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Democracy of Sound: Music Piracy and the Remaking of American Copyright in the Twentieth Century
It was a time when music fans copied and traded recordings without permission. An outraged music industry pushed Congress to pass anti-piracy legislation. Yes, that time is now; it was also the era of Napster in the 1990s, of cassette tapes in the 1970s, of reel-to-reel tapes in the 1950s, even the phonograph epoch of the 1930s. Piracy, it turns out, is as old as recorded music itself.
In Democracy of Sound , Alex Sayf Cummings uncovers the little-known history of music piracy and its sweeping effects on the definition of copyright in the United States. When copyright emerged, only visual material such as books and maps were thought to deserve protection; even musical compositions were not included until 1831. Once a performance could be captured on a wax cylinder or vinyl disc, profound questions arose over the meaning of intellectual property. Is only a written composition defined as a piece of art? If a singer performs a different interpretation of a song, is it a new and distinct work? Such questions have only grown more pressing with the rise of sampling and other forms of musical pastiche. Indeed, music has become the prime battleground between piracy and copyright. It is compact, making it easy to copy. And it is highly social, shared or traded through social networks--often networks that arise around music itself. But such networks also pose a
as channels for copying and sharing sounds, they were instrumental in nourishing hip-hop and other new forms of music central to American culture today. Piracy is not always a bad thing.
An insightful and often entertaining look at the history of music piracy, Democracy of Sound offers invaluable background to one of the hot-button issues involving creativity and the law.
In Democracy of Sound , Alex Sayf Cummings uncovers the little-known history of music piracy and its sweeping effects on the definition of copyright in the United States. When copyright emerged, only visual material such as books and maps were thought to deserve protection; even musical compositions were not included until 1831. Once a performance could be captured on a wax cylinder or vinyl disc, profound questions arose over the meaning of intellectual property. Is only a written composition defined as a piece of art? If a singer performs a different interpretation of a song, is it a new and distinct work? Such questions have only grown more pressing with the rise of sampling and other forms of musical pastiche. Indeed, music has become the prime battleground between piracy and copyright. It is compact, making it easy to copy. And it is highly social, shared or traded through social networks--often networks that arise around music itself. But such networks also pose a
as channels for copying and sharing sounds, they were instrumental in nourishing hip-hop and other new forms of music central to American culture today. Piracy is not always a bad thing.
An insightful and often entertaining look at the history of music piracy, Democracy of Sound offers invaluable background to one of the hot-button issues involving creativity and the law.
272 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2013
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
March 28, 2013
The Democracy of Sound: Music, Piracy and the Remaking of American Copyright in the Twentieth Century Century by Alex Sayf Cummings (Oxford University Press, 2013, 272 Pages, $29.95) makes a persuasive argument for the positive elements gained from bootlegging and even piracy in democratizing the distribution of recorded sound, particularly music, to the broader world created by the creation of new technologies and its spread worldwide. In a book based on his doctoral dissertation at Columbia University, Cummings examines the history of copyright law back almost to Gutenburg, with emphasis on the legal precedents in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the effects from the rise of new media and popular culture through the influence of the counterculture, Deadheads and Hip Hop, and the globalization of piracy. Much of the text is critical of court support for establishment capital and organizations against the urge to democratize sound, but is always balanced and scholarly in its discussion of the role of the courts and business interests. The book is remarkably free of cant and extreme rhetoric in its exploration of this explosive topic. Read my entire review: http://tedlehmann.blogspot.com/2013/0...
February 6, 2013
This history of piracy covers everything from copying piano rolls and sheet music in the nineteenth century to pirating mp3s and leaking tracks on YouTube. It includes fascinating facts about the industry. Everyone with an interest in music should read it.
I loved reading about the avid, competitive jazz collectors of the 1930s and the expense some outlaid for a home disc engraver to copy rare records. It also, to some extent, provides a history of musical evolution. Apparently, free form boogie-woogie is rather difficult to copyright.
Throughout the book, there is an engaging discussion about who owns the rights to music and its distribution: the composer; the artist; the recorder; the record company? If someone covers a piece of music, to what extent does that belong to them? Ethical questions give the discussion nuance; some pirates justified their actions by saying that they were providing a service to the people as record companies failed to produce or reissue classic, niche records that were culturally important. Of course there were also mobsters and inside-jobbers doing it for the cash! Excellently, one of the pirating outfits of the 1950s ‘bootleg boom’ cheekily named themselves ‘Jolly Roger’. The section about the birth of the mixtape and hip hop is a brilliantly researched account that really captivated me.
