Without Copyrights: Piracy, Publishing, and the Public Domain

374 Pages·2013·2.75 MB·English

by  Robert Spoo

WITHOUT COPYRIGHTS
Modernist Literature & Culture
Kevin J. H. Dett mar & Mark Wollaeger, Series Editors
Consuming Traditions Unseasonable Youth
Elizabeth Outka Jed Esty
Machine Age Comedy World Views
Michael North Jon Hegglund
Th e Art of Scandal Americanizing Britain
Sean Latham Genevieve Abravanel
Th e Hypothetical Mandarin Modernism and the New Spain
Eric Hayot Gayle Rogers
Nations of Nothing But Poetry At the Violet Hour
Matt hew Hart Sarah Cole
Modernism & Copyright Th e Great American Songbooks
Paul K. Saint-Amour T. Austin Graham
Accented America Fictions of Autonomy
Joshua L. Miller Andrew Goldstone
Criminal Ingenuity Without Copyrights
Ellen Levy Robert Spoo
Modernism’s Mythic Pose Th e Degenerate Muse
Carrie J. Preston Robin G. Schulze
Pragmatic Modernism Commonwealth of Lett ers
Lisa Schoenbach Peter J. Kalliney
W I T H O U T
C O P Y R I G H T S
PIRACY, PUBLISHING, AND
THE PUBLIC DOMAIN
ROBERT SPOO
1
3
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide.
Oxford New York
Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi
Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi
New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto
With offi ces in
Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece
Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore
South Korea Switzerland Th ailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam
Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press
in the UK and certain other countries.
Published in the United States of America by
Oxford University Press
198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016
© Robert Spoo 2013
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitt ed, in any form or by any means, without the prior
permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitt ed by law,
by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization.
Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the
Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above.
You must not circulate this work in any other form
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Spoo, Robert E.
Without copyrights : piracy, publishing, and the public domain / Robert Spoo.
p. cm. – (Modernist literature & culture)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978–0–19–992787–6 – ISBN 978–0–19–992788–3 1. Copyright–United States–History.
2. Copyright, International–History. 3. Law and literature. I. Title.
KF2994.S65 2013
346.7304’82–dc23
2012040019
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
For the Th ree Tolerant Graces: Marjorie, Sophie, and Virginia
This page intentionally left blank
CONTENTS
Series Editors’ Foreword ix
Acknowledgments xiii
PROLOGUE—GROWING THE AMERICAN PUBLIC DOMAIN 1
1
THE AMERICAN PUBLIC DOMAIN AND THE COURTESY OF
THE TRADE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 13
2
TRANSATLANTIC MODERNISM IN THE AMERICAN
PUBLIC DOMAIN 65
3
EZRA POUND’S COPYRIGHT STATUTE: PERPETUAL RIGHTS AND
UNFAIR COMPETITION WITH THE DEAD 116
4
ULYSSES UNAUTHORIZED: PROTECTIONISM,
PIRACY, AND PROTEST 153
5
JOYCE V. ROTH : AUTHORS’ NAMES AND BLUE
VALLEY BUTTER 193
viii • CONTENTS
6
ULYSSES AUTHORIZED: RANDOM HOUSE
AND COURTESY 233
EPILOGUE — DISTURBING THE AMERICAN
PUBLIC DOMAIN 263
Notes 277
Bibliography 327
Index 337
SERIES EDITORS’ FOREWORD

In publishing Paul Saint-Amour’s edited collection Modernism and Copyright
in 2011 (which includes an early version of chapter 3 of this book), we hoped
to set the stage for a more thorough and sophisticated conversation about
the role intellectual property issues played in the construction of modernism.
Further, we believed that the Modernist Literature & Culture series might be
an att ractive venue for the kind of vibrant work on IP modernism sketched
out in that volume. (Indeed, the series had already tapped into new work in
law and modern literature with Sean Latham’s Th e Art of Scandal in 2009.)
In the back of our minds, we also knew that Robert Spoo was at work on an
important study of the topic, work that reached back into the nineteenth-
century tradition of “trade courtesy” and bore the impress of his careful legal
scholarship; for many of us, the earliest inkling of this work came with the
1998 publication of his Yale Law Journal article “Copyright Protectionism
and Its Discontents: Th e Case of James Joyce’s Ulysses in America.”
But we think it’s fair to say that no one—not even Bob—knew back then
how this story would turn out. In Without Copyrights: Piracy, Publishing,
and the Public Domain, Spoo traces the shift ing and dynamic relationship
between intellectual property law, informal “gentlemen’s” publishing tradi-
tions, and the practices of modernist literary production—“the story,” as he
describes it, “of transatlantic modernism’s encounter with U.S. copyright
law, lawful piracy, and the American public domain.” Th e book’s thesis, to
pick up on just one of Spoo’s artful formulations, is that “the fear of failed
copyrights lay behind many developments of modernism.”
It’s hard to write this foreword without dropping a lot of “spoilers”: you’ll
learn things that will fundamentally unsett le your understanding of modern-
ist authorship. Without giving too much away here, one comes away from