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Patry Copyright Blog Closed
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."
Or a wannabe martyr?
There's no question that copyright issues are developing in a way that pushes more power to the top of the pyramid at the expense of the little guy.
And, like it or not Google is not that much smaller than the largest companies in the US. They need to protect their image as much as anyone. And, features such as the "Cached" link on their website (among many, many others) have copyright implications.
All this means there's really no reason for Google to take a risk with their reputation by having a "loose cannon" blogging about practices which could have direct implications for Google.
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avoiding advertisements is nice, but what would really get me to lay down some subscription money?... the ability to only read stories that don't mention the word "blog".
I can't be the only one who feels this way...
Obama is a twitter sock puppet
Unfortunately, there's nothing I can do to reverse the depressing trends in copyright law that I'm not doing already.
Sure there is. You've just gotta do what those on the other side of the issue do. Put some money together and invest it in buying some congressmen.
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.
No mod points, no meta-moderating/Firehose/all the other free work Slashdot wants me to do.
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?
Although I'm sure that Patry had an excellent Blog, the cynic in me thinks that there is only one real reason why the archives are now off line. This is probably fear that some of his earlier statements are now inconsistent with his high level legal position at Google. That is, he is concerned that an opponent might try to twist his words in the Blog against him.
I'm shutting down my blog about the finer points of the GNU GPL in protest of Mr. Patry's shutting down of his blog about copyright.
I'm sorry it had to come to this. And to all my readers: I WONT be back.
Just read it here. Thanks, Wayback Machine!
It's sort of like the drains going the opposite way and Summer being cold, right?
If you don't know what you're doing, you can't make mistakes.
I consider myself a cynic but I've gone a different path. I believe him, in the sense that there would be a serious difficulty for journalists to resist the temptation to not attribute anything he says to google.
Whilst I'm sure that as he points out that he is under no duress to close, I'll bet this blog and the constant misquoting the google position is enough to make things uncomfortable in his day job often enough.
I record my sleeptalking
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 your appology is not accepted.
Will you rethink your ideals or will you keep working to understand the reality?
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.
Being honest and calling it a bribe won't work because politicians lack an honest bone in their bodies. There is no lower lifeform.
But calling it "campaign contributions" might work though, since that's a term with a very long pedigree and, for some very odd reason, has respectability.
We shouldn't let 'fair use' be 'redefined' either, but you don't get to be a hypocrite. You have to consistently vote in officials that will respect laws, and not try to 'muscle' and 'redefine' them to your side's political position. That's not a government of the people, but a regime of a single party.
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.
I am really sorry to see the archives go. If he doesn't want to continue writing, the man has his reasons. But the archives were full of good material.
:)
Fortunately the Wayback Machine is on the case
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://williampatry.blogspot.com
... The patry's over. (I'm sorry)
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
If anyone has some insight I would appreciate it.
ACTA can be killed in no time.
The internet archive has his older blog posts archived here:
http://web.archive.org/web/*hh_/williampatry.blogspot.com/
Slashdot is used to ignoring trolls. Publishers hire PR people to harass others, it is annoying but not a good reason to quit. If you quit, all that's left to influence the public will be the crazies.
Twitter waited. The lights above him blinked and sparked out of the air. There were crazies on the internets. He didn't see them, but had expected them now for years. His warnings to Linus Torvalds were not listenend to and now it was too late. Far too late for now, anyway.
Twitter was a space cadet for fourteen years. When he was young he watched the flamewars on alt.fan.stallman and he said to dad "I want to be on the internets daddy."
Dad said "No! You will BE TROLL"
There was a time when he believed him. Then as he got oldered he stopped. But now in his parents basement he knew there were trolls.
"This is Torvalds" the radio crackered. "You must fight the trolls!"
So Twitter gotted his Iceweazel and posted "M$M$M$".
"HE GOING TO DISCREDIT US" said the paid shills.
"I will shoot at him" said Ballmer and he fired the cost of ownership surveys. Twitter flaemed at him and tried to blew him up. But then the downmods fell and they were hidden and not able to kill.
"No! I must kill the trolls" he shouted
The radio said "No, Twitter. You are the trolls"
And then Twitter was a troll.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
...to PJ at Groklaw. The summary is a straight copy-and-paste of her coverage of this issue that was posted days ago.
like these trolls
Indeed. You and your army of sockpuppets, critics, critic sockpuppets, Twitter impostors, critic impostors, Twitter counter-impostors, and critic counter-imposters (did I miss anyone?) have done a smashing good job of training Slashdot readers to ignore trolls.
Congratulations, Twitter! Couldn't have done it without you!
Worse is losing the blog itself. Unlike, say, a discontinued magazine or out-of-print book that a library will continue to maintain, a discontinued web site leaves a "hole" in the web where it used to be. All of the sites that linked to it now link to the proverbial black hole.
And yes, I know about the Internet Archive, but I suspect that many don't, and that still fails to help all of those broken links...
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
Sez the moron with 30 accounts.
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Slashdot is used to ignoring trolls
Considering how many responses you got, obviously not
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Umm, no it isn't. The facts are the same (because the story is the same), but I wrote that myself. Obviously, I listed the same two reasons she did, but that's because they're the reasons Mr. Patry gave. I didn't copy & paste even one line, and the editors added that part in parentheses as you can verify with the firehose.
Now, if you think it's a copy & paste, would you like to point out where PJ apologized for referencing his bio without a disclaimer? Because I don't think she did. And why would she link to past Slashdot stories? I had to Google those up.
So check your facts next time before you lie like that.
- I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property
Lawrence Lessig went this way before him. There's no doubt that the state and direction of copyright law is problematic when the brightest and most qualified people with an understanding of the subject can't bear to think about it.
It leaves little room for optimism.
I don't need large brains to have a good time.
You have to be wealthy and well connected to make it as a politician. They're are ruling class, not employees. You can occasionally join that class, but you still have to be in it. Otherwise you can't raise the funds needed to win.
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