Helprin's simply wrong in a simple way.

[elfs]

The New York Times handed Mark Helprin, a writer whose fiction work I usually admire, centerpage on their op-ed Sunday, and Helprin used the opportunity to demand perpetual copyright from his legislators. Helprin writes,

Once the state has dipped its enormous beak into the stream of your wealth and possessions they are allowed to flow from one generation to the next. Though they may be divided and diminished by inflation, imperfect investment, a proliferation of descendants and the government taking its share, they are not simply expropriated.

Helprin then goes on to rail against bookstores for selling works in the public domain because the money given to the bookstore goes not to the families of the writers, but to the publishers who bothered to put their works into print again.

Helprin's idea seems rooted in a strange idea: material is eternal. He says that families can go on to create more wealth with the land and other properties left behind by the deceased. But this idea is fundamentally incorrect: families can't do that without upkeep and maintenance of the property or land. Fallow properties may be potentially useful, but without stewardship they are simply wasted.

A great idea requires no upkeep or maintenance; it survives forever because it has moved from non-existence to an active and shared residence in the minds of those who have encountered it. The estates of Dickens, Swift, Poe, and even Tolkien have done far less to preserve and proliferate their literary than their millions of fans, who have amplified, honored, and sometimes internally policed the fanbase to keep it true to the original intent.

Helprin seems to live in a universe where someday a novel of his will arise so compelling that six generations down the line it will still speak with such force that his descendants will be able to profit from it. Very few novels make it there. Most books descend into irrelevance, and a fitful few survive because small fanbases keep their candles alive. The creative tradition is not one passed from father to son: unlike the skills needed to manage a farm, a factory, or a funhouse, one cannot transmit creativity, one can only give the skills and encourage a love for the craft. The probability that some fifth-generation family member is the only appropriate intellectual advocate of a writer's work is vanishingly small.

Helprin's proposal would lock away even those ideas for eternity and punish our admiration for writers. It would make the rediscovery of great original thinkers like H.P. Lovecraft or Alexander Herzen impossible. It would drive the wedge between the truly admirable few and the pulp many even deeper. When Jefferson and the Founding Fathers laid the groundwork for the copyright and patent system in this country he was mindful of this difference between real property and the creations of the mind, of the ever-diminishing power of the former and the irrepressible force of the latter set free.

Comments

[dossy.livejournal.com]

Longer copyrights will mean even more copyright infringement. Which, presumably, will translate into more litigation. Which will yield the copyright holders more wealth.

That is not the spirit behind copyright protection. Sigh.

[kenshardik]

My first thought was to the Spider Robinson story Melancholy Elephants which is one of my favorites.

Modern copyright laws are ridiculous. Why should an artist's progeny profit off of work that they didn't produce? They profited off of it while the artist was alive - the food they ate, the clothes on their backs, etc.

I hate the way that copyright law ruins plays, TV shows, and movies. How many times have you gone to a birthday party, the cake is wheeled out, and everyone sings, "For He's A Jolly Good Fellow"? You'd think it was commonplace from the TV shows and movies where they didn't want to pay to be able to use Happy Birthday to You which is protected by copyright until 2030! What the hell?!?

[sirfox.livejournal.com]

Oddly enough, in one of Spider's columns for a Canadian newspaper, he also argued the opposite side. I'll hafta dig it up and see how it compares to the article Elf cited.

[dossy.livejournal.com]

Speaking of copyright protection being ridiculously long:

[trinsf.livejournal.com]

Yeah....I dearly love Helprin's writing, and one of his books is probably my *favorite* novel of all time -- but ever since I found our he paid the bills as a speech writer for Reagan and is of that political ilk, it's made me a bit queasy. Had I known before what he politics were, I wouldn't have read him, because I'm that kind of 2nd gen feminist.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

I have mixed reactions to Helprin in much the same way I have uncomfortable reactions to reading DeLillo. A Soldier in the Great War was wonderful beyond words, Memoirs from an Antproof Case was great, Winter's Tale started beautifully and tanked early, and somehow I ended up really disliking Freddy and Fredericka.

I get the sense that a youthful edge has given way to mature assholiness within Mr. Helprin.

[lovingboth]

.. and in a universe where it's ok for him and his to benefit from this, but not the descendants of the long-dead people he stole various ideas from.

[kengr]

I've known Helperin had a weird take on reality ever since I was one of the folks corresponding with him about the potential problems with his ideas about widespread usage of a "perfect" lie detector (which eventually became "The Truth Machine".

He just plain doesn't get ideas such as "I can be hurt if people know true things about me, even if those things aren't illegal"

So I'm not terribly surprised to find out he's weird about other stuff as well.