On the difficulty of legally securing intellectual work. Copyright is under attack. Whether it's file sharing or Google, new technological inventions and players are putting pressure on what was once legally protected as the value of intellectual work. But is this new? Monika Dommann demonstrates in her impressive study that there has always been a conflict between authors and machines. She describes the development in the USA, Germany, France, and Great Britain and examines two exemplary cases, photocopying and music recording, revealing the complex interplay of rights and interests of all parties involved from 1850 to the present. Her book shows how old the new problems are and how fragile the legal protection of intellectual property is. An essential look into history to understand the present.