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This book has taken more than a decade to complete. It deals with themes that extend across the domains of human creativity, over a long timescale, and across awide geographical area. I have incurred countless intellectual and social debts in writing it. I can signal only a few of them here, but my gratitude to all who have helped is deep and lasting.

In the first place, I must thank the University of Chicago Press, where Alan Thomas shepherded this book into being, showing extraordinary patience and wisdom over a number ofyears. Mark Reschke did a fine job copyediting the typescript. With any other publisher this project could not have become the book that it is.

Students at the various universities where I have worked have endured courses on piracy and intellectual property from me for several years now. At UCSD, Caltech, and the University of Chicago I have encountered a vast range ofviews and knowledge on the topic. Many of the young people who took part in these classes were imaginative originators who had already encountered the intellectual property system in their own lives, even before arriving at university. They could speak from experience about the fine structure of its effects on digital, biotechnological, or artistic enterprises. That seems to me a real change-an advance, really- that has taken place in my lifetime and that deserves notice. I benefited in countless ways -probably more than the students themselves -from the conversations we had.

I have also been the beneficiary of many learned responses when I have presented versions of some of the claims published here at academic institutions and societies. Over the years I have been fortunate to have the opportunity to do this many times: at Berkeley, Bucknell University, Harvard, McGill, NYU, the University of Pittsburgh, Princeton, the Society for the History ofAuthorship, Reading, and Publishing, Stanford, various annual meetings of the History of Science Society, the University of Chicago, UCLA, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the University of Michigan, and Yale. Audiences at all these places helped enormously in the refinement of the book's arguments. Even if I did not record the names of those who made particular comments, I always tried to listen to and accommodate the comments themselves. I am grateful for them all.

The story told in this book rests substantially on primary-source evidence, and this could not have been gathered without the aid of many libraries and archives. I am grateful for the opportunity to consult papers at the following institutions-and, no less, for the aid of the staff at these places: the American Antiquarian Society; the American Philosophical Society; the BBC WrittenArchives Centre; the British Library; the British Telecom Archives; Cambridge University Library; the Historical Society of Pennsylvania; the Houghton Library, Harvard University; the Huntington Library; the University of Glasgow Archives; the London School of Economics Archives; the William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan; the MIT archives; the National Archives (UK); the National Library of Ireland; the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford; the Royal Mail archives; the Royal Society Library; the Regenstein and Crerar Libraries at the University of Chicago; and the Worshipful Company of Stationers and Newspaper Makers.

Financial support for research leave has been vital to the pursuit of this project and to the writing of the book that has resulted. I have received such support from the University of Chicago, the American Philosophical Society (Sabbatical Fellowship, 2002), and the National Science Foundation (2005, grant number 0451472). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this book are mine and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation or any other of these bodies.

I am no less appreciative of all those individuals I have met over the years who have contributed ideas, criticisms, and suggestions. As I have traveled around the academic