Democracy of Sound: Music Piracy and the Remaking of American Copyright in the Twentieth Century

by Alex Sayf Cummings

  27. Getz, Taping Compendium, 22.

  28. Mike Tannehill, “Recording a Live Concert or, Hey Are You Recording This?” Dead Relix, November–December 1974, 16.

  29. Charlie Rosen, “Wither the Poor Dead Freak,” Dead Relix, November–December 1974, 7–8.

  30. “Sound on Sound,” Dead Relix, November–December 1974, 4.

  31. Ibid., 4.

  32. “Trade with the Hell’s Honkies Tape Club,” Dead Relix, November–December 1974, 18.

  33. Melissa McCray Pattacini, “Deadheads Yesterday and Today: An Audience Study,” Popular Music and Society 24, no.1 (2000): 7; “What Is a Tape Tree and How Does It Work?” Stason.org, http://stason.org/TULARC/music-bands/grateful-dead/6-What-is-a-Tape-Tree-and-how-does-it-work-Grateful-Dead.html, accessed July 24, 2012.

  34. Pattacini, “Deadheads Yesterday and Today,” 7.

  35. Dead Relix, November–December 1974, back cover.

  36. “Shit List,” Dead Relix, November–December 1974, 5.

  37. Ibid.

  38. Peter Kollock, “The Production of Trust in Online Markets,” http://www.connectedaction.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/1999-peter-kollock-the-production-of-trust-in-online-markets.htm, accessed October 24, 2008.

  39. Mark F. Schultz, “Fear and Norms and Rock & Roll: What Jambands Can Teach Us about Persuading People to Obey Copyright Law,” Berkeley Technology Law Journal 21 (2006): 695.

  40. Dwork, introduction to Getz, Taping Compendium, xii.

  41. Schultz, “Fear and Norms and Rock & Roll,” 727; see also Yochai Benkler, “Coase’s Penguin, or, Linux and the Nature of the Firm,” Yale Law Journal 112 (2002): 369–446.

  42. Moore, “Tapers in a Jam,” 627.

  43. Ibid., 628.

  44. John Perry Barlow, “The Economy of Ideas,” Wired, March 1993, 84–129.

  45. John Markoff, What the Dormouse Said: How the 60s Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry (New York: Viking, 2005), xiv–xix, 96–7.

  46. Fred Turner, From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 207–9; Langdon Winner, “Cyberlibertarian Myths and the Prospects for Community,” Computers and Society 27 (1997): 14–9.

  47. Thomas Frank, “Why Johnny Can’t Dissent,” in Commodify Your Dissent: Salvos from the Baffler, ed. Thomas Frank and Matt Weiland (New York: W. W. Norton, 1997), 31; Lawrence Lessig, Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace (New York: Basic Books, 1999), 104–5; James Boyle, The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), 180–1.

  48. Yochai Benkler, The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), 13.

  49. Ressner, “Bootlegs Go High-Tech,” 15.

  50. Jim Walsh, “Singer Says ‘Seinfeld’ Tune Was Much Ado About … Nothing,” St. Paul Pioneer Press, May 22, 1998; see also Stephen Thomas Erlewine, “The Shit Hits the Fans: Overview,” Allmusic, http://allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:0bftxqwgldfe, accessed September 15, 2008.

  51. Ressner, “Bootlegs Go High-Tech,” 15.

  52. Robert Hilburn, “Dylan Songs out of the Basement,” Los Angeles Times, July 26, 1975, B5. For a playful take on the claim that the Black Album was “the most bootlegged album in history!” see “People Who Own Bootleg Copies of Prince’s ‘Black’ Album Given Offer of Amnesty,” Billboard, November 26, 1994, 138.

  53. Ressner, “Bootlegs Go High-Tech,” 15.

  54. David Gonzalez, “Pressed by Music Industry, New York Seizes Pirate Tapes,” New York Times, December 9, 1990, 46.

  55. Jeff Chang, Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation (New York: Picador, 2005): 127–8.

  56. S. H. Fernando, The New Beats: Exploring the Music, Culture, and Attitudes of Hip-Hop (New York: Anchor Books, 1994), 12–3.

