Patry Copyright Blog Closed 129
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."
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.
Re:Can't millions of us *BUY* some politicians? (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:Can't millions of us *BUY* some politicians? (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?
Re:Letter of the Law (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.
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.