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Patry Copyright Blog Closed
Posted by
kdawson
on Tue Aug 05, 2008 11:43 PM
from the pecked-to-death-by-ducks dept.
from the pecked-to-death-by-ducks dept.
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "William Patry, noted copyright expert and Google's top copyright lawyer, has decided to close his personal blog. (For no reason that he has explained, the archives are gone too.) Ordinarily, that wouldn't be very newsworthy, but that little blog has made a lot of news, outing the ACTA treaty and discussing lots of other important pending legislation. Mr. Patry gives two reasons for the closure: his personal views were being attributed to Google, and the current trends in copyright law are too depressing. Though I am not the only one to have done so, as someone who has contributed to that misunderstanding by listing his credentials without a disclaimer, I would like to publicly apologize to him. Unfortunately, there's nothing I can do to reverse the depressing trends in copyright law that I'm not doing already."
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PRO-IP Act Passes Judiciary Committee 185 comments
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "The Pro-IP Act has passed the Judiciary Committee unanimously, thanks to the support of committee chairman Rep. John Conyers (D-MI). We've discussed this before — it's the same bill which would create copyright cops with the power to seize computers, when powers like that have been systematically abused in other areas. But, apparently, they think the bill is just wonderful now, simply because they cut the provision that would've increased statutory damages while keeping the rest. This is the same bill that William Patry called the 'most outrageously gluttonous IP bill ever introduced in the US.'"
While we're on the subject of intellectual property, Canadian law professor Michael Geist gave a talk on Monday about "copyright myths."
[+]
Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement 390 comments
SpaceAdmiral writes "The Canadian government is secretly negotiating to join the US and the EU in an Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. The agreement would give border guards the power to search iPods and cellphones for illegal downloads, as well as to force ISPs to hand over customer information without a warrant. David Fewer, staff counsel at the University of Ottawa's Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic, characterizes ACTA this way: 'If Hollywood could order intellectual property laws for Christmas what would they look like? This is pretty close.'"
Submission: Patry Copyright Blog Closed by Anonymous Coward
[+]
O'Reilly On How Copyright Got To Its Current State 177 comments
Schneed Tweedly writes "William Patry is one of the leading scholars in the world on copyright law. For a long time he maintained a blog, "Patry on Copyright," that discussed new cases as they came out. A few days ago, though, he shut down his blog because 'the Current State of Copyright Law is too depressing.' O'Reilly has a long post up on their news site discussing Patry's retirement from blogging and giving a history of copyright that explains how we got where we are."
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Self-censorship? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Self-censorship? (Score:4, Insightful)
Postel's Law: be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others. A good networking rule to follow whether or not you're a computer scientist.
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Re:Self-censorship? (Score:5, Funny)
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Backwards and upside-down (Score:5, Funny)
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
It's sort of like the drains going the opposite way and Summer being cold, right?
I just had a mental image of a bunch of republicans holding hands and dancing in circles.
Re:Backwards and upside-down (Score:4, Funny)
I always picture them doing that anyway. In the backrooms of the Whitehouse. At midnight. In Robes. Around a pentagram.
You mean they don't?
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Re: (Score:2)
Really? I thought Summer was still hot in Australia.
Bearing in mind that Summer runs from December through March in Australia, rather than from June through September like it does in the Northern Hemisphere.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Backwards and upside-down (Score:4, Informative)
The Liberal Party is conservative on economic issues but liberal on social issues.
You have that back to front. The Libs are "Liberal" in their economic policies (ie: pro-free-market, free trade, anti-union, etc).
They _are_ conservative in their social policies, but I'm pretty sure that (originally, at least) has more to do with the type of people their primary beliefs attract, rather than any specific attempt at being so.
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Re:Backwards and upside-down (Score:4, Funny)
You have that back to front.
Duh. He said he was in Australia!