  57. Matt Mason, The Pirate’s Dilemma: How Youth Culture Is Reinventing Capitalism (New York: Free Press, 2008), 73.

  58. Chang, Can’t Stop, 30.

  59. Ibid., 79.

  60. Shaheem Reid, “Mixtape History,” MTV News, http://www.mtv.com/bands/m/mixtape/news_feature_021003/index8.jhtml, accessed November 22, 2012.

  61. Troy L. Smith, “The World Famous Brucie Bee of the Legendary Roof Top,” The Foundation, Fall 2006, http://thafoundation.com/brucie.htm, accessed January 11, 2009, 7.

  62. Fernando, New Beats, 6.

  63. Steven Daly, “Hip-Hop Happens,” Vanity Fair, November 2005, 250; Chang, Can’t Stop, 129–30.

  64. Chang, Can’t Stop, 130.

  65. Joanna Demers, Steal This Music: How Intellectual Property Law Affects Musical Creativity (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2006), 91–2.

  66. Fernando, New Beats, 225.

  67. Ibid., 47.

  68. Smith, “World Famous Brucie Bee,” 13–4.

  69. Frank Owen, “Street DJs Bring Live Flava Back to Hip Hop,” Village Voice, October 25, 1994, 71.

  70. Touré, “Biggie Smalls, Rap’s Man of the Moment,” New York Times, December 18, 1994, H42; Michael Marriot, “Long Before He Was B.I.G.,” New York Times, March 17, 1997, B2.

  71. DJ Kool Herc, introduction to Chang, Can’t Stop, xi.

  72. Joseph G. Schloss, Making Beats: The Art of Sample-based Hip-Hop (Wesleyan University Press, 2004), 27–8.

  73. Ibid., 30.

  74. Ibid., 29.

  75. Owen, “Street DJs,” 71.

  76. Ibid., 71.

  77. Reid, “Mixtape History,” 1.

  78. Smith, “World Famous Brucie Bee,” 17–8.

  79. Shaheem Reid, “Mixtapes: The Other Music Industry,” MTV News, http://www.mtv.com/bands/m/mixtape/news_feature_021003/index5.jhtml, 5.

  80. Mixtape, Inc., DVD, directed by Walter Bell (New York: Pixel Propaganda, 2005).

  81. Ibid.

  82. Steven Stancell, “FOCUS ON: Funkmaster Flex and Goings On,” New York Beacon, February 21, 1996, 28.

  83. Funkmaster Flex, The Mix Tape, Vol. 1: 60 Minutes of Funk (Loud Records, 1995).

  84. Charles E. Rogers, “DJ Clue Scores Big with New Album,” New York Amsterdam News, December 30, 1998, 19; Reid, “Mixtape History,” 1; Shams Tarek, “Jamaica’s Own ‘Bad Guy’ Making Good in the Music Biz,” Queens Press, May 16, 2003, http://www.queenspress.com/archives/features/2003/0516/feature.htm, accessed November 17, 2008, 1.

  85. Steve Jones, “Money in the Mixtape,” USA Today, April 20, 2006.

  86. Mixtape, Inc.

  87. Jared Ball, “FreeMix Radio: The Original Mixtape Radio Show: A Case Study in Mixtape ‘Radio’ and Emancipatory Journalism,” Journal of Black Studies 20 (2008): 1.

  88. Ibid., 11.

  89. David Gates, “Decoding Rap Music,” Newsweek, March 19, 1990, 60.

  90. Owen, “Street DJs,” 71.

  91. Burnett, Global Jukebox, 61–2; for more on the relationship between independent and major labels, see Jon Pareles, “The Big Get Bigger,” New York Times, March 19, 1990, 3.

