Digital Barbarism

By: Mark Helprin

Narrated by: David Colacci

“A strange, wondrous, challenging, enriching book….Beautiful and powerful…you will not encounter another book like it.”

—National Review online

In Digital Barbarism, bestselling novelist Mark Helprin (Winter’s Tale, A Soldier of the Great War) offers a ringing Jeffersonian defense of private property in the age of digital culture, with its degradation of thought and language and collectivist bias against the rights of individual creators. A timely, cogent, and important attack on the popular Creative Commons movement, Digital Barbarism provides rational, witty, and supremely wise support for the individual voice and its hard-won legal protections.

©2009 Mark Helprin; (P)2009 HarperCollins Publishers

Grandpa rants about copyright

Vivid descriptions and colourful storytelling kept me listening despite my disagreement with the main argument.

Didn't like it

I was really looking forward to reading this book and hearing good arguments about Anti-Piracy, but thats nto what this book was about. It was more about why copyrights were important. In doing so thought it did not give a good impression on why Piracy was a real issue. The book spent a lot of time going over things that didn't seem to have anything to do with the argument at all. I'd say it felt like 75% of the book felt unnecessary.

Also the author stoops to the pirates level and does some name calling when reffering to them. I understand that he might have been a little hurt by all of the negative comments he had previously recieved in his articles, but it doesn't look good to me when your trying to take the moral high road, and still trying to insult others with immature name calling.

Self Indulgent Rubish

The auther fails to asemble any coherant arguments to support his position and reguarly falls into nonsensical rants that give the whole book a "get off my lawn" feel.

Sadly quite dissapointing

An writer makes his own case

This book is written with all of the brilliance in language and turn of phrase thak characterizes his fiction. Good thing, too, because as such it is an illustration of the improtance of supporting literary creativity. More than simply advancing his cause, he makes you think about where we are headed with the digital revolution. Now that I've read it, I'm going to get the book so I can slowly savor some of his brillaint insights.
Listen to your Grandpa, you might learn something.

Ranting, raving, and rambling

I purchased this book because I'm interested in learning more about the copyright debate. Who better than an author to argue the pro side? Almost anyone, apparently.

Though Helprin has some good points to make, they're hard to filter out from the stream of invective. In much of the book, he comes across as no better than the "mouth-breather" army of internet "ants" he decries. There are also significant chunks of the book that seem to have nothing to do with the topic, such as a long, rambling discussion of convergence, near the end. Helprin rarely uses one word when 10 will, with a few asides thrown in for good measure.

All in all, very disappointing. Seek elsewhere for a reasoned discussion of the pro-copyright argument.