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Death
of a Mentor
IMHO,
Bill Patry is the dean of American copyright lawyers. His
5500-page treatise “Patry on Copyright” is my bible; I refer
to it three or four times a week. Even better, his personal
blog contained up-to-the-minute reporting and deep analysis
of current copyright issues—internationally, in the courts,
and in Congress. The blog was indispensable: I referred to
it for a lot of my columns here, and if I knew that a client
had an issue that had recently been dealt with almost anywhere,
I could count on Patry’s blog to give me the skinny. And amazingly,
the few times that I had comments or questions, I’d e-mail
him and he’d get back to me within a day. (Like his gig as
senior counsel for Google didn’t keep him busy enough.)
I’m referring to his blog in the past tense because he shut
it down last week. He first took the whole thing offline,
and then restored the archives after he heard from tons of
people who, like me, considered his blog a primary research
resource.
You’d think maybe he was too busy to keep it going, or that
something happened in his life to make continuing the blog—that
had almost-daily posts, some of which were several thousand
words long—untenable.
Nope. He shut it down because the state of copyright law has
become too depressing. Here’s part of what he posted:
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 is profoundly depressing, after 26 years full-time in a
field I love, to be a constant voice of dissent. I have tried
various ways to leaven this state of affairs with positive
postings, much like television news shows that experiment
with “happy features.” I have blogged about great articles
others have written, or highlighted scholars who have not
gotten the attention they deserve; I tried to find cases,
even inconsequential ones, that I can fawn over. But after
awhile, this wore thin, because the most important stories
are too often ones that involve initiatives that are, in my
opinion, seriously harmful to the public interest. I cannot
continue to be so negative, so often. Being so negative, while
deserved on the merits, gives a distorted perspective of my
centrist views, and is emotionally a downer.
Wow is right. What he’s talking about is the hijacking of
copyright law by Big Media, who perversely twist and augment
the law with silly provisions designed not to encourage creativity,
but to protect their multi-billion-dollar business from the
simple fact that the Internet has rendered their modes of
business unsupportable otherwise. Free copying doesn’t stop
new music from being made, but it does put a hurtin’ on Edgar
Bronfman, Jr.’s stock options.
He’s also talking about how these ridiculous laws, that not
only stifle creativity and innovation, but threaten the public’s
privacy, are rammed down our throats. The president (and I’m
not complaining about just Bush; Clinton did it, too) sends
a trade envoy who negotiates intellectual property treaties
that obligate the U.S. to adopt these hideous provisions into
our copyright law. Then the pfresident goes to Congress and
leans on them to pass the new laws, so we can be in conformance
with the treaty. And the members of Congress, who for the
most part don’t understand the laws, don’t care, or are in
Big Media’s pocket, happily comply.
Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy’s one of Big Media’s great proponents.
And he’s got a speaking part in the new Batman movie. Just
sayin’.
I mourn the passing of Patry’s blog. It’s gonna be harder
for me to appear smarter than I am without his guidance. But
I’ll keep going here, because unlike Patry, I enjoy bitching
about stuff.
—Paul
Rapp
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