In the Huffington Post, Larry Lessig has written an in-depth review of the book, and the picture he paints isn't pretty. Starting from the question, "Why isn't copyright perpetual," Helprin goes on to totally fail to research this question, failing to inspect any of the arguments that have preceded his asking. Instead, he raises a bunch of tired old saws about copyright as property, and, on the way, characterizes the Internet as a colossal failure (though, as Lessig points out, it seems like it was the only tool he used to research his book), populated by "blogger-ants" (that would be me, I guess), and led by crypto-Marxist "professors in glasses" (that would be Larry, a former Young Republican).
But Helprin has spent precious little time actually researching the supposed copyright abolition movement he's so up in arms about. He apparently watched a video in which Professor James Boyle appears, because he talks about Jamie's "desire to appear almost English, an embarrassing phase some insecure colonials enter never to exit" (Jamie is Scottish). But that's about it. He thinks that Creative Commons exists to promote "freeware" software. He thinks Lessig is anti-copyright. He thinks "monopoly" can only be applied to commodities (because he looked it up in the dictionary, and it says so there). As Lessig sez, "Too bad the lawyers at AT&T didn't read the OED when Reagan's Justice Department intervened to break up its monopoly in 'telephone service.' I can hear Attorney Helprin now: 'Your honor, excuse me, but the government has no case here. AT&T is not a monopoly, because AT&T sells no 'commodity.' A commodity is a 'thing,' your honor. All we sell is telephone service."
It's amazing that 232 pages of (let's not mince words) badly researched twaddle made it off the presses at HarperCollins -- but it's nice to be sure that Helprin wasn't kidding after all.
"Maybe," you say, charitable reader that you are, "he read the books, but just didn't cite them." And true enough: Helprin has this weird thing against citation. He quotes me criticizing him (on my blog): "Helprin barely cites anyone .... [He] doesn't bother with what others have written...." (164) but then defends his practice: "It's one thing to learn from others, but another to copy them." (164). True enough. But then it is a third thing to acknowledge a point you have drawn from another -- assuming, of course, pace solipsism, you believe that there are other people in the world, and they might possibly have something to say. At another part of the book, he mocks students who "support their assertions with crushing citations." (162) A sin, perhaps, but nothing as compared to an author who supports his assertions with no citations at all.The Solipsist and the Internet (a review of Helprin's Digital Barbarism)But if he actually read any of these books, he didn't take notes. The structure of his book is sprinkles of promises to make an argument, mixed with the most self-indulgent reflections upon his own life. And when Helprin actually gets around to argument, the arguments are a series of questions. (For example: "Where do they get the idea that copyright is a drag on artistic production? Are they suggesting that Pasternak could not write because Yeats had beaten him to the punch, that Tolstoy didn't write War and Peace because Moby Dick was copyrighted?" (140); or "What magic influence comes into play to convert a condition that does not hinder publication or however many years of commercial availability into a condition that then has the opposite effect?" (77); "Is the argument that books that go into print while copyrighted and stay in print for twenty years while copyrighted go out of print because they are copyrighted?" (77)) None of these questions are profound or new. None of them would be unanswered if the author had spent two weeks researching before he wrote. But Helprin apparently didn't have time to research. And who does these days? We're living in Internet time. It's work enough simply to keep up with the blogs!
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Helprin's stance in favor of Forbes et al's regressive flat tax is much more distasteful than perpetual copyright. He props up both with excruciatingly florid prose which amount, under the surface, to just a bunch of anecdotes.
Mark Helprin should not be taken seriously.
Anecdotes tainted by confirmation bias. Who can even read it?
(Every counter-tactual Helprin presents could be recast in the perfectly opposite direction... would Tolstoy have written _Moby Dick_ a second time instead of _War and Peace_ if copyright didn't exist, just to stick it to Melville? Somehow, I don't think so.)
Seriously, was this post really needed? I mean, okay, Helprin kinda mentions you, but spreading the news about his rubbish just draws much more attention to his "badly researched twaddle" than it merits or deserves.
Oh dear, oh dear.
Erlik,
You don't think it is fair to tear down faux-evidence that will be used against sane copyright laws?
Someone will cite this shit as if it's a valid academic point of view, and the more it is casually referenced the stronger it gets (it doesn't need to be true, it just needs people to believe it). If we can invalidate it now, it won't be ammunition in the future.
