Copyright doyen Bill Patry explains why he shut down his brilliant copyright law blog. Some of it had to do with his inability to prevent people from ascribing his personal views to his employer, Google. Some of it had to do with a sort of spiritual exhaustion (despite being a pretty spiritual guy). But naturally, this is the reason that got my attention:
This leads me to my final reason for closing the blog which is independent of the first reason: my fear that the blog was becoming too negative in tone. I regard myself as a centrist. I believe very much that in proper doses copyright is essential for certain classes of works, especially commercial movies, commercial sound recordings, and commercial books, the core copyright industries. I accept that the level of proper doses will vary from person to person and that my recommended dose may be lower (or higher) than others. But in my view, and that of my cherished brother Sir Hugh Laddie, we are well past the healthy dose stage and into the serious illness stage. Much like the U.S. economy, things are getting worse, not better. Copyright law has abandoned its reason for being: to encourage learning and the creation of new works. Instead, its principal functions now are to preserve existing failed business models, to suppress new business models and technologies, and to obtain, if possible, enormous windfall profits from activity that not only causes no harm, but which is beneficial to copyright owners. Like Humpty-Dumpty, the copyright law we used to know can never be put back together again: multilateral and trade agreements have ensured that, and quite deliberately.
It’s depressing, and he’s probably right. Again: He says copyright’s “principal functions now are to preserve existing failed business models, to suppress new business models and technologies, and to obtain, if possible, enormous windfall profits from activity that not only causes no harm, but which is beneficial to copyright owners.”
What ever kind of thing could he be talking about? (Hat tip to Carol Ruth Shepard.)
Cross-posted on Likelihood of Success.
That’s unfortunate. Has he stopped blogging altogether. He has at least one other blog (Moral Panics and the Copyright Wars)–has he stopped that blog as well?
He actually had started again on the copyright blogging… then just stopped.