M. H. Beals’s Reviews > Piracy: The Intellectual Property Wars from Gutenberg to Gates > Status Update

Chapter 7 considers the 'land with property, Ireland. It explores the cultural, political and economic reasons behind Dublin's prolific piracy over a long period through numerous individual cases. Its bountiful evidence is slightly muddled by the limited analytical framework (it appears only inconsistently throughout the chapter). Surely an important part of the overall argument, it may require multiple readings.

Chap. 6, of the 1710 statute, delves more deeply and satisfactorily into promised debates of IP, with a wider, more representative cast and detailed evidence. Moreover, the links between mechanical and literary property are clearly explained (in all their contradictions) and we get, for the first time, a true conversation with the author about the implications of this period on modern conceptions of IP and copyright.

Chapter 5: Piratical Medicines are discussed, again through a particular case of claim and counter-claim. The topic has rich and deep connections to other forms of intellectual piracy (and was a well chosen inclusion) but this is so implicit as to be invisible. Instead, it is a detailed and interesting tale of Epsom Salts which raises many contextual questions over authenticity that are sadly never discussed directly

Chapter 4 is a case study of the Royal Society (largely Hooke and Newton) through the lens of publication and perusal. Its origins and evolution are clearly laid out and well explained, though the peripheries of the story remain somewhat out-of-focus. Its connection to 'piracy' was largely implicit, but *its* story of *a* birth of peer review and scholarly publishing was extremely engaging and thought-provoking.

Chapter 3 briefly describes the 'lawless' under William and Mary, the rise in legal reprinting and the semantic associations with piracy. The connection seems a bit too convenient and, though alluded to, the range of 'piracies' in this period is not sufficiently covered. A more international discussion of reprinting as the backbone of the Enlightenment is welcome but seems rushed compared to the semantic discussion.

The first substantive chapter provides an eminently readable, but somewhat unsatisfying account of the birth of piracy, in its intellectual property sense. The story flows by the cast too thin, and the uncertain pronouns (they, them) too frequent. Introductory protestations notwithstanding, the laser-like focus on London printing is troubling and raises many questions that are not, as yet, satisfactorily addressed.