Comments on: Helprin has got a point after all

By: John Holbo

John Holbo — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 01:19:24 +0000

Hey Bianca, yes Lessig does make the same point. in writing the post I didn’t remember that he actually makes the exact same five-year plan joke, otherwise I would have credited him properly in the post. Either I was half-remembering or it’s just such an obvious joke in this connection that I reinvented it. Either way: it’s Lessig’s joke. He got it into print first!

Thanks for the kind words, Lemuel, glad you like S&O. It will exist in paper form soon. I’m going to bookify itself myself if I can’t find a publisher. (Yes, I’m not sure how old you have to be to hear about regicide. Part of me thinks that bit doesn’t fit with the rest, which is pretty relentlessly gentle.)

Steven Atwell: “I have to say that I now feel the temptation to go print fifty copies of his book and sell them on the street corner for a dollar, and then scream at the cops when they come to arrest me that they’re violating my rights to freedom of enterprise, and that copyright is a commie plot to fluoridate the water.”

Just so long as you sell the books in time-lock boxes, only set to open in 2070 or whenever the current term expires, Steven. (We don’t want to ruin the joke by not letting the author himself get royalties. We just want to deprive his grandkids, by the terms of his own proposal, for the sake of poetic justice.)

By: bianca steele

bianca steele — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 22:26:29 +0000

And I agree, the anecdote about the Iowa corn is stupid, stupid, stupid (IMHO, anyway). But I think it’s probably made up, and moreover probably “borrowed” from Rousseau’s obviously made up anecdote about stealing fruit from a gated orchard.

By: bianca steele

bianca steele — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 22:20:52 +0000

I noticed the quote on Lessig’s blog about “five year plans” and all that, though I’m not sure if John means to allude to it. My take is that there may have been a kind of mashing together of somewhat recent discussions about how you should plan software projects (which actually includes the question of whether planning is even possible, and which is actually pretty interesting, though complex) with twenty-year-old debates about whether there is and ought to be an indelible animosity between people who work for commercial firms and people who work on or use or support open source. There might also be a kind of mashing together of rhetoric about the “netroots” with the way people think of open source, but I don’t know that much about it and can’t really say much about it.

By: lemuel pitkin

lemuel pitkin — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 17:50:29 +0000

But first, ask yourself: wouldn’t you rather be reading Squid and Owl?

Why yes. Yes I would.

…

… hey, that’s really good! Does this thing exist, or will it, in physical form? I might be persuaded to pay money for it. My only quibble is with the deaths of president and queen. Couldn’t read those bits to kids.

By: Jerry

Jerry — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 17:22:00 +0000

I should say that in the previous post, the “argument” I refer to is the one John makes in the OP. Not Helprin’s argument, which stinks.

By: Jerry

Jerry — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 17:21:13 +0000

It may not be a good legal argument, but it’s not too bad as a logical one. I note with some dismay that Helprin’s editorials read like his fiction writing: big on long words strung together to elucidate some putatively noble principles, but actually mostly empty of content.

By: StevenAttewell

StevenAttewell — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 16:50:50 +0000

Quality snark. I have to say that I now feel the temptation to go print fifty copies of his book and sell them on the street corner for a dollar, and then scream at the cops when they come to arrest me that they’re violating my rights to freedom of enterprise, and that copyright is a commie plot to fluoridate the water.

By: Seth Gordon

Seth Gordon — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 14:26:06 +0000

Isn’t this basically Nozick’s “Demoktesis” from Anarchy, State, and Utopia?

By: RWB

RWB — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 10:41:05 +0000

I like Helprin’s novels. I’ve read Memoirs from Antproof Case and A Soldier of the Great War. I have Winter’s Tale on my “to read” shelf—some say it’s his best.

150 years from now, if people still read novels, no one will pay Mark Helprin’s descendants for reproduction rights for these novels. No one. His descendants will have to earn their living doing work or something. If Helprin is interested in any sort of literary immortality, he better allow his books go into the public domain at some point.

By: Tracy W

Tracy W — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 09:58:43 +0000

Brillantly done. :)