Ok, so his ideas re: increasing the military budget by orders of magnitude suck, his ideas about perpetual copyright are borderline insane (this whole crusade of his is very much in line with the way Orfeo, a bugshit crazy character from his novel "A Soldier of the Great War", would behave) and his stance on how the American military should have used 9/11 as an excuse to topple every government in the Arab world that doesn't bend over and spread its cheeks to the US are just plain terrifying.
However! (And with all due respect.)
His book "A Winter's Tale" contains more literary genius than all of your books combined, Cory.
So I'll read the library edition his next novel anyway.
Tearing down something like that is easier than shooting... not fish in a barrel, but elephants in a typical backyard.
Considering how often some stuff has been debunked and still pops up as "evidence", it is an exercise in futility.
And if you poke a turd with a stick, the stench will just be stronger.
His ideas may be insane, but the insanity is nothing an army of well-funded MPAA/RIAA lobbyists, a pro-Big-Copyright media and bought congressmen can't paper over. If Murdoch instructs his editors to swing for perpetual copyright, citing Helprin as an "esteemed intellectual property expert", that will have a devastating effect to shift debate.
I'm kind of amazed how this guy can be so "strict constitutionalist" that he is heavily involved in the Claremont Institute whose mission is "to restore the principles of the American founding fathers to their rightful, preeminent authority in our national life" and be so in favor of perpetual copyright when the American founding fathers thought that intellectual property should be copyrighted for a very short period of time.
That he is so staunch a defender of his own intellectual property that he wants it to basically last forever and yet he refuses to cite the ideas that he gets from other people is also quite ponderous. I guess he only cares that people make money off of copyright not that they get credit for their ideas or anything...
It's too bad that a writer like Helprin, whose fictional work can be so beautiful, can also be so wrongheaded and clueless about real life.
Erlik, it's very genteel to ignore a turd, but sooner or later someone has to clear it up. May as well do it now than leave it until we're used to the smell.
If you've ever read any of his work, it is clear that Helprin likes to think of himself as the sort who gains strength from conflict, and that the best battles are the ones with the longest odds of being won.
I would speculate that this whole business has more to do with Helprin feeling old and needing to pit himself against something larger than he is than it is about the need for perpetual copyright.
As far as self serving jackasses who cite flawed "studies" to bolster their arguments go... If they aren't interested in using real facts to make their case, then they'll always be able to find/create a mother lode of bullshit sources to cite. Fuck 'em.
Why waste time and energy rumbling with a crotchety old guy who can't even be bothered to get his facts straight?
Just keep doing things that might actually make a difference, man, like writing subversive fiction and helping the EFF.
Helprin is a really fantastic writer; a master of prose. and given the themes of his stories, it's not surprising at all to learn that he's a hard-core conservative. but it truly sucks to see he's a sloppy thinker.
Somebody needs to send this guy a copy of a Spider Robinson story. I believe it's "An Elephant Never Forgets"
It's about what happens when you have perpetual copyright and automated enforcement.
"It's amazing that 232 pages of (let's not mince words) badly researched twaddle made it off the presses at HarperCollins..."
HarperCollins? surely this is unprecedented?
It's not as hard to get published as you might think.
Just look at Stephanie Meyer.
thx 4 the link to that review.
Very, very inforamtive!
And if you poke a turd with a stick, the stench will just be stronger.
That's a nice metaphor for not disturbing something that's dormant, which Helprin clearly isn't. He just published a book, dude.
I've never read Helprin, and won't if he's such a prat, but...
He's a fantasy novelist, and every fantasy novel I've ever read [maybe he's startlingly original, but I doubt it] was more or less "borrowed" from Tolkien. And Tolkien borrowed from English folk tales.
So before he can complain about limited copyright, he should track down the ancestors of the authors of those folk tales and pay them the royalties due them for allowing the genre to exist in the first place.
Looks like he is just aspiring to the high wing nut standards set by Jonah Goldberg in "Liberal Fascism".
"Mark Helprin should not be taken seriously."
But he will be. He will appear on important shows promoting his book where all the other conservatives will cluck their approval at this very important work of deep scholarship. Your mistake is thinking you live in a meritocracy.
