Patry Update
The king hell god of copyright has decided to stop blogging, for multiple reasons, one of them being that "the current state of copyright law is too depressing":
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.
There's also a dig at "multilateral and trade agreements" in there, though whether he's talking about GATT-TRIPs or going right back to the Berne Convention, which came into being just a few years after Patry started practicing copyright law, is unclear.
A pretty scathing indictment of the state of the field.
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.
There's also a dig at "multilateral and trade agreements" in there, though whether he's talking about GATT-TRIPs or going right back to the Berne Convention, which came into being just a few years after Patry started practicing copyright law, is unclear.
A pretty scathing indictment of the state of the field.