Parker Higgins | 3 Aug 09:33

Re: End of the Patry Copyright Blog

Great link, Kevin!  For anybody else following it, it's worth noting that Patry responded to this essay, it's the second comment down.

I'm not sure where I stand on this.  I don't think the judicial record has been quite as good as Tim Lee suggests, and I don't take much consolation in the idea that things could be fixed, in congress just decided it would fix them.  That said, I think there have been a lot of good ideas and grassroots activity in the copyfight, and that's something Patry might not have considered.

I'm warier than Tim about the value of a split between common norms and actual law.  Tim Wu has written some great pieces about that, and Tehranian's "Infringement Nation" speaks to that idea as well: I think it's fundamentally a Very Bad Thing when most people behave like the laws do not exist.  Unless the end goal is the total abolition of copyright in all forms, I think the prospect of reaching a good consensus on a reasonable copyright policy is greatly hurt by people just ignoring the law in its current form.

Parker

On Sat, Aug 2, 2008 at 10:12 PM, Kevin Donovan <kdonovan11 <at> gmail.com> wrote:
Here's a countervailing opinion on the state of copyright: http://techliberation.com/2008/08/02/why-im-not-a-copyright-pessimist/

On Sat, Aug 2, 2008 at 11:17 PM, Parker Higgins <parkerhiggins <at> gmail.com> wrote:
Some sad news in the free culture blogosphere, for those of you that didn't see it yesterday.  William Patry is ending his blog, The Patry Copyright Blog.

http://williampatry.blogspot.com/2008/08/end-of-blog.html

Patry's blog has consistently been one of the best sources of information and opinion on copyright cases and legislation.  It's very sad for me to hear that he won't be writing it anymore... If you aren't familiar with it, you could have a fantastic time reading through four years of back issues... over 800 posts.

Sadder perhaps is his (second) reason for ending the blog: that "The current state of copyright law is too depressing."  I think that's a stance many of us in this organization can identify with, and hope to help remedy, but to hear it from such a notable and prominent figure in the field is upsetting.

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