From NYTimes to Wiki in Record Time

by biverson | May 20, 2007 at 06:55 pm

262 views | 0 Recommendations | 0 comments

I was visiting New York this weekend, so I was out and around and didn't spend a couple of hours reading the NYTimes, so I glanced at Mark Helprin's Op-Ed called A Great Idea Lives Forever. Shouldn't Its Copyright? but didn't go over it, nor did I blog about it.

The statement that stuck in my mind was about how an author's family would seem to starve or something when copyright ran out. What Helprin says is:

Were I tomorrow to write the great American novel (again?), 70 years after my death the rights to it, though taxed at inheritance, would be stripped from my children and grandchildren.

I don't go for the argument, because the heirs have plenty of recompense from the idea in the 70 years. When I got home from NYC, I found the reaction to the piece has been quicker than I expected across web and blogosphere.

Slashdot had postings about reaction to the piece, including that a deconstruction of Helprin's argument is online on Larry Lessig's wiki. So, an Op-Ed that runs on Sunday morning generates a Wiki page by Sunday night on a topic that lots of people might have thought was dry and pedantic.

That is food for thought for copyrighters and copylefters.