Chris Timmons: This digital barbarian will balance freedom and honor
You might want to take a moment to read this piece by our friend and guest blogger Chris Timmons, which ran in the Orlando Sentinel last weekend. Chris is young, smart and really knows how to turn a phrase (but I’ve got to ask him for a bigger picture, sorry Chris). Here Chris sees some troubling trends on the internet from a uniquely conservative perspective:
Mark Helprin has a beef, and it’s with me — or my generation.
Helprin’s new book, Digital Barbarism, at first blush, seems to be an overheated, high-watt diatribe against the computer geeks at Google who have given us the digital age. These geeks, in concert with a nonprofit corporation called Creative Commons, want to eliminate copyright protections for written works (after the holder is gone) and have them available for free on the Web for the public good.
This seems innocent enough, yet, like many a great writer, Helprin sees its dangers.
Helprin understands that copyright has more importance than its technical aspects. He relates in his book that copyright, because of the scale of what it protects, is an essential part of the cultural garment. Continue reading…
Add comment October 20th, 2009
