David Newhoff - Who Invented Oscar Wilde?: The Photograph at the Center of Modern American Copyright

Most books about copyright are academic analyses or rantsor both. Not this one. David Newhoffs Who Invented Oscar Wilde?is full of fascinating reporting and clear analysis that adds up to a compelling and well-researched story. Its amusing, important, and a great read.

Robert Levine, author of Free Ride: How Digital Parasites are Destroying the Culture Business, and How the Culture Business Can Fight Back

David Newhoff is one of our clearest-thinking and most knowledgeable observers of twenty-first-century American culture and the destructive copyright wars waged by digital utopians.

T Bone Burnett, musician, songwriter, and record producer

Copyright law, cool? David Newhoff eloquently makes the case for it being at least cool adjacent in Who Invented Oscar Wilde?, his entertaining, witty new book about the complex history of a law rooted in the constitution and vital to the survival of artists, our culture, and, as he shows, our democracy itself. This is an important book that everyone who cares about the survival of artists and the arts should read.

Doug Menuez, photographer, director, and author of the best-seller Fearless Genius: The Digital Revolution in Silicon Valley, 19852000

No one engages the intellect on copyright dialectic with the elocutionary prose of a Brahmin-like David Newhoff. He is a copyright mandarin. Press pause on sophistry. You are going to enjoy this Wilde ride.

Michelle Shocked, picker-poet, singer-songwriter, and artists rights activist

David Newhoff does more than provide a refreshing and original history of copyright. He goes to the dark heart of digital cultures disregard for human creativity and ingenuity.

Andrew Orlowski, journalist and founder of the research network Think of X

David Newhoff is one of the sharpest and most nuanced thinkers about the role of artists rights in the digital age.

East Bay Ray, guitarist, songwriter, and co-founder of the Dead Kennedys

What do Mickey Mouse, Andy Warhol, Prince, Annie Leibovitz, and Oscar Wilde have in common? They are all characters in the story of American copyright. David Newhoff cleverly dissects the history (and challenges) of individual expression and authorshipfrom the time of cave paintings to the digital age. For those who create original work and want to understand the confusing concepts of copyright protection, Newhoffs book will appeal.

John Kitsch, photographer

David Newhoff

Potomac Books

An imprint of the University of Nebraska Press

2020 by David Newhoff.

Cover designed by University of Nebraska Press; cover images are from the interior.

Author photo Sean Mekas.

All rights reserved. Potomac Books is an imprint of the University of Nebraska Press.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Newhoff, David, author.

Title: Who invented Oscar Wilde?: the photograph at the center of modern American copyright / David Newhoff.

Description: Lincoln: Potomac Books, University of Nebraska Press, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020007565

ISBN 9781640121584 (hardback)

ISBN 9781640123861 (epub)

ISBN 9781640123878 (mobi)

ISBN 9781640123885 (pdf)

Subjects: LCSH : CopyrightUnited StatesPhilosophy. | CopyrightPhotographsUnited States. | CopyrightMotion picturesUnited States.

Classification: LCC KF 2994 . N 49 2020 | DDC 346.7304/82dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020007565

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For Jake, Sasha, and Julien

It is well worth ones while to go to a country which can teach us the beauty of the word