More here: http://eveproofreads.com/2013/01/17/d...
I loved reading about the avid, competitive jazz collectors of the 1930s and the expense some outlaid for a home disc engraver to copy rare records. It also, to some extent, provides a history of musical evolution. Apparently, free form boogie-woogie is rather difficult to copyright.
Throughout the book, there is an engaging discussion about who owns the rights to music and its distribution: the composer; the artist; the recorder; the record company? If someone covers a piece of music, to what extent does that belong to them? Ethical questions give the discussion nuance; some pirates justified their actions by saying that they were providing a service to the people as record companies failed to produce or reissue classic, niche records that were culturally important. Of course there were also mobsters and inside-jobbers doing it for the cash! Excellently, one of the pirating outfits of the 1950s ‘bootleg boom’ cheekily named themselves ‘Jolly Roger’. The section about the birth of the mixtape and hip hop is a brilliantly researched account that really captivated me.
More here: http://eveproofreads.com/2013/01/17/d...
September 9, 2017
I am all for a few libertarian approaches to intellectual property, especially in the music industry. This book lays out a fairly convincing argument in support of such policies. It is a fantastic history of copyright law and especially within music. There is a very extensive description and analogy to pirating and the bootlegging of concerts which I can get behind. Growing up as a huge Counting Crows fan, I remember a fairly robust exchange market for bootleg concerts of Adam Duritz and the fan/labor of love that these niche communities were able to produce. It was, as he detailed, a productive pirating that was much more archival in nature than it was nefarious. However I have a hard time making the steps he does making the connections between these extremem fan archivists to those intending to profit off of another individual's work. With that said, I do find flaws in the current system, as he details, that many artists do not in fact own the rights to their creativity but they belong to a studio or label. This seems not only antithetical to the intent of our Constitutional framers but to the general idea of intellectual property law, which seems to have an intent to incentivize creation but may in fact be doing the opposite. I believe wholesale changes may eventually need to be made, but I'm not sure they are the ones suggested in this book.
February 10, 2017
"Information wants to be free." - Stuart Brand
The title of this book references music but the book is a much broader look at the current evolution of property rights and how business interests are using the law to claim ownership of ideas...what we call intellectual property.
I have an abstract experience in this. When I had a blog I spent a lot of time writing and posting poetry. A few weeks after I started this I found my poetry on other blog sites and websites outside of Xanga all over the Internet. It pissed me off and led me to take the poetry I was writing private. But as I thought about it longer and harder I evolved to a different conclusion...I really should have been proud it was being shared and just let it go.
But property rights as this book points out are growing in scale. And the enforcement behind those rights should alarm anyone who is interested in the growth of big government. Because corporations are now using the law...that is police POWER to try to regulate the flow of ideas.
Want an example? Think about music from Itunes. Now when you pay .99 cents for a song ask yourself do you own that song? I thought I did. Actually you DON'T. Apple does. You are 'renting' the music but Apple retains the rights. So you don't even own the intellectual property that you think you own.
You want to know how crazy it has gotten? When the Record Industry sued the file sharing site Limewire they put a price tag on how much in their judgment file sharing had cost them. Their price tag? $79 TRILLION DOLLARS. The judge in the case was so stunned and in disbelief. That is more money than the recording industry has made publicly in its entire existence.
This book gets into that too but touches on a lot of areas of very clear conflict that makes it even more worth a read...
- In 1909 Congress was very progressive and fearful of monopolies. They were very careful to give a publisher a flat fee. When Edison first invented the phonograph he was intending & thought it was going to be used as a machine to record speeches. Music never even was a concept for recording. Many companies copying the phonograph sprang up to take advantage of it as a device.
- After WW II bootlegging was huge. The recording companies tried everything they could to stop bootlegging...until they discovered their own employees engaging in the practice using RCA's own facilities to print bootlegs for independent labels.
