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Canadian Pirates Sell Spurious Songs — In 1897
Reservoir Hill writes "The NYTimes reported in their June 13, 1897 edition that 'Canadian pirates' were flooding the country with spurious editions of the latest copyrighted popular songs. 'They use the mails to reach purchasers, so members of the American Music Publishers Association assert, and as a result the legitimate music publishing business of the United States has fallen off 50 per cent in the past twelve months' while the pirates published 5,000,000 copies of songs in just one month. The Times added that pirates were publishing sheet music at 2 cents to 5 cents per copy although the original compositions sold for 20 to 40 cents per copy. But 'American publishers had held a conference' and a 'committee had been appointed to fight the pirates' by getting the 'Post Office authorities to stop such mail matter because it infringes the copyright law.' Interestingly enough the pirates of 1897 worked in league with Canadian newspapers that published lists of songs to be sold, with a post office box address belonging to the newspaper itself. Half the money went to pay the newspapers' advertising while the other half went to the pirates who sent the music by mail." The AMPA never dreamed of suing their customers, though.
The more things change, the more they stay the same. Did these "evil pirates" kill the music industry, as was proclaimed they would?
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
In ancient Rome, it was completely ordinary for an audience member to transcribe a poetry recital, hand it over to amanuenses to massively copy, and then sell it in the marketplace with no money going back to the creator. Even poets didn't have a problem with it. The only protest I'm aware of in the literature is Martial's unhappiness that some talentless fellow was putting his own name on the transcription of Martial, and plagiarism is rather separate from copying without authorization.
In spite of this activity, literature still flourished in the ancient work. This is because the market depended on patronism. I wouldn't mind going back to those days, and to some extent we never left them. Indeed, most of the films and music I enjoy now are funded through a great deal of support from state arts ministries and private patrons. Record labels aren't so worried about piracy when the bills are already paid.
So privacy might make it harder for makers of the lowbrow to turn a profit. Boo-hoo. True art will continue to shine regardless of copyright laws.
Pffft. This is old news. Try to keep up guys...
This guy's the limit!
It turns out that my great grandfather was involved in the sheetmusic pirate trade. Actually, he was involved in beaver skinning and general supply chain stuff in the Great Lake area of Quebec and later Manitoba as the pioneers headed westward.
He had two sayings, that are still repeated in my family. "Your customers will buy whatever you sell them, because they don't have a choice." and "What no one finds out you're doing, they aren't going to complain aboot."
While it's certainly not so much true today as it was in those frontier days, the marketplace is still a monopoly in many ways for many types of products. It's only those "customers" who can either forego some product or generate it themselves that can avoid buying from sellers like grampy.
Nowadays with the near instantaneous ability to copy and distribute ephemeral works like music, more and more customers are falling into that latter category of "generating it themselves". Those sellers who want to make a profit off of these pioneers aren't going to see a loon.
I think these PaperSharing M2M(Mailbox2Mailbox) systems which allow just anyone to swap files, folders and even whole books should be banned immediately before they destroy all that is good and pure with our country!
Neighboring stories on page 6: right below it is a bird eating a snake, to the left is construction workers find papers shedding light on 40 year old missing person case, to the right are ads. Apparently this wasn't a very important story back then.
You must ban the wax cylinder musical format before it destroys the musical performance industry forever!!!
The article was published june 13, 1897 - how the fuck can copyright still be applicable to that article?
The copyright was assigned to a corporate entity, and as such there is no "life + 70 years". It becomes what - 90 years at the outside?
Trying to claim copyright on a 112 year old article is insane ...
The more things change, the more they stay the same. Did these "evil pirates" kill the music industry, as was proclaimed they would?
It didn't ruin the music industry but it probably ruined any number of small composers and threw them to the mercy of big distributers who were the only ones that had the resources to defend against this sort of thing. Even back then piracy could ruin you or at least cause you significant economic harm. A classic example is the 1902 movie: "A Trip to the Moon" by Georges Méliès. The movie was stolen by agents of Thomas Edison and widely circulated in the US by Edison. This ruined Méliès plans to market his film in the US and Méliès never got a profit from this movie. Eventually Méliès was forced into bankruptcy and although the losses on "A Trip to the Moon" probably didn't help his bankruptcy was mostly due to aggressive anti competitive behavior by the big studios of the period. So perhaps the lesson is that there is not much difference between pirates and evil mega-corps from a small/independent artist's or for that matter a small software developer's point of view. Both cause you economic harm and if you are a small/independent artist or software developer you can therefore feel free to detest both equally.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
They sure did! In the 1890s there was a great market for piano rolls. Where can you buy piano rolls today? Conclusion: pirates killed the music industry.
Pft...anyone can go into a music store in the US and get copies of standard popular drivel like "Let's Hear it for McKinley!" or "The Victoria Waltz", but those stores won't carry the more edgy stuff like "Please Don't Die of the Dropsey, Dear Adeline" or "Miss Merryweather's New Corset".
Until the US realizes that there's a whole market for sheet music and piano rolls that is out of the mainstream, I'm going to keep buying from north of the border.
I hate the way they sell those Gutenberg presses as a loss leader, then gouge you on printing plates and ink refills.
Canadian Pirates!!!! Instead of saying ARRRRRRR they go EHHHHHHHHH?
Sig? No thanks. I don't smoke.
This story originally appeared on Ye Olde Slashdotte 112 years ago, although archive.org don't seem to have a copy of the original page....
Hilarious, and plausible - but has anyone verified that this is a real NYT article and not a mock-up?
Isn't anyone skeptical on the authenticity of the article? Do you really think copyright infringers were called "pirates" in 1897?
Here's a quote from his article "The Menace of Mechanical Music" from 1906:
Some would say he was just greedy, however; he had an investment in marching bands, which is what most of the article is about, especially those using the Sousaphone. The phonograph was seen as a threat to that.