No one should have had to write Digital Barbarism. It’s common sense that copyright laws are important: They protect the creators of art against theft, making it possible for writers, composers, filmmakers, and countless others to pursue their callings full-time. Without copyright protection, we could only enjoy works produced for free — by hobbyists, the very rich, those supported by charity, and those dedicated enough to starve for their crafts. Not to mention the obvious immorality of taking a work that someone labored to create, without permission and without payment, and not to mention that the Constitution explicitly encourages Congress to protect copyright.
But someone did need to write this book, because today there is a war on copyright. The music industry fought the opening battle against Napster (a web site full of copyrighted music available for free download) in the late 1990s. Napster lost, but infringers still won: Better piracy software soon came out, making it possible for users to download files from each other, rather than from a central website. Since then, the problem has spread to movies and books.
The surprising part isn’t that people like to take things without paying for them, but that they think they’re morally entitled to do so. An army of activists, ranging from bratty teenagers to tenured academics, has made the case that copyright itself is outdated or flat-out counterproductive. Some economists have even claimed (ridiculously) that piracy doesn’t hurt sales.
Digital Barbarism: A Writer’s Manifesto charges fiercely into some of this war’s meanest fights, and the author, Mark Helprin, principally a novelist, is a terrific writer. He explains the history of copyright, offers interesting (if not always strictly relevant) anecdotes from his personal life, and bats down many of the anti-copyright mob’s arguments — even the silly ones he finds in Internet comment sections.
However, the book will not make a good gift for your favorite downloader, because Helprin does not offer (and to be fair, does not claim to offer) a clear, calm, comprehensive defense of copyright law’s status quo. Instead, he goes on the offensive, arguing that copyright protection should extend even further than it does now (70 years after an author’s death); viciously attacks groups of innocent people; and often comes across as a cranky old man blind to the good that has come from the digital revolution. Basically, Mark Helprin should write books, and someone should have written
Digital Barbarism, but Mark Helprin should not have written
Digital Barbarism.
The book
began as
an article for the New York Times, in which Helprin made his point regarding the 70-year law. Helprin’s case, outlined again in his book, is an interesting conversation starter — but it’s not really suited for changing minds in the current debate.
Helprin is on strong ground logically. He points out that if someone spends his life building a business, he can leave it to his heirs, who pay any required inheritance tax and go merrily on their way. If someone spends his life creating books or songs, however, the government simply makes those assets worthless after 70 years. It’s certainly unfair, at least insofar as it can be unfair to inherit less money than one might have otherwise.
This is an odd way to defend copyright in 2009, though, for several reasons. For starters, in terms of strengthening copyright (as opposed to fighting the weakening of it), the issue today isn’t so much policy
as enforcement. New releases are pirated almost immediately, and from
time to
time,
unreleased material even hits the Internet. Royalties 70-plus years down the road pale in the face of such flagrant, rampant violations. And very,
very few copyrights are worth anything after the better part of a century anyway.
It also helps to remember that the Constitution defined the purpose of patents and copyright as, “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts.” In that regard, what good is done by further delaying expiration? Will someone write the Great American Novel if his great-grandchildren will receive royalties, but not if only his grandchildren will?
More problematic are Helprin’s mean-spirited attacks on groups of people whose tastes he doesn’t share. He likens the
enjoyment of violent video games to mental illness. He slams anyone who reads a thriller, even just for a plane ride. And here’s possibly the worst passage in the whole book:
[Modern digital culture] produces mouth-breathing morons in backwards baseball caps and pants that fall down; Slurpee-sucking geeks who seldom see daylight; pretentious and earnest hipsters who want you to wear bamboo socks so the world won’t end; women who have lizard tattoos winding from the navel to the nape of the neck; beer-drinking dufuses who pay to watch noisy cars driving around in a circle for eight hours at a stretch; and an entire race of females, now entering middle age, that speaks in North American Chipmunk and seldom makes a statement without, like, a question mark at the end?
It’s fine for a novelist to hate everyone, but it’s best not to let such sentiments slip into a work (presumably) meant to persuade us dufuses and morons.
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