Piracy_ The Intellectual Property Wars from Gutenberg to Gates - Adrian Johns [118]
The printers' associations sought to enshrine a moral economy of printing as a craft, not as a form of capitalism. One of the first was the "association" of masters called the Company of Printers that appeared in Philadelphia in 1794. It aimed to deter nonmembers from practicing printing, and to monitor members' compliance with craft rules.48 It was followed ayear later by the Typographical Society of New York, and then by the Franklin Typographical Society, launched specifically for journeymen in 1799. Another group, the Asylum Company ofJourneyman Printers, appeared in i8oo, only to change into the PhiladelphiaTypographical Society. A Boston equivalent also arose, and in 18o8 took the name of the Faustus Association. All of these were essentially artisanal- the journeymen's groups were among the first workers' associations in America. Yet their views of their role could be quite broad. Both the Baltimore and Philadelphia societies called for protective duties on imported books, for example, while the Faustus Association listed the protection of printing houses from fire as one of its principal raisons d'etre.
It was, however, the second kind of association that more directly shaped piracy and property. This was the society dominated- and often launched-by booksellers, and specifically by publishing booksellers, Carey being their doyen. Such groups aimed to maintain prices, the integrity of editions, and proprieties for intercity commerce. The "courtesies" of the trade were their province; they tried to organize trade sales and book fairs, and to achieve the quiet resolution of disputes. They typically proclaimed a "harmony of interests," as it would become known, between printers, publishers, booksellers, and authors, although some formally excluded artisans from their ranks. The first of these bodies was the Philadelphia Company of Printers and Booksellers. It convened for the first time on Independence Day in 1791, with Carey a moving force and a regular participant.49 Somewhat akin to an old London conger, its intent was to distribute the risks of publishing both by formalizing a share system and by preventing piracy. It also sought to fix prices so that members need not compete against what they saw as underselling.
Insetting up the society, Carey declared, he hoped to achieve two ends. First, he wanted to encourage the publication ofworks otherwise beyond the means of individual booksellers. And, second, he hoped to "secure the copy-rights of the members against invasion by printers at a distance, or by the associators individually"The venture lasted five years before Carey abruptly resigned, triggering its collapse. It had "utterly failed" to meet its first aim, he explained. The company's choice of works to publish, interestingly had proven less judicious than that of any individual. And at the second aim it had done even worse, proving actively "pernicious." Books the company had undertaken in Philadelphia had been seized upon for that very reason as sure things and reprinted in New York, Boston, and other towns. Had he been acting individually, Carey said, he could have made exchange agreements with those reprinters and benefited from their work. But the company's own principles had ruled that out. So the adoption of a compact against reprinting had, in practice, been selfdefeating. The Philadelphia Company had been a very costly "experiment," and it had failed.so
A major reason for this failure was that the Philadelphia Companywas based in just one city. The problems it was formed to tackle arose, increasingly from trade between cities. In i8oo, therefore, Careywas interested to hear from a correspondent named Littlejohn a more ambitious scheme that would operate at that national level and thereby underwrite the emerging customs