Intellectual Property Law

Patry copyright blog is no more

By McKee, Voorhees & Sease, P.L.C.

It's a sad day in the blogosphere, as Bill Patry, author of Patry on Copyright and the Patry Copyright Blog, has announced he is shutting down his blog.  We've linked to Professor Patry's commentary on copyright law on many occasions, and his additional insight into copyright issues will be missed.

Other blogs noting his departure:

• Chicago IP litigation blog
• Fire of Genius
• Patently-O
• Rob Hyndman

He provides two reasons for his departure, the second of which is profoundly depressing, as it is due to the current state of copyright law:

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.

His voice will be missed in the blogosphere.

Full post as published by FileWrapper on August 03, 2008 (boomark / email).