Consumer Law

New Book by Bill Patry -- who is back to blogging

By Paul Levy

Bill Patry has just published an intellectually provocative and useful polemic, Moral Panics and the Copyright Wars, that urges public attention to excessive incursions on the public domain undertaken at the behest of copyright holders through what Patry calls ?The Copyright Wars.?  Patry is the author of two significant copyright treatises, Patry on Copyright and The Fair Use Privilege in Copyright Law, as well as the very well-received Patry Copyright Blog that he suspended last year.

Patry points out that although there is always a very powerful constituency for the expansion of copyright protection, and it is easy to identify those who will gain economically from such expansion and hence whose wrath will be incurred by politicians who refuse to go along, the constituency for protecting the interests of consumers and other users who benefit as works pass into the public domain tends to be more diffuse, and the victims of incursions into the public domain are far less likely to punish the elected officials who hurt them.  Yet the evidence supporting the proposition that augmentation of copyright protection is needed to create incentives for the production of creative works ? the supposed justification for copyright and patent protection found in the Constitution?s so-called ?intellectual property? clause ? is really quite thin.  Indeed, evidence suggests that the expansions protect industries that exploit authors, not the authors themselves.

Patry draws on his own lengthy experience in the legislative branch, dealing with such masterful lobbyists as Jack Valenti, to point out the effectiveness of the copyright-expansion interests in manipulating publc attitudes.  For example, he argues that the very use of the term intellectual ?property? unduly loads the dice in the public mind because decision-makers often ignore the ways in which copyright is solely the product of legislation, much more so than real or personal property that necessarily entail exclusive possession and enjoyment at any one time.

Not all of what Patry says is entirely persuasive, but the book is a good read and worth reading.  There is a blog devoted to the issues raised in the book, thus far consisting largely of back and forth between Patry and blogger Ben Sheffner.  Patry has also recently posted to his main blog, the Patry Copyright Blog -- we may hope that he will resume that useful point of discussion of recent developments in copyright law.

Full post as published by CL&P Blog on August 18, 2009 (boomark / email).