/ducks
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Re: (Score:2, Offtopic)
I think you'll find our conservative parties are called "Liberal", "Labour" and "Family First". In the US, they are called "Republican" and "Democrat". There are progressive political parties, but they haven't been nearly as successful in appealing to voters and their fear and self-interest.
Re:Self-censorship? (Score:4, Informative)
Two seconds of Googling:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Labor_Party#Etymology [wikipedia.org]
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Re:Self-censorship? (Score:4, Informative)
That's normal in politics. In Soviet Russia (don't even think it) the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was popularly known as "Four words, four lies."
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Self-censorship? (Score:4, Funny)
As a European who has seen Fox News I think Liberal means believing Stalin was The MAN! and Conservative means being persecuted for driving.
*shrugs*
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I see adjective and noun... but no verb form.
"Why don't you just liberal yourself man!"
"I was walking down the hallway and all of a sudden I liberalled right in front of her. I've never been so embarrassed!"
"I liberal; therefore I am."
??
Not really. (Score:5, Interesting)
I do a number of things related to copyright law. IMHO, Patry's blog was one of the greatest free Web resources for anything interested in following copyright.
If you read the comments on Patry's closing blog entry, you'll find a number of names you'd recognize if you follow copyright law at all- almost a who's who of the copyright world. And most of them, while they wish he would continue, completely agree with his reasons for leaving, including his second premise. Copyright law has gotten depressing, and it does bring the crazies out. And he's not the first person who works in copyright law that I've heard say pretty much the same thing.
It's not like he's leaving the copyright world- he is still the author of the definitive legal treatise on copyright, and he's still a copyright attorney.
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Seconded (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm no lawyer, but I know a little about law anyhow. Mr. Patry is one of the heavyweight scholars of copyright law, not some random nobody on Slashdot like me.
His blog was very important. Like TFS says, it broke the news on the ACTA treaty, which would still be secret if not for him. Lawyers read his books to learn about copyright law. His blog was incredibly useful to find out all the latest happenings in copyright law, which is only getting crazier now that it's being rewritten to appease Disney and to try to deal with the internet, which most politicians don't understand on a deeper level than "it's not a big truck, it's a series of tubes."
So losing him is a big deal and it sucks. There simply aren't many people who could ever hope to replace him. Groklaw, Ars Technica and NYCL are all great, don't get me wrong.
But they simply lack the authority someone like Mr. Patry can bring to the table. He will be missed.
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Might Wanna Put Some Ice On That (Score:3, Insightful)
Mr. Patry gives two reasons for the closure: his personal views were being attributed to Google, and the current trends in copyright law are too depressing .
The first reason is probably valid, and Patry is correct in wanting to clearly differentiate his views from Google's. (While most people would just slap "The views expressed here are my own and do not represent my employer's ..." boilerplate on their blog and call it a day, its a free Intertubes.)
The second reason reads more like pure frustration and petulance than anything else. His pulling the archived material is likely a part of this martyrdom.
I do wish that Mr. Patry would come on down off that cross - we need the wood.
Re:Might Wanna Put Some Ice On That (Score:5, Informative)
He also said
On top of this there are the crazies, whom it is impossible to reason with, who do not have a life of their own and so insist on ruining the lives of others, and preferably as many as possible. I asked myself last week after having to deal with the craziest of the crazies yet, "why subject yourself to this?" I could come up with no reason why I should: My grandfather chose to be a psychiatrist, but I chose a different professional path, one that doesn't obligate me to put up with such nonsense.
Funny how slashdot misses that part out.
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Re:Might Wanna Put Some Ice On That (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd hardly call it petulance, although working with copyright today is incredibly frustrating. I wouldn't call him a martyr. Read the comments on that entry.
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Can't millions of us *BUY* some politicians? (Score:5, Insightful)
This whole copyright business is depressing alright, mainly because those who are allegedly "our" politicians are working against us as a result of corporate $$$-based lobbying, which would be known as bribery in more enlightened societies.
