Legal Commentary

Fiction as policy in the New York Times (the book version)

By Lawrence Lessig

Looks like novelist Mark Helprin is back. You might remember that in 1997, Helprin published an oped in the New York Times praising, as Peter Jaszi put it, perpetual copyright terms "on the installment plan." (Helprin insists he doesn't support perpetual terms; he just likes extending terms now to assure that grandchildren get the benefit of an authors work.) At the time, I invited the lessig-wiki community to pen a response. And amazing even to me, an extraordinary response they penned.

NPR retells the story today because apparently Helprin has a book which will be released on the 28th -- "Digital Barbarism: A Writer's Manifesto." (Note: if you buy Helprin's book from that link, Creative Commons will get the money.) The NPR page includes an interview with me (in my flu-ridden, 102 degree fever state, I'm terrified to listen to it again). But I am eager to read the book, and even more eager to read the review on the wiki.

Full post as published by Lessig Blog on April 27, 2009 (boomark / email).