- Technology in the 1950's evolved to speed up bootlegging and make the process easier. Many people started recording right off of the radio and they were sued as well. But they fought back saying that the radio was public property. The record companies, broadcasters and individuals fought each other over and over while Congress kept putting off updates of copyright law. Many of those recordings of musical performances from the radio and now treasured and in museums as the few precious representations of live Jazz music...music they had been sued over previously.
- In 1972 Copyright law got updated. As it did Record companies went to assert themselves though they found bands that were openly advocating for bootlegs and live recordings to promote their music. Bootlegging of music got so big that in the 1970's it started to get the attention and the involvement of the mob.
- Record companies found themselves undercut with enforcement though as copyright laws were only for the United States. Laws from other countries weren't updated so bootlegs flooded in from other countries and the record companies were engaged in suing everyone, everywhere all over again. Then they started to focus on International trade agreements and went to extend copyright protections into those and trying to get other nations to update their own laws. It was ridiculous after decades of lawsuits and only got worse as they went along.
- In the 1980's Hip Hop and Dub emerged as musical styles that because they pulled melodies or fragments from other songs and music it shattered the recording companies ideas of how they thought music was being copied. Mix tapes and promotional tapes the recording industry openly admitted that they promoted their artists. In Hip Hop many artists had several mix tapes and used that to get the attention of decision makers for the recording industry to produce. The artist 50 Cent had 20 different mix tapes circulating before he made music for the 'legitimate' recording industry.
- Some artists such as the Grateful Dead and Phish created and supported open networks where their fans traded recorded concerts and bootlegs. They turned around and fought their own labels over recording. At one point the label for the Grateful Dead threatening their own fans and the band threatened to sue their own label for infringement.
- The Recording industry has grown in its influence but has now turned to not just music but rather IP (Intellectual Property). Now it is more about capturing the vessel for those ideas and using Federal power to impose civil and criminal fines to keep their ideas.
Powerful book that really gets into the tension of how these companies that deal with almost intangible ideas are doing everything they can to try to hold onto them so they don't slip away...
The title of this book references music but the book is a much broader look at the current evolution of property rights and how business interests are using the law to claim ownership of ideas...what we call intellectual property.
I have an abstract experience in this. When I had a blog I spent a lot of time writing and posting poetry. A few weeks after I started this I found my poetry on other blog sites and websites outside of Xanga all over the Internet. It pissed me off and led me to take the poetry I was writing private. But as I thought about it longer and harder I evolved to a different conclusion...I really should have been proud it was being shared and just let it go.
But property rights as this book points out are growing in scale. And the enforcement behind those rights should alarm anyone who is interested in the growth of big government. Because corporations are now using the law...that is police POWER to try to regulate the flow of ideas.
Want an example? Think about music from Itunes. Now when you pay .99 cents for a song ask yourself do you own that song? I thought I did. Actually you DON'T. Apple does. You are 'renting' the music but Apple retains the rights. So you don't even own the intellectual property that you think you own.
You want to know how crazy it has gotten? When the Record Industry sued the file sharing site Limewire they put a price tag on how much in their judgment file sharing had cost them. Their price tag? $79 TRILLION DOLLARS. The judge in the case was so stunned and in disbelief. That is more money than the recording industry has made publicly in its entire existence.
This book gets into that too but touches on a lot of areas of very clear conflict that makes it even more worth a read...
- In 1909 Congress was very progressive and fearful of monopolies. They were very careful to give a publisher a flat fee. When Edison first invented the phonograph he was intending & thought it was going to be used as a machine to record speeches. Music never even was a concept for recording. Many companies copying the phonograph sprang up to take advantage of it as a device.
- After WW II bootlegging was huge. The recording companies tried everything they could to stop bootlegging...until they discovered their own employees engaging in the practice using RCA's own facilities to print bootlegs for independent labels.
- Technology in the 1950's evolved to speed up bootlegging and make the process easier. Many people started recording right off of the radio and they were sued as well. But they fought back saying that the radio was public property. The record companies, broadcasters and individuals fought each other over and over while Congress kept putting off updates of copyright law. Many of those recordings of musical performances from the radio and now treasured and in museums as the few precious representations of live Jazz music...music they had been sued over previously.
- In 1972 Copyright law got updated. As it did Record companies went to assert themselves though they found bands that were openly advocating for bootlegs and live recordings to promote their music. Bootlegging of music got so big that in the 1970's it started to get the attention and the involvement of the mob.