  92. Jones, “Money in the Mixtape,” 1.

  93. Fernando, New Beats, 242.

  94. Vaidhyanathan, Copyrights and Copywrongs, 143.

  95. For an example of DJs as careerists and tastemakers, see “TJ’s DJs Tastemakers Only Conference/Ozone Magazine Awards Official Site,” TJ’s DJs, July 25, 2008, http://www.tjsdjs.com/toa/, accessed February 14, 2009.

  96. John Yau, “Richard Prince: Spiritual America,” Brooklyn Rail, November 2007, http://www.brooklynrail.org/2007/11/artseen/prince, accessed February 14, 2009.

  97. Ian F. Svenonius, The Psychic Soviet (Chicago: Drag City, 2006), 218.

  98. Ibid., 244.

  99. Hillary Crosley, “DJ Drama Arrested in Mixtape Raid,” Billboard Biz, January 17, 2007, http://www.allbusiness.com/retail-trade/miscellaneous-retail-retail-stores-not/4392944-1.html, accessed January 11, 2008.

  100. Mixtape, Inc.

  101. Tiziana Terranova, “Free Labor: Producing Cul
ture for the Digital Economy,” Social Text 18 (2000): 42; Franco Berardi Bifo, “Teaching Insurrection,” Through Europe, March 17, 2011, http://th-rough.eu/writers/bifo-eng/teaching-insurrection-franco-berardi-bifo-brera-academy-milan, accessed June 21, 2011.

  102. Statik Selektah, Spell My Name Right: The Album (Showoff Records/Brick Records, 2007).

  103. David Suisman, Selling Sounds: The Commercial Revolution in American Music (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), 59.

  Chapter 7

  1. Diva, DVD, directed by Jean-Jacques Beineix ([1981]; Troy, MI: Anchor Bay, 2002).

  2. Peter Manuel, Cassette Culture: Popular Music and Technology in North India (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 30.

  3. “Pakistan to Pirate Books,” New York Times, December 10, 1972, 5.

  4. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), 287; on domestic and foreign subcontracting, see J. Carlos Jarillo, “On Strategic Networks,” Strategic Management Journal 9 (1988): 38; Cecilia Green, “The Asian Connection: The U.S.-Caribbean Apparel Circuit and a New Model of Industrial Relations,” Latin American Research Review 33 (1998): 10–11; and David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An Inquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change (Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1989) 150–7.

  5. “Twelve Ways to Fight Piracy,” Journal of Commerce, December 13, 1990, 14A.

  6. B. Zorina Khan, “Copyright Piracy and Development: United States Evidence in the Nineteenth Century,” Revista de Economia 10 (2008): 21–54.

  7. “US Trade in Goods and Services—Balance of Payments (BOP) Basis,” US Census Bureau, November 21, 2008, http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/statistics/historical/gands.txt, accessed January 5, 2009.

  8. Overall consumer prices increased by about 50% between 1972 and 1977, and by about 60% again between 1977 and 1982. For early 1970s figures, see Historical Statistics of the United States (Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1975). For later data, see Statistical Abstract of the United States published yearly by the US Census Bureau.

  9. Laurence Kenneth Shore, “The Crossroads of Business and Music: A Study of the Music Industry in the United States and Internationally,” (PhD diss., Stanford University, 1983), 143.

  10. Gillian Davies, Piracy of Phonograms (Oxford, UK: ESC Publishing, 1981), 2.

  11. Shore, “Crossroads of Business and Music,” 152.

  12. Shore, “Crossroads of Business and Music,” 152; Paul Grein, “Unemployment Lines: L.A. Industry Personnel Face Major Challenges to Rebuild their Careers,” Billboard, May 19, 1979, 3.

  13. US Bureau of the Census, 1977 Census of Manufactures, Volume II: Industry Statistics, Part 3. SIC Major Groups 35–9 (Washington, DC: Department of Commerce, 1981), 36D–20; US Bureau of the Census, 1982 Census of Manufactures: Subject Series General Summary, Part 1. Industry, Product Class, and Geographic Area Statistics (Washington, DC: Department of Commerce, 1986), 1–16, 1–17.

