Piracy: the Intellectual Property Wars from Gutenberg to Gates

Summary of "Piracy: the intellectual property wars from gutenberg to gates" by Adrian Johns. It provide a historical overview of the evolution of intellectual property rights, focusing on the concept and practice of piracy from the early modern period to the twentieth century. Initially, the text examines the establishment of print regulation through entities like the Stationers’ Company, which used registers to record and protect titles, defining early notions of proper conduct and transgression in the trade. Later sections explore how the debate over authorship and invention shifted, with conflicts arising around patents for pharmaceuticals and mechanical devices, as well as the tumultuous struggle for literary property in Britain, Ireland, and America, often tied to political and economic goals. Finally, the sources discuss modern forms of piracy, such as music and broadcast piracy, and how these phenomena influenced the creation of new institutions like the BBC and spurred theoretical frameworks of scientific knowledge and intellectual property in the mid-twentieth century.