Lawrence Lessig reviews Mark Helprin’s ‘Digital Barbarism’
Found via BoingBoing: In the Huffington Post, Lawrence Lessig reviews novelist Mark Helprin’s new non-fiction book, Digital Barbarism. Helprin posted an editorial in the New York Times in 2007, calling for perpetual copyright, and was roundly denounced by contributors to Lessig’s wiki. As Cory Doctorow writes on BoingBoing, “The essay was so ham-fisted and odd that a lot of people assumed that it was a joke,” and judging from Lessig’s review the book suffers from the same problem, only more so.
Lessig proceeds to demolish Digital Barbarism at great length, in terms of both argument and writing style. He points out that Helprin apparently did not research his book at all beyond reading blogs and the Internet, and makes a number of errors and fallacies that stem from this lack of research.
The review makes for interesting reading, especially if you have an interest in copyright term lengths.
May 21st, 2009 at 2:43 pm
Thank you, Chris, for this link and your comments. Lessig’s long book review is captivating reading. It’s the most crushing critique I’ve read since Mark Twain’s hilarious essay: Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses.
Helprin and Lessig are just about at opposite ends of the argument about copyright laws.
Here is an excerpt from Lessig’s review:
It would be interesting to get these two authors together at the same time, in a live debate about this issue of copyrights.
May 21st, 2009 at 2:58 pm
Interesting in the Chinese sense?
Make sure there are no throwable objects in the vicinity? 