• Introduction


• Part One: The Birth and Growth of Piracy, 1877-1955


• 1. Music, Machines, and Monopoly


• 2. Collectors, Con Men, and the Struggle for Property Rights


• 3. Piracy and the Rise of New Media


• Part Two: The Legal Backlash, 1945-1998


• 4. Counterculture, Popular Music, and the Bootleg Boom


• 5. The Criminalization of Piracy


• 6. Deadheads, Hip Hop, and the Possibility of Compromise


• 7. The Global War on Piracy


• Conclusion: Piracy as Social Media


• Notes


• Index

Alex Sayf Cummings is Assistant Professor of History at Georgia State University.

It was a time when music fans copied and traded recordings without permission. An outraged music industry pushed Congress to pass anti-piracy legislation. Yes, that time is now; it was also the era of Napster in the 1990s, of cassette tapes in the 1970s, of reel-to-reel tapes in the 1950s, even the phonograph epoch of the 1930s. Piracy, it turns out, is as old as recorded music itself.