Halloween Jack, yes, the book is out. It's not like it's shouting at the top of its lungs, though. I have to admit I like Nelson C's metaphor more. :-)
But you both forget one thing: Helprin's book is not a scorpion on an angel cake*. It's a turd among a great number of turds. You won't clear them picking one by one as they appear. You have to remove them all together.
* Bonus points for recognising the reference. :-)
You're right Nelson, because everybody knows you can't polish a turd...though if people are paid enough, they'll proclaim how nice and shiny it is;)
I would like to draw attention to the use of "pace" as a preposition in the quoted text. This is a wonderful and entertaining use that I had never encountered before but will now be tucking into my hat-band.
"pace, prep.: With due deference to (a named person or authority); despite."
http://dictionary.oed.com/cgi/entry/50168932
This is just so sad because his novel "Winters Tale" is pretty amazing. Why don't we just ignore this book and focus on that one instead.
Rob @12: Spider Robinson's story is Melancholy Elephants.
I think JCCalhoun is on the right track. Helprin cares only about money not ideas. Copyright isn't an impediment to ideas, just to making money off of them. Steal whatever you like and repost anonymously - who is there to sue? Let the copyright holders pay their lawyers to chase down YouTube videos - I can have another account there tomorrow. Of course if I want to make a buck off of The Little Mermaid, I have to do like Disney and steal from somebody whose lawyers aren't as good as mine. But if we're talking about information being free, I don't think copyright is a problem.
@#19: Helprin doesn't really write in the Tolkien tradition, but he has written a trilogy that heavily references and reimagines Tchaikovsky's ballet Swan Lake—itself a reimagining of old German and Russian folk tales—so the substance of your assertion is correct: he's biting the very hand that feeds him.
#26, copyright is an impediment to ideas as anonymous posters are having their videos, writings and commentary pulled off of all sorts of sites with lawyers trying to track them down. As long as rightsholders perceive a possible loss of income, copyright will inspire draconian enforcement on the part of some.
Once you get past one or two, decades are abstract time periods people can't relate to.
Look at the purpose of copyright, from the author's standpoint.
You wanna use royalties to put your kids through college? OK, that's "one generation." In our society that means 30 years. Thirty years of copyright, and that's it.
Oh wait, you wanna retire on the royalties. That's called "life of the author." Plus zero. Maybe plus five years or something, so nobody looks like they have an immediate interest in your death.
You wanna put your kids through college and retire? Fine, "life of the author or 30 years, whichever is longer." That's still much less than current law.
What, now you say you want your kids to retire on your royalties? That's pretty wack, but whatever: Life of the author plus one generation. Life plus 30 years. That's it. That's the outside envelope of anything reasonable. And it's like 50 years shorter than current statute.
Hmm. I was all set to get good pissed about Helprin's book until I read the full text of Lessig's review of it.
I don't have a problem with Lessig's overall thesis that the sections of the book relating to copyright are poorly researched. I've no doubt that on matters of copyright law, Lessig can kick Helprin's ass with both hands behind his back. But did he have to be so *personal* in his criticism? I mean, being called a "blogger-ant" is pretty tame, after all. Hell, call me an ant. No problem. Ants are actually pretty cool.
The review was so obviously written by a man with a personal axe to grind (hey, if Mark Helprin compared *me* to Idi Amin in public, I might also take it to heart) that it actually made me curious to read the book. I couldn't avoid the impression that I wasn't getting a complete picture of the book from Lessig. I've read books by Mark Helprin. They were damned readable. There's got to be more to this than meets the eye.
Whether or not I agree with his views on everything, Helprin is a good enough writer that I expect his book would be an entertaining read, no matter what. Matter of fact, I'm gonna go buy a copy right now.
I've just finished reading Helprin's book on copyright (in fact, it is about far more than that). If someone had told me a month ago that I would immensely enjoy reading a book about such an obviously dry topic, I would have died laughing. But you know what? No matter what it's perceived failings might be, it is one helluva good read. I would recommend it to any aspiring writer, not for what it says about copyright so much as its reflections on the book publishing industry as a whole.
Also, the title "Digital Barbarism" strikes me as particularly apt in the wake of events like 4chan's massive youtube porn-uploading. Even Bruce Sterling has called these sorts a "a Golden Horde".