Mark Helprin seeks that the government rent seek even further than Eldred v. Ashcroft already allows. There are so many reasons for my distaste for perpetual copyrights but I'll just put one in place for Mr. Helprin. If perpetual copyright exists how much will it cost to license an 800 year old copyright that has been subdivided on 16 occasions an average of 2.3 ways leading to 37 separate owners? Good luck quoting the great works in your future great work.

Any "right" that isn't natural suffers from all sorts of complications that require a state to intervene. Leaving the state wide open to create an "idead gentry" is wrong on many levels. Who do you think will be the patrons of the state? So much for freedom of thought and creation being balanced against the incentive to create.

I leave it to you the reader to realize how badly he misrepresents Jefferson. Jefferson was the founder who most thought that intellectual property laws were a dangerous infringement of natural rights. I don't fully agree with him on that, but I'm coming to more understand his concern as rights holders and Supreme Court Justices read the words "for limited Times" out of the Constitution.