researched, and cogently argued, Democracy of Sound offers readers a compelling analysis of the changing legal status of recorded music in the United States from the 1870s to the present. Many books have been written about intellectual property; few have done more to make its significance accessible to the general reader. It will appeal not only to specialists in American studies, music, and law, but also to anyone who cares about American popular culture, past and present." --Richard John, author of Network Nation