Adrian Johns

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. 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.

The Intellectual Property Wars from Gutenberg to Gates

Piracy

Discusses how books were written, printed, and distributed in early modern England; the relationships among authors, printers, booksellers, and government officials; and the impact of technological innovation.

Print and Knowledge in the Making

The Nature of the Book

What is the difference between thongs and flip flops? To a Brit, flip flops are worn in the summer to the beach. To an Australian, thongs are all-purpose, all-terrain footwear worn 365 days a year. If they could climb mountains, fight fires in their thongs, they would give it a damn good go. True stories you just never hear! Covering over thirty years from my service in the British Army to migrating to Australia and becoming an underground coal mine worker. 'You're not all coming home speech' prior to Gulf War 2. OCD is rife in the British Army. The clown on parade and meeting a soldier called 'Git'. The 'Duaringa Incident'; two idiots stuck on a railway line. Bolts not boats! Smelly passengers, workmates and sanitary issues within a coal mine. My turbulent relationship with the Australian wildlife, especially Skippy; once love, but now so bitterly estranged. How did it go so wrong?

Shiny Arses, Skippy and Men in Orange

Desde la aparición de Napster y otros servicios para compartir archivos a través de internet, los famosos P2P, la mayoría de la población ha asumido que la piratería intelectual es un producto de la era digital, una amenaza a la expresión creativa como nunca antes ha existido. La primera década del siglo XXI ha visto cómo la industria cultural de todo el mundo se enfrentaba con una forma de piratería intelectual que no entendía de fronteras y que no parecía, ni parece hoy, poder ser controlada. Sin embargo, tal y como Adrian Johns muestra, la piratería intelectual tiene una larga historia. Esta obra explora las numerosas guerras de la propiedad intelectual desde el advenimiento de la cultura de la imprenta en el siglo XV hasta el reinado de internet el siglo XXI. Del papel al archivo digital. Su historia no solo es la de los piratas y ladrones, personajes en no pocas ocasiones dotados de ingenio y buenas intenciones, sino también la de las víctimas, de Charles Dickens a Bob Dylan. Rebosante de información, su certero análisis permite al lector afrontar las implicaciones de la historia de la piratería intelectual en el momento presente, analizando los debates sobre el acceso abierto a la información y la cultura en internet, el reparto justo de retribuciones económicas y la cultura libre en las redes sociales en una perspectiva histórica notablemente más amplia que lo que tradicionalmente es considerada. En última instancia, el autor sostiene que la piratería siempre ha estado en el centro de nuestros esfuerzos por reconciliar a la creatividad y el comercio cultural, siendo un motor fundamental en el desarrollo de innovaciones sociales, tecnológicas e intelectuales a la altura, en no pocas ocasiones, de su propio adversario. De Cervantes a Bono, de María Callas a Microsoft o Google, ningún capítulo en la historia de la piratería intelectual evade el inteligente análisis de Adrian Johns en lo que será la historia definitiva de este polémico aspecto de nuestra historia cultural.

Las luchas por la propiedad intelectual de Gutenberg a Gates

Piratería

Describes the pirate radio stations operating in coastal waters off Britain in the 1960s and how competition between the free-market entrepreneurs came to a head when pirate operator Oliver Smedley shot and killed rival Reg Calvert.

Adrian Johns

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