Hollywood's Copyright Wars: From Edison to the Internet by Peter Decherney (review)

Books on the implications of media copyright easily run the risk of being academically rigorous but so densely written and jargon-filled as to be barely readable by an audience unversed in the intricacies of the law. On the other hand, some guides and handbooks focus on the pragmatic "how-tos" of copyright to the detriment of historical context and critical insight. Peter Decherney, associate professor of cinema studies, English, and communication at the University of Pennsylvania, effectively and engagingly avoids both scenarios in Hollywood's Copyright Wars by chronicling the complex history and societal implications of copyright decision-making among its many stakeholders.

Decherney's work complements other recent and cogent books on the topic, including Reclaiming Fair Use: How to Put Balance Back in Copyright by Patricia Aufderheide and Peter Jaszi (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), Siva Vaidhyanathan's Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How it Threatens Creativity (New York: New York University Press, 2001), and John Tehranian's Infringement Nation: Copyright 2.0 and You (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). Decherney incisively historicizes the often shifting and malleable understanding of consumers, artists, and the entertainment industry on the distinctions between plagiarism and originality, mass production and artistic achievement, fair and unfair use, authorship and ownership. He also demonstrates through a vast selection of landmark court cases and legislation that the industry's response to a lack of clarity and effectiveness in the law has typically been to turn toward self-policing via restrictive technology and other means. This has often been at the sacrifice of creativity and a healthy, informed debate that can better transform our understanding of how film, television, and new media should be defined, controlled, and made accessible. Decherney's focus is less on simply discussing the impact of the law on policy than on "the industrial and cultural impact of copyright law." (p. 2) From the earliest years of the industry, copyright has directly shaped the way media is produced, distributed, consumed, archived, and appropriated.

The book begins with a chapter on "Piracy and the Birth of Film." Decherney moves both thematically and somewhat chronologically throughout, beginning with early debates over copying and piracy grounded in the early and deeply problematic classification of motion pictures as photographs. One of the recurring themes of Hollywood's Copyright Wars is the intrinsic irony that film history, and more broadly artistic expression itself, is based in the assimilation and recycling of ideas. In many cases, those seeking to claim control and ownership over existing media were themselves heavy borrowers from other companies and artists. Decherney notes that the entire business of the early industry was built heavily upon practices that would ultimately be considered piracy. The case of Edison V. Lubin figures prominently here as a battle that tested how film was classified under the law and who could claim ownership of its contents and reproduction. The outcome of the case had little effect on the practice of duping competitor's films, and instead led to film companies internally changing their business model from selling to renting. In the end, film was declared a type of photography rather than a new medium, a short-sighted decision that failed to solve the industry's issues and contributed to monopolization. Decherney also alludes for the first time to public performance rights in this chapter, noting that the nature of early film made it difficult to classify the works as performances.

As subsequent chapters illustrate, however, the rise of narrative film, the studio system, writers unions, and the artists' struggles to control specific characters and works once again led to cases that challenged the definition of authorship, ownership, and performance. Chapter two, "Hollywood's Golden Age of Plagiarism," underscores the distinction between an idea (which is shared and cannot be owned) and an expression of that idea (which can be protected by copyright). The court cases and industry...