Peter Baldwin - The Copyright Wars. Three Centuries of Trans-Atlantic Battle [2014][A]

Book Description
Publication Date: September 22, 2014
Today’s copyright wars can seem unprecedented. Sparked by the digital revolution that has made copyright—and its violation—a part of everyday life, fights over intellectual property have pitted creators, Hollywood, and governments against consumers, pirates, Silicon Valley, and open-access advocates. But while the digital generation can be forgiven for thinking the dispute between, for example, the publishing industry and Google is completely new, the copyright wars in fact stretch back three centuries—and their history is essential to understanding today’s battles. The Copyright Wars—the first major trans-Atlantic history of copyright from its origins to today—tells this important story.

Peter Baldwin explains why the copyright wars have always been driven by a fundamental tension. Should copyright assure authors and rights holders lasting claims, much like conventional property rights, as in Continental Europe? Or should copyright be primarily concerned with giving consumers cheap and easy access to a shared culture, as in Britain and America? The Copyright Wars describes how the Continental approach triumphed, dramatically increasing the claims of rights holders. The book also tells the widely forgotten story of how America went from being a leading copyright opponent and pirate in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to become the world’s intellectual property policeman in the late twentieth. As it became a net cultural exporter and its content industries saw their advantage in the Continental ideology of strong authors’ rights, the United States reversed position on copyright, weakening its commitment to the ideal of universal enlightenment—a history that reveals that today’s open-access advocates are heirs of a venerable American tradition.

Compelling and wide-ranging, The Copyright Wars is indispensable for understanding a crucial economic, cultural, and political conflict that has reignited in our own time.

Reviews
"Baldwin expertly and economically records the major beats of copyright history in the last 300 years in a surprisingly focused, readable narrative. . . . In discussions ranging from the origins of copyright in 18th-century England, through the rise of 'moral rights' in Europe and the transition of the U.S. from global pirate to a net exporter of cultural works in the 19th century, to present day battles over Google Book Search and thorny legislation, such as the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), Baldwin both illuminates the past and neatly sketches the contours of the battles to come."--Publishers Weekly starred review

"Scholarly but accessible and lucid; essential for students or modern intellectual property law and of much interest to a wide audience of writers, journalists, publishers and 'content creators'."--Kirkus

"Baldwin has provided an often fascinating account of debates over intellectual property, including the defense of the moral rights of authors in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. Most important, Baldwin makes a compelling case that although claims to intellectual property have strengthened over the last three hundred years, they do not rest in nature. Intellectual property is, in fact, 'a contingent, socially created right, in thrall to what the lawmakers of the day' decide it is."--Huffington Post

From the Inside Flap
"From Kant and Fichte to Wikipedia's protest shutdown and the Swedish Pirate Party, and from international copyright in the Confederacy to moral rights in Fascist Italy, Baldwin offers a riveting historical account of copyright in the Anglo-American and Continental European spheres that becomes an indispensable guide to understanding today's struggles over copyright and international trade treaties."--Yochai Benkler, Harvard Law School

"Why does current U.S. copyright sentiment accord more with the views of Jack Valenti than of Thomas Jefferson? Understanding the fault lines of copyright in the digital age means returning to the debates of the 1830s, if not to even earlier struggles at the Enlightenment's dawn. Nobody could tell the tale with more consummate skill than does Peter Baldwin in this tour de force of cultural history."--David Nimmer, author of Nimmer on Copyright

"I thought I knew what the fuss over copyright was, but this smooth, clear, and well-written book opened my eyes to completely different ways of balancing the benefits of authors vs. audiences. I was astonished to learn that today's die-hard advocates in the digital realm had their exact antecedents hundreds of years ago. And that the divergence between Europe and America reflects not geography, but a profound riddle: who should benefit most, creators or society? Despite its intensely researched and sourced text, this book is a delight to read, with news on almost every page. It is not about the tiny laws of copyright; it's about the meaning of copyright in a big way."--Kevin Kelly, Senior Maverick, Wired Magazine

"Baldwin deftly shows that the crucial copyright controversies of today are part of a much older set of controversies and that understanding today's situation is vastly enhanced by understanding its history. This is a must read."--Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia

"Peter Baldwin's The Copyright Wars spans centuries and continents to reveal the background of today's battle over open access to information. Anyone who wants to understand how we arrived at this conflict should read this remarkable book."--Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive

"The creation, distribution, and enjoyment of copyrighted works often result in conflicts based on where you stand, including which side of the Atlantic Ocean you stand on. Peter Baldwin ably demonstrates why this is the case as he carefully charts the centuries-old tensions between Anglo-American and Continental European approaches to copyright."--William Patry, author of How to Fix Copyright

About the Author
Peter Baldwin is professor of history at the University of California, Los Angeles and Global Distinguished Professor at New York University. His books include "The Narcissism of Minor Differences: How America and Europe Are Alike".