Piracy: The Intellectual Property Wars from Gutenberg to Gates Book

This is a richly detailed history of the concept of intellectual property (mainly copyright and patents) as told from the perspective of its alleged infringement. The author argues persuasively that our current modern notions of intellectual property are ideological stances of certain players in the creative industries. Most provocatively, he demonstrates that while accusations of piracy have flown fast and furious between those who have distributed the arts and sciences from early modernity on, various forms of piracy (from reprinting to oscillation to open source) played a greater role in "promoting progress" than these protections.

Johns is very conscious of writing at a moment when the IP wars are raging once again (e.g. the recent kerfuffle over SOPA and PIPA and ongoing confrontations over the Google Book Settlement and pharma generics), and appears to suggest that a historical perspective will enable a more balanced view of what we should do with our current IP regimes. In fact, what he seems to be suggesting is that our current notions of IP rights are both recent (industrial era) and already quaint, and history offers many alternative models.

It's a fascinating book, introducing a much-needed historical perspective against the usual myopic proclamations of the digerati. Unfortunately, it is a very thick read. 520 pages, written in a dense style that presumes a high level of incoming cultural literacy. Really a shame, given how much the book has to offer. I was excited to read this book, and even I found it a tough passage much of the time. But I will keep it handy as a reference work whenever I need to situate current IP debates in their historical predecessors.