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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."
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.
Free Conference Call -- No Spam, High Quality
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.
We can agree to disagree on which is 'vastly' better, but claiming Stallman's purpose and motivation has changed really doesn't hold up against the plethora of his writings dating back quite a few years.
I'm not American, but I'm pretty sure that self-defence was not the primary objective of the Second Amendment.
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
There are only three types of people who are bothered by homosexual marriage:
1. People that are just set in their ways. They grumble and mutter under their breath, but at the end of the day, are prepared to live and let live.
2. Bigots who want to see their particular set of morals enshrined in law.
3. Bigots who want to see their particular set of morals enshrined in law, but try to disguise it using a smokescreen of either other broken laws (welfare seems to be a favourite) or slippery slope fallacies ("legal bestiality" seems to be a favourite) as justification.
You have convinced me to abandon my methods, as your method (calling people Bigots) sounds like a sure-fire way to convince people to change their minds and hearts. I now understand why reasoned debate like mine gets ignored, because reporters would rather quote someone like you, and then like at a playground fight chant fight fight fight. /sigh