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Published: 1st June 2012

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The long and tortured career of Ira B. Arnstein, the unrivaled "king of copyright infringement plaintiffs," opens a curious window into the evolution of copyright law in the United States. As Gary A. Rosen shows in this frequently funny and always entertaining history, the litigious Arnstein unwittingly transformed not just copyright, but American popular music itself.

A youthful prodigy in the late nineteenth century, Arnstein performed at the famous 1893 "White City" exhibition in Chicago. By the 1920s, he was a moderately successful songwriter and performer in New York, but beginning in 1928, his career entered a steep descent, and he was reduced to near-penury. Embittered, he became convinced that other artists were making fortunes off of his material, and so began a quixotic two-decade campaign to sue each and every one of them. While Arnstein failed in every case, Rosen shows that the decisions rendered--often by the famous jurist Learned B. Hand--ultimately defined some of the basic parameters of modern copyright law. The final case that he lost, against a bewildered Cole Porter, was the most consequential: Arnstein v. Porter. Successful suits against George Harrison, Led Zeppelin, and others for plagiarism owe a great deal to this decision and to Arnstein's relentless efforts over the years.

Although the book focuses on Ira Arnstein, Rosen alternates the story of Arnstein's career with a fascinating account of the period between the Tin-Pan-Alley and rock-and-roll eras, a period when Cole Porter, George Gershwin, Irving Berlin and many others wrote songs that would become classics. Just as important, changes in copyright law shifted the balance of power from music publishing companies to writers and performers, a revolution that occurred in no small part because of Arnstein.

"Rosen paints a fascinating portrait of one of history's most fertile creative eras - the rise of Tin Pan Alley, or the "Age of the Songwriter," as Rosen calls it - and the book brims with history relevant to today's disruptive technology climate." -- Publishers Weekly

"This is an amazing intertwined tale of Tin Pan Alley, a series of courtroom showdowns, and the changing nature of commercial creativity through the 20th century. Rosen has done us all a great favor by unearthing the story and writing about it so well." --Siva Vaidhyanathan, author of TheGooglization of Everything

"Unfair to Genius is a lively, learned, and illuminating look at American popular music, from the Tin Pan Alley era to the advent of rock 'n' roll, through the lens of one of its quirkiest denizens."--Philip Furia, author of The Poets of Tin Pan Alley and Ira Gershwin: The Art of the Lyricist

"Exhaustively researched, this multi-layered tale of the economic, cultural and legal forces that forever changed the institutions of American popular music is both immensely readable and thoroughly engaging. It is a gem of a book."-Paul Goldstein, Lillick Professor of Law, Stanford University

"Everyone interested in how the law and entertainment intersect should read this story of the original copyright troll." --Adrian Johns, author of Piracy: The Intellectual Property Wars from Gutenberg to Gates

"Entertaining and instructive...the improbable leap from high opera to low vaudeville suggests the fun to be found in "Unfair to Genius" as it leavens legal history with showbiz anecdote, and insight with amusement." -Wall Street Journal

"Unfair to Genius is a superbly researched and written account of the Tin Pan Alley era of pop music and the peculiar career of one Ira Arnstein, who started with tons of talent and ambition but ended up as a reviled eccentric who pathologically sued big-name songwriters for imagined copyright infringement. Author Gary Rosen, an in

ISBN: 9780199733484
ISBN-10: 0199733481
Audience: General
Format: Hardcover
Language: English
Number Of Pages: 307
Published: 1st June 2012
Dimensions (cm): 23.6 x 15.5  x 3.0
Weight (kg): 0.612