Alex Sayf Cummings: Democracy of Sound: Music Piracy and the Remaking of American Copyright in the Twentieth Century (2013)
Filed under book | Tags: · copyright, counterculture, intellectual property, law, music, new media, phonograph, piracy
“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 counter-argument: 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.
– Provides a political and historical perspective on the rise of the “information economy.”
– Discusses rare and little-known unreleased songs by the Beatles, which are potentially controversial because of their racial content.
– Shows how piracy has been integral to the music industry through much of its history and how pirates have influenced copyright law.”
Publisher Oxford University Press, 2013
ISBN 0199858225, 9780199858224
336 pages
John McMillian: Smoking Typewriters: The Sixties Underground Press and the Rise of Alternative Media in America (2011)
Filed under book | Tags: · 1960s, alternative media, counterculture, journalism, mass media, new left, publishing
How did the New Left uprising of the 1960s happen? What caused millions of young people-many of them affluent and college educated-to suddenly decide that American society needed to be completely overhauled?
In Smoking Typewriters, historian John McMillian shows that one answer to these questions can be found in the emergence of a dynamic underground press in the 1960s. Following the lead of papers like the Los Angeles Free Press, the East Village Other, and the Berkeley Barb, young people across the country launched hundreds of mimeographed pamphlets and flyers, small press magazines, and underground newspapers. New, cheaper printing technologies democratized the publishing process and by the decade’s end the combined circulation of underground papers stretched into the millions. Though not technically illegal, these papers were often genuinely subversive, and many of those who produced and sold them-on street-corners, at poetry readings, gallery openings, and coffeehouses-became targets of harassment from local and federal authorities. With writers who actively participated in the events they described, underground newspapers captured the zeitgeist of the ’60s, speaking directly to their readers, and reflecting and magnifying the spirit of cultural and political protest. McMillian pays special attention to the ways underground newspapers fostered a sense of community and played a vital role in shaping the New Left’s highly democratic “movement culture.”
Deeply researched and eloquently written, Smoking Typewriters captures all the youthful idealism and vibrant tumult of the 1960s as it delivers a brilliant reappraisal of the origins and development of the New Left rebellion.
Publisher Oxford University Press, 2011
ISBN 0195319923, 9780195319927
304 pages
review (Dan Berger, International Journal of Communication)
review (Kirkus Reviews)
review (Russ Smith, The Wall Street Journal)
interview with the author (video, 48 min)
Jake Kinzey: The Sacred and the Profane: An Investigation of Hipsters (2012)
Filed under book | Tags: · capitalism, counterculture, hip hop, hipster, music, neoliberalism
The Sacred and the Profane examines the hipster and the current cultural impasse by going beyond “going-against-the-grain.”
The Sacred and the Profane is a work that combines local and global analysis to examine our age’s often-talked about, but mostly misunderstood, mainstream subculture: the hipster. This book seeks to answer questions like, Why don’t hipsters want to be called hipsters? and Why do they act like they are different when they are just like all the other hipsters? If you can’t stand hipsters, are a hipster, or don’t know what a hipster is, this book is for you.
Publisher Zero Books, an imprint of John Hunt Publishing, 2012
ISBN 1780990340, 9781780990347
68 pages
PDF (EPUB)
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