“The Lessig posting is a wiki created by dozens of people. Ah, people creating without compensation. Imagine that. Then again, why would this site even know what a wiki is.” — one of our readers.

American writer Mark Helprin has a vigorous piece in the New York Times asking in principle why author’s copyrights are expropriated by the state for the public good. Expropriating all kinds of things might serve the public good, he observes, but most states respect and protect property — except intellectual property.

Stanford IP prof Lawrence Lessig blazes back at him here. They have time, these profs; Lessig’s piece must be five times the length of Helprin’s, an enormous assembly of every justification ever mooted for setting short terms on copyright. But to my eye it never deals with Helprin’s essential point.

Late Update: We should have noticed: it reads like that not because Professor Lessig has so much time, but because this is a collective work from a wiki maintained by people interested in Lessigian ideas.

Canada Council at fifty and doing a strategic plan for the next few years, invited stakeholder comments on a set of questions and issues.

Download it from www.50.canadacouncil.ca/en/consultation

Recent news via the grapevine.

“Simon & Schuster has changed its standard contract language in an
attempt to retain exclusive control of books even after they have
gone out of print. Until now, Simon & Schuster, like all other major
trade publishers, has followed the traditional practice in which
rights to a work revert to the author if the book falls out of print
or if its sales are low.

The publisher is signaling that it will no longer include minimum
sales requirements for a work to be considered in print. Simon &
Schuster is apparently seeking nothing less than an exclusive grant
of rights in perpetuity. Effectively, the publisher would co-own
your copyright.”

No spring election, but no sign of copyright legislation either. Course if there is legislation, this government’s narrowly political calculations may well it make a dog’s breakfast of concessions to interest groups on all sides (wow, the film industry’s campaign to criminalize camcording of movies sure makes noise!). So maybe we are just lucky.