Mentioning the appointment in April 1930 of a copyright agent to represent the Performing Rights Society in Palestine, Birnhack meticulously describes how the society gave him “a strong incentive to collect as much as possible” (170). It is through the nuances of these episodes that we may glimpse the multifaceted and complicated entanglements between territory and copyright, and the labyrinthine connections that linked the ways colonial copyright law was imagined and the manners in which it influenced and was influenced (or not) by local practices. In that sense, colonial copyright elicits a temporal dislocation of principles that appeared already settled (80); traces the forces of representation and commitment to copyright “on the ground” (87); and discusses emerging cultural fields (110–20). As a result, Birnhack's book brings to the fore not only the violence of foreign-imposed interests, but also the more complex and interesting infrastructural questions, that is, the pathways and institutions through which those interests came into contact with local realities and served to constitute colonial copyright. In that regard, instituting copyright in colonial territories was more than an imposed framework: it was wrapped around stories of immigration (109, 135, 184), anxieties (80), and, of course, translation (91). More than filling gaps or reversing narratives, Birnhack's fascinating and provocative account opens a true Pandora's Box; a series of haunting episodes always running in the background of copyright's history, whose traces remained buried in archives dispersed throughout the world. Above all, the book seeks to unsettle disciplinary assumptions by showing how a study of colonial copyright in Mandate Palestine (1917–48) is still relevant today, how copyright law cannot escape its own past, and how current contemporary problems echo questions already asked decades ago (287). For that reason, the book will become a useful reference as an initial and lucid attempt to provide a sophisticated theoretical analysis of colonial copyright.

There are points that at first glance look somehow controversial. First, the reference to the stages of development and the rise of social norms seems particularly contentious (161–62). Second, and despite the fact that the book uses what it defines as the Authorship project (134), or the lack of training in or knowledge about copyright (139), as different vectors that expose the gap or caesura opened by colonial copyright law, one is left wondering why Birnhack did not fully explore the political and legal complexity among immigration, settlement, and copyright rules (137). And third, the brief chapter devoted to colonial copyright law in Palestine's Arab society opens up many more questions about the interaction between communities and how copyright was understood then (239–55). Nevertheless, it is necessary to mention that Birnhack gathers a great deal of historical evidence to support these arguments that could look somehow debatable (139–62), and he also elegantly refers to the archival obstacles that he experienced as an Israeli researcher (251). However, the book's strength lies not only in comprehensive scholarship but also in several instances of skillful storytelling. When it follows the concrete steps of the Performing Rights Society (163–89), when it gives specific details about the involvement of the BBC in establishing the Palestine Broadcasting Service (190–211), and when it traces the story of telegraphic news in Palestine (212–38), the book is particularly captivating. By unveiling rich material in minute detail that is handled with care and sensitivity by an insightful author, we realize that most of these stories carry their own explanation. Precisely because of the self-explanatory character of some episodes, there is an aspect of the book that might leave some historians uneasy. Its steady preoccupation with providing an overall theoretical framework (59) and its concern for stories that “fit the pattern” (80) or follow “the line” (93) is particularly visible in its recurrent insistence on legal transplantation as the axis and connective tissue to structure the book (22–39). However, legal transplantation as the logic governing colonial copyright appears too rigid for the rich historical material, and the political and legal complexities that the book unveils. More specifically, the metaphor of legal transplants is “misleading” (G. Teubner, “Legal irritants: Good Faith in British Law or How Unifying Law Ends Up in New Divergences,” Modern Law Review 61 [1998]: 12). Its underlying evolutionary premise continues to marginalize and reduce the possibilities of thinking about the history of copyright differently in a postcolonial world. Such an orderly desire for a “general model of analysis” (282) is probably a consequence of a normative understanding of history (Kretschmer et al., eds. Privilege and Property: Essays on the History of Copyright [Cambridge: OpenBook Publishers, 2010], 1); a distinctive way to conceive copyright's history from a legal point of view. The compromised methodological element may pass unnoticed to the primary audience addressed by the book. However, it already anticipates a need to reconsider the effects of Kathy Bowrey's pertinent question (“Who's writing copyright's history?” European Intellectual Property Review, 18 [1996]: 322–29).