If you are going to troll the Internet for images of or information about someone’s genitals, you might want to do it from someplace other than the university where you work... especially when the proprietor of the site where you land is a big fan of your colleague’s writing.

I’m not sure I’ve ever been more offended by a Google search.

It's understandable that Newton is, at first blush, upset, but are there really guys (or lesbians) out there who think they can just call up pictures of some woman's cooch on demand? That implies, first, an unusually specific type of physical lust. Not just for a naked body, or chest, or for a backside, but for the vag specifically.

But, fine, whatever, there are people out there with all sorts of kinks. But do any of them really have such a bold faith in the power of the internet — a network that any self-respecting perv knows like the palm of his hand — that they think they can just type in someone's name + "pussy" and actually get a picture of exactly that?

Alternate theory: Maybe the offense-giving prof was simply looking for a memorable post in which the lady writer's name was mentioned, for some reason, along with the word "pussy," which is, as keywords go, reasonably rare and especially memorable. The woman writer might have, for example, used a juicy (sorry) quote involving the term in a high-profile piece of writing.

Or maybe not! Perhaps the search was unambiguously offensive. Only Newton has all the clues, and she's being discreet. But everyone else should be installing Google Analytics on their Tumblrs or whatever, because they'll then probably have fuel for at least one outraged Google-search-terms post by Labor Day.

[Maud Newton]

(Photo via MaudNewton.com)

So is Helprin's argument sound?
No, not really. Slippery, but not sound.

Not even from a legal standpoint?
The Constitution authorizes Congress to give authors and artists exclusive rights to their work "for limited Times." Limited is by definition not perpetual But then, as my high school government teacher was fond of observing, "The Constitution says whatever the Supreme Court says it says." I wouldn't put it past the current court to rule that "limited Times" means anything short of infinity.

How about from a moral one?
Let's stay focused on the law for a minute.

But shouldn't authors and their descendents have the right to royalties from their work?
Authors hold copyright for life plus 70 years, meaning that their heirs reap the benefits of exclusive rights for seven full decades after they die. But the purpose of exclusive rights like copyright and patent — both of which flow from the same twenty-seven words of the Constitution — is "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts," not to fund vacations for John Grisham's great-great-grandchildren.

What about Helprin's point that we're giving less privilege to a work of art than a commodity, which can be owned in perpetuity?
Copyright is not, constitutionally, a form of property. It's a government-granted monopoly on the right to reproduce a work. And if this sounds like a lot of Libertarian live-free-or-die mumbo jumbo, blame the Supreme Court — which speaks in terms of "the scope of the limited monopoly that should be granted to authors" — not me.

So this could be likened to a patent situation?
Again, copyright and patent laws flow from the same constitutional provision, so yes.


Doesn't the current system actually privilege publishers over writers or their descendents?
How so? Helprin wants Times subscribers to get all teary-eyed for the poor authors' progeny screwed by Barnes & Noble, but his public domain example is craftily disingenuous. Think about it: you can pick up a new copy of Huck Finn for ten bucks or seven bucks or three bucks — or you can read it for free online.

(Most people don't realize this, but the company that challenged the most recent copyright extension all the way to the Supreme Court, and lost, was a nonprofit electronic publisher that posts works in the public domain at no charge to readers.)

You want to talk about corporations riding to riches on the backs of authors and artists? Take a look at the copyright rules and terms for "works made for hire."

Out of curiosity, who owns your Gawker posts? You, or Nick Denton? [Denton does, but given the crap I churn out, he's welcome to it. - Ed.]

Sure, 70 years is a long time, but Saul Bellow's daughter is going to need some of that money to go to college.
Haha! Yeah, how old is she now, six? I guess she has sixty-some-odd years to work it like the Beckett and Joyce estates or get a job.

We all know the '98 copyright extensions were enacted to benefit Disney, yet you didn't see old Walt trying to track down the descendants of the Brothers Grimm to give them their fair share for Cinderella.

And there you have it. Screw you, Helprin! Nobody's going to be reprinting Memoir From An Antproof Case a hundred years from now anyway, so don't worry about it.

A Great Idea Lives Forever. Shouldn't Its Copyright? [NYT]
When "for limited Times" means forever? [Maud Newton]

Mr. Ford, who has never looked at a literary blog, said he wanted the judgment and filter that he believed a newspaper book editor could provide. "Newspapers, by having institutional backing, have a responsible relationship not only to their publisher but to their readership," Mr. Ford said, "in a way that some guy sitting in his basement in Terre Haute maybe doesn't."

"Every blogger wants to write a book," Dirda begins. Sure, who wouldn't! That's where the real money and glamor is! Oh, hilarious. No thanks! He continues:

In fact, the dirty little secret of the internet is "Littera scripta manet"—the written word survives. A book is real, whereas cyberspace is just keystrokes—quickly scribbled and quickly forgotten. But to publish a book isn't enough: It has to be noticed. And this is where book sections matter. If you were an author, would you want your book reviewed in The Washington Post and The New York Review of Books—or on a website written by someone who uses the moniker NovelGobbler or Biografiend? The book review section, whether of a newspaper or a magazine, remains the forum where new titles are taken seriously as works of art and argument, and not merely as opportunities for shallow grandstanding and overblown ranting, all too often by kids hoping to be noticed for their sass and vulgarity.

Are Book Reviewers Out Of Print? [NYT]

Even though the company dropped me like a creepy date when [expurgated], I feel a certain loss every time I see Hufty Mufty, Old Mother Mifflin, get passed around like some pimp's tired goods.

Houghton Mifflin Accepts $1.8 B Buyout [AP]

Along came in the '20s a bunch of near-illiterates, like F. Scott Fitzgerald, who couldn't spell. Max Perkins, his hack editor at Scribner, would help him turn his prose into recognizable English. Somehow in the world of hackdom it's got out that every writer needs a stern person as teacher behind him, who will tell him 'i before e except after c.' I've never known a good writer who needed an editor. Many of them have been destroyed by good editors. Luckily, no one knows how to edit anymore either, so I think that phase is over.

[The Reading Experience via Maud Newton]