Helprin defends Digital Barbarism.

For sheer audacious ballsacity alone, Helprin's screed should have been a wonderful read, a well-argued polemic from an excellent novelist. Instead, we get... this. (various quotes) To which the only sensible response is, "Please, God, make it stop." But it doesn't stop. For more than 200 pages, novelist and sometime New Yorker writer Mark Helprin churns out a truly astonishing pastiche of the pretentious and the profane, not bothering to address hundreds of thoughtful writers, but content to lambast (over and over and over again, in some horrible parody of Neitzschean "eternal return") anonymous commenters on blogs.

In 2007, [Helprin] published an essay in the Op-Ed section of this newspaper arguing for the continuing extension of copyright, so that the rights to a novel or poem could be passed down not only to the author’s children, but to his children’s children’s children as well. Since a more latitudinarian copyright regime is a cause célèbre for a certain class of Internetista, his argument ignited a storm of criticism, and the comments appended to the online version of the article ran into the hundreds of thousands. And since this was, after all, the Internet, most of them were stupid.

Helprin could have ignored the barrage; he could have sifted it for arguments worth replying to. Instead, he decided to write a furious treatise against the comment-happy horde. The resulting book, “Digital Barbarism: A Writer’s Manifesto,” is a vindication of the aphorism about the perils of wrestling with a pig. (You get dirty; the pig likes it.) Helprin can be a wonderful wordsmith, and there are many admirable passages and strong arguments in this book. But the thread that binds the work together is hectoring, pompous and enormously tedious.

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. . . .

Copyright infringement is everywhere, and anti-copyright beliefs are growing, so despite the book’s flaws, Mark Helprin deserves credit for writing Digital Barbarism. It is a useful and often entertaining read. Unfortunately, though, it is unlikely to persuade non-believers — so the world still waits for the definitive defense of copyright.

The structure of his book is sprinkles of promises to make an argument, mixed with the most self-indulgent reflections upon his own life. And when Helprin actually gets around to argument, the arguments are a series of questions. ... Helprin's argument (to the extent there is one in these 232 pages) begins with an objection similar to the objection I've launched against him: his critics, Helprin insists, didn't read his op-ed carefully. ...
Mark Helprin has demonstrated no understanding in this book.