Piracy_ The Intellectual Property Wars from Gutenberg to Gates - Adrian Johns [290]
The intellectual property defense industry began to take its current form in the 1970s. It emerged from what were originally dispersed ventures in particular trades and in-house operations in discrete businesses. As it consolidated, it drew on people, devices, and practices that often originated inpolice or military circles - ex officers, surveillance techniques, encryption-to form a distinct enterprise with branches in digital, pharmaceutical, agricultural, and other domains. By the mid-i98os it was multinational. Trade associations had by then established divisions for antipirate policing in Asia, Africa, Europe, and theAmericas. The MPAA, for example, maintained what it called "Film Security Offices" not only in Los Angeles, NewYork, and London, but also in Paris, Hong Kong, and South Africa.3 Coordinating such offices was ajoint Anti-Piracy Intelligence Group (JAPIG), founded in 1984 as an intellectual property counterpart to Interpol. JAPIG was capable of tracking cargo vessels across the oceans and tapping local customs agents to intercept them when they made landfall. In the 199os, such bodies became players alongside governments, the United Nations, and Interpol in overseeing globalization. The World Health Organization's International Medical Products AntiCounterfeiting Taskforce, launched in Rome in 20o6, was a late but extremely important addition to their ranks. By this point a huge and multifaceted enterprise, antipiracy policing combines the interests and reach of states, corporations, multinationals, and world bodies.4Taken in the round, it effectively shapes intellectual property in countless mundane settings. One could certainly track, and perhaps account for, the increasing consistency of intellectual property in the age of globalization by following this expansion of its practical enforcement across new regions and realms.
Efforts to uphold intellectual property against piracy take place in all areas of today's economy, but they are most prominent in three: media, pharmaceuticals, and agriculture. (Biotechnology is included in the last two.) In each domain, the enterprise of enforcement seeks to discipline what it sees as a world comprising producers and consumers of intellectual property both by intervening preemptively to forestall piracies and by undertaking operations to interdict or respond to those that do occur. But it also coordinates broader efforts to produce changes to national and international laws. At a global level, it surveils the digital world and probes virtual homesteads; at a local, it impinges on physical households, workplaces, and farms. In all, it is an exemplary postindustrial enterprise. Its leading constituents are, fittingly, hybrids, mixing state and private interests and physical and virtual strengths. They are at once technological, administrative, informational, and productive. Moreover, they not only prevent, deter, and detect piracy, but also measure it. What we "know" about piracy-its rates, locations, costs, and profits-is usually what this industry sees and transmits to us. What we do not know about itprincipally its cultural bases and implications -is what it does not see.
At the time ofwriting, the U.S. Congress has just voted to formalize all this. It has passed a law mandating the creation of an "intellectual property enforcement coordinator" to operate out of the president's executive office. This official will be charged with liaising with companies and trade associations to create and pursue a joint Strategic Plan for worldwide antipiracy policing. The coordinator has inevitably been called a "copyright czar," the implication being that