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and professional worlds I have found that every kind of specialism has its own developed mythology of piracy, often central to its sense of how it itself originated. A multivolume book could have been written from what I learned about them all, and I hope that those who contributed material that I did not in the end use will understand. I can only apologize even more to the many I have doubtless omitted from the following list-please blame my memory, not my manners. But among those whose assistance I particularly remember are Lionel Bently, Mario Biagioli, Geoffrey Bilder (for conjuring up the perfect moment at the Googleplex), Ann Blair, Peter Burke, Graham Burnett, James Chandler, Roger Chartier, Bill Clark, Roger Cooter, Angela Creager, Robert Darnton, Arnold Davidson, Peter Dear, Richard Epstein, James Evans, Paula Findlen,John Forrester, Marina Frasca-Spada, Peter Galison, Anne Goldgar, Jan Golinski, Anthony Grafton, John Guillory, Deborah Harkness, Nicholas Jardine, Daniel Kevles, James Lee, Alan Liu, the late Donald McKenzie, Michael McKeon, Jim Moore, Oliver Morton, Reviel Netz, Shuhei Ogawa, Trevor Pinch, Steven Pincus, Mary Poovey, Wei Ran, Robert Richards, Lissa Roberts, Jonathan Rose, Larry Rothfield, Martin Rudwick, Simon Schaffer, Anne Secord, James Secord, Steven Shapin, Geoffrey Smith, Pamela Smith, Emma Spary Peter Stallybrass, Stephen Stigler, Kate Stimmler, Fred Swartz, Michael Warner, William Wimsatt, Alison Winter, and Martha Woodmansee

This book focuses on the English-speaking world. But my perspective on that world has been shaped by experiences in Japan, China, and Continental Europe. Investigating practices of digital (and other) piracy in such different settings has helped to cast the peculiarities of my own culture in sharper relief, even though the results of those investigations are not explicit in this volume. My heartfelt thanks go especially to Yoshihisa Ogawa and Naoya Nakanishi of Foursis, Inc., in Japan: my thinking about digital matters and their place in history would not have developed as it has without their extraordinarily generous help. In China my efforts to talk with DVD pirates would have got nowhere but for Wei Ran, and in Hong Kong Stephen Selby, director of Intellectual Property of the SAR, gave of his time very generously.

Those most closely involved with the seemingly endless process of researching, writing, and rewriting this book have been the members of my own family: Alison, David, Elizabeth, Zoe, and Benjamin. It could certainly not have been completed without their help, understanding, and tolerance. But I owe them far more than that implies-far more, indeed, than could ever be put into words.

Although I have always conceived of this book as a single whole, I have benefited from the chance to try out earlier versions of some sections in print. Chapter 3 draws on "The Piratical Enlightenment," in This Is Englightenment, ed. C. Siskin and W. Warner (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, forthcoming). Parts of chapter 4 appeared first in "Reading and Experiment in the Early Royal Society," in K. Sharpe and S. Zwicker, eds., Reading Society and Politics in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 244-71 (© Cambridge University Press; reprinted with permission). "Truth and Malicious Falsehood," Nature 4¢ (February 28, 2008): io58-6o, contains a much-abbreviated version of an argument from chapter 5. Chapter 12 expands on material initially presented in "Pop Music Pirate Hunters," Daedalus 131, no. 2 (Spring 2002): 67-77. And a preliminary version of the argument in chapter 14 was published as "Intellectual Property and the Nature of Science," Cultural Studies 20 (2006):145-64.

I A GENERAL HISTORY OF THE PIRATES

i See an expose at http://www.cn.necel.com/en/cprofile/elhk/cprofile_elhk_ job_disclaimer.html.

2 D. Lague, "Next Step for Counterfeiters: Faking the Whole Company," New York Times, May 1, 2006, Ci; D. Lague, "Next Step in Pirating: Faking a Company," International Herald Tribune, April 28, 2oo6, i.

3 S. Vickers, "Confronting the