Digital Barbarism: A Writer's Manifesto – A Rational Attack on Creative Commons and Defense of Copyright

“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.