Digital Barbarism

“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. In this forceful defense of civilization itself, Helprin dissects the modern assault on creative work and reveals: A Defense of Copyright: An unflinching argument for the legal protections that shield authors, artists, and innovators from the collectivist forces of the digital age. The Critique of Digital Barbarism: An incisive look at how the degradation of language and thought in our modern technological era threatens the foundations of culture. Property as Liberty: A reclamation of Jeffersonian principles, exploring why the right to private property—including intellectual property—is an indispensable pillar of freedom. The Case Against "Creative Commons": A rational and witty counter-argument to the popular movement that seeks to dismantle the hard-won rights of the individual creator.