The Foreign Service Journal, December 2010

D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 0 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 65 An Age-Old Problem Piracy: The Intellectual Property Wars from Gutenberg to Gates Adrian Johns, University of Chicago Press, 2010, $35/hardcover, $19.25/Kindle, 626 pages. R EVIEWED BY D AVID D RINKARD As soon as the printing press arrived in England in 1471, unscrupulous in- dividuals falsely claimed authorship of and copied legitimate works. Among the first people to recognize a safer, more profitable, form of booty that didn’t entail the scourges of sea travel, these scoundrels became known as pi- rates long before the term “intellectual property” was invented. Piracy will be invaluable to anyone wishing to understand the history and development of intellectual property, and the relationships among industry, government and consumers in creat- ing, using and enforcing property rights. Author Adrian Johns provides historical context for the development of these concepts, along with an excel- lent account of the anti-piracy industry (generally known as intellectual prop- erty enforcement). This presentation of the dynamic, interdependent view of piracy and in- tellectual property in today’s world constitutes the book’s real value. Piracy is at heart a history book, and al- though it is not a military history, it does document the war waged by in- dustries and governments against pi- rates — whom Daniel Defoe called “a reproach to a well-governed nation.” But who is a pirate? In 16th- and 17th-century England, it was someone who reprinted works on private press- es in “holes” or “corners.” During the 18th and 19th centuries, the concept expanded to include anyone who ap- propriated a patent (most likely for the latest weapon), along with the printers of books, pamphlets and sheet music who never sought permission, let alone paid royalties. And in 20th-century England, listening to the BBC at home without paying a license could make one a pirate, as could the act of copying a record onto a cassette or a movie onto a videotape in America. The inviolability of the home, pri- vacy rights and “fair use” also shaped the argument and affected court cases and industry alike. The evolution of an equitable system remains a work in progress, as new forms of access to in- tellectual property continually emerge. For instance, the role of government in copyright and patent enforcement can be traced to the monarchy claim- ing ownership of all property. And the latest debate over Google’s ambition to compile a universal library of works has its roots in the Enlightenment. Bill Gates is mentioned in the book’s title for his repeated denuncia- tions of user groups and shareware users who didn’t pay royalties to what was then Microsoft for copies of his BASIC programming language for Al- tair computers. He famously laid down the law in an Altair Users’ Newsletter by claiming, “Most of you steal your software.” In other words, what the Al- tair users saw as openness and collabo- ration was now “theft,” pure and simple. Johns summarizes the debate as follows: “Gates’ statement would go down in computer lore as the canoni- cal declaration of a rift over intellectual property and access that would divide the digital world from then on.” And so ends Piracy. Johns does not aspire to address all aspects of intellec- tual property, but he does explain the major issues in the field: counterfeit Johns’ presentation of the dynamic, interdependent view of piracy and intellectual property in today’s world constitutes the book’s real value. B OOKS