Well fine, if that's how the system works then why don't *WE* bribe our politicians too? Dozens of millions of citizens are affected by this media-led crap, hundreds of millions of people worldwide, so surely we can afford the bribes?
It shouldn't be necessary to bribe those who in theory should be representing us, but if that's the only way to make them work for the people, then we should do it. If we don't, then the next step will be to employ contract hit men to make the politicians "see sense", and that's not a step to be taken lightly. But bribery appears to be acceptable in current society. So how about it?
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
I don't understand why you've been moded Offtopic because you are clearly Ontopic. It's common knowledge that our politicians are bribed by all manner of corporations, and corporations certainly don't have our best interests at heart.
I would love to see communities, counties or even whole states banding together to raise money for bribery of "their" representatives in congress.
And it's probably way too soon to be talking about assassination.
Re: (Score:2)
Clearly.
Well, I guess there is room to interpret him as off-topic if you don't take the popular heresay about politicians as fact, but it's such a tiny loophole, and nobody really goes against the groupthink... right? Right?
Re:Can't millions of us *BUY* some politicians? (Score:5, Insightful)
We don't have to bribe our politicians because they are our employees. We pay their salary with our tax money. We, the citizens, are supposed to "bribe" them with their jobs. If they want to keep their job, they protect our rights and look out for our interests.
The sad fact of the matter is, if enough people actually cared enough to implement a plan like yours, we wouldn't need it anyway because scumbag politicians would rarely get elected in the first place. As the saying goes, we're getting the democracy we deserve.
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Letter of the Law (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
In many places, judges are 'redefining' marriage from Husband & Wife, to Partner A & Partner B. If you just felt a knee-jerk reaction on this one, take a second to think about it. If you really cared about homosexual marriage, then you should go about it in the correct manner.
The thing is, most such laws originally on the books don't explicitly specify man and woman to begin with - note the bazillion local movements to pass new laws that do explicitly specify one man and one woman. Those new laws would not be necessary if the original laws had been explicit to begin with.
Re: (Score:2)
Are you a lawyer?
I suppose a lawyer might argue that it's ok to censor a blog because it's on the internet, and your right to free speech (written in the 18th century) doesn't 'explicitly' say internet. But the 'spirit of the law' is that the government may not abridge your free speech whether it be on a soap box, newspaper, radio, tv, internet blog, or any future method. It is not possible to be infinitely 'explicit'.
Dude, you are insane. seriously. First you argue that we shouldn't change laws that don't exist. Then you claim we shouldn't change the spirit of the law. Except your analogy is seriously flawed because ALL of the court rulings for gay marriage have been based on actual laws that say no discrimination based on gender. Its only now that people have started to realize the full scope of those laws.
Let's be reasonable, civilizations worldwide haven't had a problem with the definition for thousands of years, but you do? Just how 'explicit' would you require it to be? Full color pictures of a penis entering a vagina with an internal camera to explicitly show conception?
Woah!! Did you just try to pull out the marriage is for procreation argument? Puhlease. History is against
Re: (Score:2)
Woah!! Did you just try to pull out the marriage is for procreation argument? Puhlease. History is against you on that one.
I guess it's just a coincidence (or crazy random happenstance - DrHorrible) that both marriage and procreation require a man and woman. What are the chances of that?
And I guess every young man wants nothing more than to make a commitment, for life, to one woman. It's just a natural feeling all young men have, and absolutely nothing to do with societal pressures to provide a stable home for children.
Dude, you are insane. seriously.
I'm certain one of is. :)
Re: (Score:2)
Richard Stallman's defense of the idea of 'free software' which stresses freedom of use, versus its 'redefining' as 'open source' which Microsoft appears to be all too comfortable with embracing to the 'Letter of the Law'.
Had Stallman not tried to redefine "free" in the first place, there wouldn't have been a problem. "Open Source" is not only a _vastly_ more accurate and relevant terminology, but also avoids the politics that Stallman tried to inject.
The 2cd Amendment right to bear arms in the 'Spirt
Re: (Score:2)
absolutely true...