  14. Shore, “Crossroads of Business and Music,” 142–3.

  15. Denis de Freitas, “Some Recent Developments in the United Kingdom in the Field of Copyright,” International Business Lawyer 6 (1978): 508–9.

  16. Pekka Gronow, “The Record Industry: The Growth of a Mass Medium,” Popular Music 3 (1983): 72.

  17. Mark Coleman, Playback: From the Victrola to MP3, 100 Years of Music, Machines, and Money (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2003), xv.

  18. Gordon McComb and John Cook, Compact Disc Player: Maintenance and Repair (Blue Ridge Summit, PA: Tab Books, 1987), viii, 2; Burnett, Global Jukebox, 18–9, 51–2; Coleman, Playback, 155–6; Shore, “Crossroads of Business and Music,” 215.

  19. Burnett, Global Jukebox, 4; Jim Hollander, “International Markets: Labels Eye the New Frontier,” Los Angeles Times, November 4, 1979, M6.

  20. Hollander, “International Markets,” M6; Markos Mamalakis, “The New International Economic Order: Centerpiece Venezuela,” Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs 20 (1978): 270; Ann Genova and Toyin Falola, “Oil in Nigeria: A Bibliographical Reconnaissance,” History in Africa 30 (2003): 134; Brian Larkin, Signal and Noise: Media, Infrastructure, and Urban Culture in Nigeria (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008), 222.

  21. “40 Countries Meet on Piracy in Recording Industry,” New York Times, April 5, 1981, 21.

  22. United Kingdom Anti-Piracy Group, International Piracy: The Threat to the British Copyright Industries (London: Publishers Association and the International Federation of Phonogram and Videogram Producers, 1986), 29; Gladys and Oswald Ganley, Global Political Fallout: The VCR’s First Decade (Cambridge, MA: Program on Information Resources Policy, 1987), 6.

  23. Ganley and Ganley, Global Political Fallout, 9; Douglas A. Boyd, “Third World Pirating of U.S. Films and Television Programs from Satellites,” Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media 32 (1988): 157.

  24. Boyd, “Third World Pirating,” 157.

  25. Serge Schmemann, “Video’s Forbidden Offerings Alarm Moscow,” New York Times, October 22, 1983, 4.

  26. Schmemann, “Video’s Forbidden Offerings,” 1.

  27. Christopher S. Wren, “Off-Key or Off-Color, Tunes of West Worry China,” New York Times, October 28, 1982, A2.

  28. Jonathan Fenby, Piracy and the Public: Forgery, Theft and Exploitation (London: Frederick Muller Limited, 1983), 122.

  29. Ibid., 127–8.

  30. Ibid., 124.

  31. Altaf Gauhar and Lee Kuan Yew, “North-South Dialogue,” Third World Quarterly 1 (April 1979): 3.

  32. UK Anti-Piracy Group, International Piracy, 9.

  33. Ibid., 9–10.

  34. Larkin, Signal and Noise, 223–4.

  35. Ibid., 221.

  36. Manuel Castells, The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture, Volume III: End of Millennium (Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1998), 72.

  37. Larkin, Signal and Noise, 217.

  38. David Edward Agnew, “Reform in the International Protection of Sound Recordings: Upsetting the Delicate Balance between Authors, Performers and Producers or Pragmatism in the Age of Digital Piracy,” Loyola of Los Angeles Entertainment Law Journal 219 (1992): 227.

  39. “Contracting Parties: Phonogram Convention,” World Intellectual Property Organization, http://www.wipo.int/treaties/en/ShowResults.jsp?lang=en&treaty_id=18, accessed January 5, 2009.

  40. Seth Faison, “Razors, Soap, Cornflakes: Pirating Spreads in China,” New York Times, February 17, 1995, A; see also Shujen Wang and Jonathan Zhu, “Mapping Film Piracy in China,” Theory, Culture, and Society 20 (2003): 97–125.

  41. Davies, Piracy of Phonograms, 66–7.

  42. Malcolm Anderson, Policing the World: Interpol and the Politics of International Police Co-operation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989); Fenton S. Bresler, Interpol (London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1992).