When I told people I was writing my history dissertation about music piracy, the typical response was, “But… that’s not history.” But, in fact, piracy has a history as long as sound recording – even as long as written music itself. Jazzheads swapped copies of shellac discs in the 1930s, and shady operators even copied music in the wax cylinder era of the 1910s. Sheet music was bootlegged in the 19th century, just as printed materials had been since Gutenberg unleashed the printing press 400 years earlier.
Music, though, has proven more vexing to regulate than other copyrighted works. Sound recordings were not protected in the US until 1972. How could this be?
Source