Piracy_ The Intellectual Property Wars from Gutenberg to Gates - Adrian Johns [200]
Arthur Preston-otherwise known as Willie, or, mysteriously, as "Nigger"25-had, like Abbott, been an employee of one of the big music publishers. In his case it was Boosey and Company, where he had worked since about 1890. He was deputed to the MPA in 1901, however, and from late 1903, if no earlier, enjoyed effective command of the Association's antipiracy efforts. In this capacity he traveled the length and breadth of Britain and Ireland, seeking out pirates and dragging them through the courts. Apparently indefatigable, Preston single-handedly revived the publishers' campaign, extending it to the furthest provinces and eventually seeing it through to victory. Remarkably, he kept a detailed scrapbook recording his successes-and his failures-along the way.26 This scrapbook has survived, along with his archive of the music most vulnerable to piracy. Together they make possible a detailed reconstruction both of the practice of piracy and of the strategy by which it was defeated.
Preston ran three distinct campaigns against pirates, which may almost be thought of as circuits on the traditional English judicial model. The first was a sweep across the north of England and the Midlands, beginning in Liverpool in December 1903 and inaugurating an effort that would continue beyond Preston's own return to the capital. Among other towns, this campaign took in Manchester, Glossop, Doncaster (where the patron of the Popular Music Stores, oneJoseph Cartledge, was the chief target), Sheffield, Barnsley, St. Helens, Leeds, Preston, Birmingham, Walsall, Leicester, Burton-on-Trent, Nottingham, and Middlesbrough. In each place hundreds, and often thousands, of copies of pirated music were seized. The second circuit then concentrated on London and its suburbs, including Enfield, Greenwich, and Walthamstow. It was this circuit that would culminate in the decisive breakthrough, as we shall see. Preston's third circuit, finally, took in the south, ranging from the Medway towns in the east to Plymouth in the farwest. And as these proceeded, he continuously kept an eye on other regions, traveling to Dublin, Belfast, and Londonderry to hunt down pirates in Ireland, and even making a detour to the Isle of Man. Altogether he masterminded some 240 raids in three months (that is, an average of two to four a day), grabbing about forty thousand pirated items.27There can have been few men who saw more of the British Isles in 1904-5 than Arthur Preston.
Preston developed a standard approach for dealing with his antagonists. He would arrive by train, having been alerted to the possibility of a raid by his local agents (the descendents of Abbott's commando force, plus any music sellers prepared to support the campaign). Often he would bring with him a second-in-command, William Muffey. Claiming that he had been summoned by the complaints of copyright owners, Preston would also carry along certificates of copyrights lodged at Stationers' Hall in London. These were the essential proof on the basis of which he could obtain an order from a magistrate for a search. Sometimes he would go to the pirate himself and place an order as if he were a routine customer. The order obtained, Preston would then take with him at least two plainclothes police detectives. Sometimes he might take more, as at one notorious Birmingham house where both Preston andAbbott ran into trouble; after a sergeant expressed fear about going there, it being "such a rough place," Preston took two plainclothes men, one inspector, and five constables. They were confronted by an angry crowd of 15x.28 But even here they did eventually gain entry. Afterward, in court, Preston would say that he had personally examined the haul to verify that the sheets were pirated (sometimes he would concede that a fewwere not), and give a speech about the profundity of the threat posed by pirates to musical culture. Then, his purpose achieved, he would