I read Mark Helprin's awful, sad opinion piece in favor of eternal copyright this Sunday. It gave me a pleasant dose of mocking-based laughter for the minute required to read the thing. Some asides occurred to me along the way - is it funny that he steals from Mark Twain without mentioning him? and that he claims to have written the Great American Novel? Ultimately it just wasn't that interesting.
Larry Lessig and others are wiki-fying a response. But it does feel a bit like debating a creationist. Perhaps Helprin's whine is simply better off forgotten, Stephen Downes notes.
What do you think of the new Copyright Alliance?
Posted by: peter naegele | May 25, 2007 at 11:33
Seems like another thick IP lobbying group.
Unsurprising that they don't mention fair use.
The part about being nonpartisan is certainly true. As Lessig and others have observed, copyright doesn't map onto the traditional left-right, liberal-conservative spectrum. Which is one reason it's been hard to get political traction on the topic for legislation.
Dang, that's a Flash-heavy site.
Posted by: Bryan Alexander | June 03, 2007 at 09:31