At the checkout counter of the Selectadisc in London, where I was on vacation last week, I picked up a book called Bootleg: The Secret History of the Other Recording Industry, by Clinton Heylin. I've read before about copyright's earliest days, but Heylin's incisive analysis puts the issue in a new light. Now, everyone seems to have an opinion on copyright, from the listeners who access tunes online to the labels that showed a misleading ad during this year's Super Bowl halftime. (Reality check: No one has ever been prosecuted for downloading music.)

Technological advances have dogged content owners ever since a caveman first got conked on the head for ripping off the other guy's yawp. We think these issues are new to our generation, but that's just not the case. Now is a good time to take a trip down memory lane to keep things in perspective.

1525					Was the English Bible the first bootleg?
					William Tyndale translated the New Testament into English without permission from the recognized authorities of the day and was, according to Heylin's book, "subsequently garroted, then burnt for his efforts." Even then, controversy surrounded consumers' right to access published content by their preferred method.
1619					We're all pirating the Bard's material.
					William Shakespeare's plays would have been lost if not for the audience members who diligently scribbled down the action in shorthand and copied, edited, and distributed the transcripts without his permission. In 1619, Thomas Pavier tried to publish Shakespeare's First Folio, but he was stopped by the Lord Chamberlain. Until recently, the royal courtier who held that office was in charge of licensing plays in parts of England. According to him, Pavier and his ilk were essentially breaking copyright laws by recording and selling copies of live performances. But if it hadn't been for those illegal reproductions, Hamlet's "To be or not to be" soliloquy might have gone something like this.
1886					The United States resists copyright.
					Because an alleged 90 percent of sheet-music piracy occurred in the United States, it refused to sign the Berne Convention treaty, the first documented attempt to establish a worldwide copyright standard. Evidently, most Americans found the price of sheet music, the day's primary form of music publishing, far too high. Countries in which piracy dominates the music market can be reticent about adopting U.S. copyright laws, but when we dismiss their concerns, it's somewhat a case of the pot calling the kettle black.
1920					Was radio the first file-sharing network?
					When radio stations began broadcasting music, first live and later recorded, orchestras went on strike, protesting people's new ability to hear performances for free from a remote location. As you know, the radio technology they feared so much became the industry's most powerful promotional tool.
1969					Listeners get what they want.
					Bob Dylan cut 26 tracks in the Band's basement, and much to the chagrin of the artist and his label, Columbia, two guys somehow obtained the recordings and released them. Their excuse: "Bob Dylan is a heavy talent, and he's got all those songs nobody's ever heard. We thought we'd take it upon ourselves to make this music available." Condemning the release of the rough tracks, Columbia said, "The sellers of this record are crassly depriving a great artist of the opportunity to perfect his performance to the point where he believes in [its] integrity and validity." Of course, when the album became the first popular bootleg in the Los Angeles area, Columbia's lofty objections gave way to commercial instincts, and the label released the songs in 1975 on The Basement Tapes, now a cornerstone of many Dylan collections.
2004					The song remains the same.
					Fans copy and share songs through portable recorders and P2P networks, different countries still have their own copyright ideas, and content owners still feel threatened by new distribution methods.

Technology keeps advancing, but as you can see from this brief look back, the issues confronting consumers, artists, and labels haven't changed much. In Billy Joel's words, we didn't start the fire.