Introduction
Part One: The Birth and Growth of Piracy, 1877-1955
1. Music, Machines, and Monopoly
2. Collectors, Con Men, and the Struggle for Property Rights
3. Piracy and the Rise of New Media
Part Two: The Legal Backlash, 1945-1998
4. Counterculture, Popular Music, and the Bootleg Boom
5. The Criminalization of Piracy
6. Deadheads, Hip Hop, and the Possibility of Compromise
7. The Global War on Piracy
Conclusion: Piracy as Social Media
Notes
Index
Alex Sayf Cummings is Assistant Professor of History at Georgia State University.
"This book is for music lovers and those of a certain age who
remember artists from the Jazz and Rock days of the 1960s when tape
recorders and vinyl were in place and bootlegged recordings of Bob
Dylan and Janis Joplin were the in-thing to have. You can see how
[Cummings] has enjoyed researching the detailed background of music
piracy which makes this book a jolly good read providing the
history of music piracy from the late 19th century
onwards."--Entertainment Law Review
"Offers a detailed narrative account of how [copyright] issues
became so complicated - and how, in the face of corporate pressure,
they're becoming brutally simple...Cummings has provided a usable,
musical past."--Jim Cullen, History News Network
"Valuable...Cummings' book makes clear that piracy will continue,
and that that is far from being a bad thing."--Reason
"From Supreme Court battles over player piano rolls to the music
industry's $75 trillion lawsuit against Limewire, Democracy of
Sound shows how we arrived at today's debates about music ownership
and piracy. Cummings is not only a skilled historian, but also a
lively story-teller who can explain complex copyright issues with
admirable clarity. For anyone with an opinion about the politics,
economics, and ethics of music copying, this book offers
essential perspective."--David Suisman, author of Selling Sounds:
The Commercial Revolution in American Music
"Piracy may be the dominant issue troubling musicians and the
culture industries today, but as Alex Cummings shows, struggles
over appropriation, sharing, and theft have long shaped the entire
history of recorded sound and the music business. Combining legal,
cultural, and business history, Democracy of Sound elegantly and
impartially illuminates how Americans made music into a thing,
while fighting bitterly over who would gain access to that
music.
Anyone with any interest in the future of copyright or in our
cultural past should read this important book."--Charles F.
McGovern, author of Sold American: Consumption and Citizenship,
1890-1945
"Beautifully crafted, intelligently researched, and cogently
argued, Democracy of Sound offers readers a compelling analysis of
the changing legal status of recorded music in the United States
from the 1870s to the present. Many books have been written about
intellectual property; few have done more to make its significance
accessible to the general reader. It will appeal not only to
specialists in American studies, music, and law, but also to
anyone
who cares about American popular culture, past and
present."--Richard John, author of Network Nation
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