Piracy_ The Intellectual Property Wars from Gutenberg to Gates - Adrian Johns [173]
The first of what was dubbed the "International Scientific Series" appeared soon after. Tyndall's The Forms of Water inaugurated what became an enduring sequence, its most famous titles beingJohn Draper's History of the Conflict between Religion and Science and Spencer's own Study of Sociology. Spencer's work- a classic in the development of social science -was in fact the ideological keystone of the ISS, which aspired to unify science around a scheme of universal evolution. Yet Youmans had to "bully" the book out of him. That bullying reflected a continuing uncertainty about the entire project.The initiative had made Appleton some "ugly" enemies in the United States, who saw it as a Trojan horse for an internationalization of copyright. He warned Spencer that they meant to retaliate by pirating his titles -"and when that thing begins there is no knowing where it will end." The "courtesies of the trade," as Youmans called them, were real but brittle; once violated, "the spell dissolves." Sure enough, two announced editions of the Study. Terrified of his ideas being stolen-and dropping hints that he deserved priority as discoverer of evolution over Darwin and Wallace- Spencerwas not about to take the threat lightly. He had his London publisher hasten plates to Appleton, who issued saturation advertising for a nonexistent pamphlet edition in order to buy time for the real volume. This he rushed out to "forestall piracy." Moreover, the threat was systematic enough to warrant a new periodical for science being created to counter it. It was "vital," Youmans said, that this venue exist if scientific authorship and authenticity were to be secured in the face of "the temptation to reprint." The new counterpirate journal came into being, and was called Popular Science Monthly. For the rest of the century and beyond, it stood alongside Scientific American as America's foremost vehicle for general science.'
The International Scientific Series and Popular Science Monthly were designed to spearhead a transformation in public knowledge by tackling the culture of international "piracy" that Mathew Carey's generation had bequeathed. Spencer spurred it on in hopes of destroying what he called the "utter viciousness" of the "piratical system." So ubiquitous was the practice that Youmans repeatedly warned European scientists about the pitfalls of engaging, not with reprinters per se - for that was unavoidable -but with the wrong kinds of reprinters. For example, if one Blanchard, a doctrinaire positivist, succeeded in pirating Spencer's First Principles, then the public would inevitably identify Spencer's project with the "gang of obscene, prurient, and scoffing authors whom he patronizes and advertises." It was largely by virtue of heading off such threats that Appleton became instrumental in the introduction into American public culture of virtually every contemporary British and German thinker of note.
Yet Youmans was quite capable of exploiting the possibilities of the pirate system himself. He changed works for new audiences, giving even Spencer's essays a new title and editing them at the level of paragraphs and sentences. His efforts substantially shaped Spencer's reputation in America, not least by distinguishing his views from positivism.' When he helped himself to the work of the leading British Comtean, Frederick Harrison, Harrison responded in the Times by accusing Youmans of"a new form of literary piracy." Youmans could only agree that American reprinting was "a scandal to civilization," but he pointed out that Harrison had been paid a royalty, and that his reprint had shielded him from worse pirates. So he had been "`plundered' by being protected against plunder." He stood his ground on the fundamental point that British writers had no right to stop their works being read. "His consent was not asked," he remarked, "because it would have implied control of that over