Piracy_ The Intellectual Property Wars from Gutenberg to Gates - Adrian Johns [95]
All this was bound up in the booksellers' representation of themselves as individuals. They were, Byrne and Wogan said, plain-dealing, modest, and trustworthy men, whose manner contrasted sharply with the "virulence" of the absentee. They kept their word. Their craftsmanship produced fidelity and honest-to-goodness knowledge, without vain ostentation. Their edition was better printed than the London one, they insisted, and was literally correct. "What they proposed, they trust they have performed."" The fidelity and sobriety of their "plain" and affordable book testified to their fidelity and virtue as craftsmen. The reprinting of British titles was a virtuous action in that light. Byrne and Wogan presented the case for the defense at its most confident.
CUSTOM AND CONSENT
These kinds of arguments upheld the reprinting of works initially issued elsewhere. But none of them applied to reprints of works already produced in Ireland itself. This was where the issue of reprinting became difficult. Unlike other places, Dublin had no law or trade-sanctioned bylaw of literary property. But that did not make it anarchic. In fact it had its own conventions-noninstitutional customs-to which Dubliners assigned strong moral qualities. These customs were real and effective. But they were not very old, they lacked a strong legal or institutional basis, they were somewhat imprecise, and in certain circumstances their hold on practice could be tenuous. There were also conventions, of course, about when and how they could be ignored, and about what would happen when they were. If we are to understand how a pirate kingdom could sustain itself, we need to reconstruct not so much the institutional character of the book trade as its moral or cultural constitution.
The principal convention was that of the "posting" of titles. This was an unwritten, but widely recognized, "Rule" (we would perhaps call it a norm) to which members of the trade were expected to adhere. Thomas Bacon-merchant, coffeeman, printer, auctioneer, bookseller, and alleged British agent-described in 1742 how it worked: "There is a Rule among the Booksellers of Dublin, established by common Consent and Custom, that whoever shall first paste up Title-Pages, advertising their Resolutions of publishing any Book, the Property then becomes theirs: And this appears to be necessary in a Country where no public Laws have been made in that Respect."23 "Posting" here meant displaying notice at some common location, such as Dublin's equivalent to Stationers' Hall; or it might also mean issuing a printed advertisement in a newspaper. The bookseller must be ready to produce on demand either the manuscript or the original London edition.24 Subsequent Dublin editions were then regarded as the prerogative of the original poster.
It is worth stressing that this convention, insofar as it was actually followed, was stricter than anything London had ever seen. No such early and easily obtained right had ever been recognized in England. And in fact it was followed, by and large. It even proved secure enough that some did not hesitate to call the result "property" Such property could be bought and sold, as in the case of the £300 paid for Leland's History of Ireland-a small amount by London's standards, it is true, but not nothing. Postings sometimes formed the basis for rudimentary share allocations, with shares even descending through inheritance. And, for all that it was not a legal title, "property" of this kind might even hold good in a court of law. Peter Wilson thus won a case to regain the "right" to his Dublin Directory after it was sold without his consent in 1781 .25
But sometimes a Dubliner would