Unfair to Genius

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.