Piracy_ The Intellectual Property Wars from Gutenberg to Gates - Adrian Johns [211]
During the 1920S "pirates" were seen as a potentially mortal threat to the nascent enterprise of broadcasting itself. But two kinds ofpiracywere at issue, exemplified in the United States and Great Britain. Everything in the different systems adopted by these two nations - ownership, financing, technology, policing, and cultural impact-coalesced in the problem of piracy as each defined it. In America, piracy was a form of transmission. Pirates were broadcasters who interfered with each others' signals. Often, these were originally legitimate operators pushed to the margins by the increasing might of the networks. Theirs became the relatively familiar kind of pirate radio that would return to prominence in the 196os and that still exists today. Their story is relatively familiar and fits neatly into the long history of piracy as a practice of reproduction or circulation. In the United Kingdom, by contrast, something more interesting happened. Although such challengers did exist, the more dangerous pirates were not transmitters at all. They were listeners. That is, "pirates" were members of the public who "listened in" to broadcasting without contributing what was reckoned to be their fair share to its costs. This was a radically new kind of piracy-a receptive practice, not a productive one. It came into being, significantly, at the time when the concept of "information"started to emerge. The subsequent histories of receptive piracy and information were to be quite closely related. But in the first place the practice ofpirate listening imperiled the very existence of broadcasting in the British realm.
PATENTS, POLITICS, AND A NEW KIND OF PIRATE
Just as America experienced a "radio boom" in the early 192os, so too did Great Britain. In mid-1921 Britons had held just four thousand licenses for "experiments in reception." Ayear later there were seven thousand, along with 286 for transmission. That June, the Daily Mail sponsored a broadcast of Nellie Melba, announcing the moment when "listening in" became an aspiration of its huge middle-class readership. After that, thirty-five thousand receiving licenses were issued in 1922, followed by 1.1 million in 1924, and 2.2 million in 1926 -an increase of 55,ooo percent in five years in licensed sets alone. A 1924 guide also contained well over one thousand call letters of amateurs engaged in transmission.' In this short, euphoric period radio had become part of everyday life. John Reith, the British Broadcasting Corporation's first director general and the dominant figure in broadcasting before WWII, declared that roof aerials were now a ubiquitous sight in the urban and even rural landscape.
Authority over the transmission and reception of radio signals laywith the Post Office, by virtue of earlier legislation giving it control of telegraphy.' It took the responsibility seriously, and until the early 1920s issued licenses on the assumption that theywould be for scientific activities. Even the Marconi Company-the dominant player in the nascent industry had to apply for permission to transmit from its experimental station in Chelmsford. In 1920 the Post Office actually denied Marconi a license, on the basis that its "frivolous" signals were not true experiments and might interfere with military communications. But it soon received a rude shock. By this time thousands of private enthusiasts had already begun to experiment with receiving and transmitting devices of their own, setting up "stations" and stimulating a literature ofwonder that invited ever more to join in. Dozens of wireless societies had sprung up across the country, starting as early as 1913