--Jeffk++
Re: (Score:2)
1) He never claimed Stallman changed position. He's claiming Stallman's starting point was a redefinition of 'free'.
So, he was "claiming Stallman's starting point" was 'free as in beer' before he later "redefined it" to 'free as in freedom'?
2) That doesn't say self defence anywhere. In fact, it explicitly says "security of a free State," which is rather different. Not getting into rights or wrongs of gun control (I really couldn't give a toss), just sayin' you quoted something that doesn't actually back up your position.
Heh, I quoted the 2cd Amendment. But to give you the benefit of the doubt which of these best defines your position:
1) The security of a free State is ensured by hunting deer with guns.
2) The security of a free State is ensured by owning a large gun collection.
3) The security of a free State is ensured by defending oneself (with a gun) against those threatening you.
4) Ok, I can't
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
that depends. what are you going to ask for? abolition of copyright? (a popular theme here). And then when all of you are unemployed because the companies you work for no longer produce anything of value (increasingly US companies produce IP or goods that can be encoded digitally), are you then going to whine to the same politicians about why you are unemployed?
Real reason: conflict with Google (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think so. (Score:3, Insightful)
He's made it clear that Google, the company, is not directly involved with the closing of his blog. I've read and respect Patry enough to believe that if something along those cynical lines was the case, he'd pretty much say so.
That's it - I've had enough! (Score:3, Funny)
I'm sorry it had to come to this. And to all my readers: I WONT be back.
Not to worry (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Hmmm strange, I had read he had it removed from the Internet Archive as well??
( http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20080803135012312 [groklaw.net] but it only refers to "archives", probably I wrongly made the association with archive.org)
(Although here he says he will think about reinstating the archives again: https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=15479871&postID=4348431689288397027&pli=1 [blogger.com])
This sucks. (Score:2, Informative)
Fortunately the Wayback Machine is on the case
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://williampatry.blogspot.com [archive.org]
Sounds like... (Score:4, Funny)
Why are IP laws getting stricter? (Score:4, Interesting)
I wish someone could explain how it is that countries everywhere are moving towards stricter and stricter IP laws when at this level there is plenty of evidence that they are having a deleterious economic impact. Even in countries in Europe where campaign contributions are not influential as in the USA. It seems that left wing politicians who supposedly abhor big business are just as pro IP as everyone else.
It also seems that whatever level of IP protection exists its never enough. Recently the EU considered extending copyright term lengths from 50 to 95 years. http://www.dmwmedia.com/news/2008/07/17/eu-proposes-extending-copyright-term-length-95-years [dmwmedia.com]
If anyone has some insight I would appreciate it.
Re:Why are IP laws getting stricter? (Score:4, Insightful)
This is going to end up, (already ending up really) like prohibition in the 1930, where certain narrow interests managed to get laws in place that the silent majority refused to follow.
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Re: (Score:2)
I just find it odd how many Slashdotters put high values on things that the real majority of people either don't care about or don't know about. What the odd part of it is isn't really the value they attribute to it but rather the idea that they think that our little community's interests somehow spread out far beyond these
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It seems that left wing politicians who supposedly abhor big business are just as pro IP as everyone else.
Ding-ding-ding! We have a winner!
Are you going to vote for a Republican, or a Democrat? Also, would you prefer to be raped anally, or in the butt?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, let's clarify: It's Western nations that are moving toward stricter and stricter IP laws.
Why? Because we can't compete with cheap labor from other countries, at least not while maintaining anything near the standard of living we're accustomed to. For better or worse, we didn't really try to (though likely couldn't even if we did); we were content to let those "old economy" jobs go away
ACTA can be killed (Score:2)
ACTA can be killed in no time.
Re: (Score:2)
Then ... don't click! No one makes you do it.
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+1, Insightful.
If I only had mod points...
Re:I believe him. (Score:5, Informative)
Patry has made it clear that he did not receive pressure from Google to close his blog.
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