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."

Comments

Re:Self-censorship?

[BPPG]

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.

Might Wanna Put Some Ice On That

[strelitsa]

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

[yar]

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.

Can't millions of us *BUY* some politicians?

[Anonymous Coward]

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:Can't millions of us *BUY* some politicians?

[jlarocco]

Well fine, if that's how the system works then why don't *WE* bribe our politicians too?

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.

Real reason: conflict with Google

[Steve1952]

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.

Seconded

[Xenographic]

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.

Re:Why are IP laws getting stricter?

[earthforce_1]

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.