I know some people think the Galambosian described and ridiculed in Jerome Tuccille’s It Usually Begins with Ayn Rand [recounted here; see also discussion here, here, and here] is fictional; likewise incredible are the more extreme advocates of intellectual property (discussed here), among them Spooner, Galambos, Ayn Rand, and Neil Schulman. As I noted in my longer IP article, most IP advocates favor finite terms for patent and copyright, but this reveals an arbitrariness and a tension in their advocacy of this as a property right. To avoid this arbitrariness the IP advocate ought to be in favor of perpetual (infinite) copyright and patent terms. Most don’t, however, for practical reasons.
Enter Claremontista Mark Helprin, who argues for infinite copyright terms in A Great Idea Lives Forever. Shouldn’t Its Copyright?. So Claremontistas are not only terrible on Lincoln, they’re bad on intellectual property too. (See this wiki criticism of Helprin’s nutty idea.)
This was called to my attention by a correspondent who wrote:
If you thought that Huffington blog entry on restricting home-schooling was bad [note: this post one of the most evil, utterly monstrous pieces of filth I have ever read; it’s why I utterly despise the left. --SK], wait ‘til you get a load of [Helprin’s piece]: He wants to extend copyright to . . . well, infinity and beyond!
Helprin, incidentally, is a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute, a super-hawk think tank... and occasional Mises Institute nemesis.