- Record companies found themselves undercut with enforcement though as copyright laws were only for the United States. Laws from other countries weren't updated so bootlegs flooded in from other countries and the record companies were engaged in suing everyone, everywhere all over again. Then they started to focus on International trade agreements and went to extend copyright protections into those and trying to get other nations to update their own laws. It was ridiculous after decades of lawsuits and only got worse as they went along.
- In the 1980's Hip Hop and Dub emerged as musical styles that because they pulled melodies or fragments from other songs and music it shattered the recording companies ideas of how they thought music was being copied. Mix tapes and promotional tapes the recording industry openly admitted that they promoted their artists. In Hip Hop many artists had several mix tapes and used that to get the attention of decision makers for the recording industry to produce. The artist 50 Cent had 20 different mix tapes circulating before he made music for the 'legitimate' recording industry.
- Some artists such as the Grateful Dead and Phish created and supported open networks where their fans traded recorded concerts and bootlegs. They turned around and fought their own labels over recording. At one point the label for the Grateful Dead threatening their own fans and the band threatened to sue their own label for infringement.
- The Recording industry has grown in its influence but has now turned to not just music but rather IP (Intellectual Property). Now it is more about capturing the vessel for those ideas and using Federal power to impose civil and criminal fines to keep their ideas.
Powerful book that really gets into the tension of how these companies that deal with almost intangible ideas are doing everything they can to try to hold onto them so they don't slip away...
June 8, 2019
Napster starts with the blatant copy of a machine design, although Napster is an original piece of software. The 20th century starts in 1877. And other shallow research.
The text itself it's a mess. Wim Wenders - why him and not another? - is a West German. He is quoted about how songs were reproduced in Hungary, and how people paid kopeks to buy the material, although kopeks is a division of the ruble, which was not used in Hungary.
The text itself it's a mess. Wim Wenders - why him and not another? - is a West German. He is quoted about how songs were reproduced in Hungary, and how people paid kopeks to buy the material, although kopeks is a division of the ruble, which was not used in Hungary.
August 13, 2017
While a bit repetitive and dry at times (remember this is derived from Cummings doctor thesis) it manages to point out excellently why the issue of copyrighting compositions, music and recordings is much more complicated and multi-layered than for movies, novels or other works of art and why piracy may not kill music but might just kill the record labels of the 21st century. A nice thought...
September 30, 2018
Very interesting. One might think that the history of music copyrights is a pretty dry topic. But, I didn't find it so. The book certainly makes you think about the complexity of property rights, especially when it comes to derivative use.
I did listen to the entire book in one sitting, so that made it more palatable. It was a little repetitive.
I did listen to the entire book in one sitting, so that made it more palatable. It was a little repetitive.
Read
September 23, 2019Used in Graduate Historiography in Fall 2019 in combination with two other books about music and politics.
A pretty quick read, and I think it will lend itself well to a discussion of how historians choose a level of detail for their writing, where they find evidence of hard-to-find voices (here, congressional hearings are used well), and how one deals with profanity in academic writing.
A pretty quick read, and I think it will lend itself well to a discussion of how historians choose a level of detail for their writing, where they find evidence of hard-to-find voices (here, congressional hearings are used well), and how one deals with profanity in academic writing.
November 21, 2025
It’s a good topic and it’s well researched but it needed more content and structure to be a book of this length. Coverage of the modern day and the medium of MP3 is definitely more scant than I expected it to be.
April 18, 2024
A little too little about bootlegging, more about the legal details.
April 19, 2016
A somewhat random bag of trivia and still gets things wrong like claiming the GPL prohibits commercial use which is up there with taste regions on the tongue as far as tired old myths go - 30 seconds on wikipedia could've prevented this.
January 8, 2017
It wasn't much about the Democracy in the music industry as much as it was about the history of anti-piracy laws. While the sub-title is accurate, the title is not.
Having said that, this book on the history of copyright laws in America was not as interesting as other books on the subject.
Having said that, this book on the history of copyright laws in America was not as interesting as other books on the subject.
Read
May 8, 2013346.73048 C9713 2013
December 23, 2013
Comprehensive. A work of genuine scholarship.
July 15, 2014
Very insightful. The music industry is more effed than I realized.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews