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depressing: bill patry stops blogging

William Patry’s announced on friday that he would be ending his blog; breaking my heart into tiny little pieces.  In the public discourse about copyright issues in the US, Patry’s voice has always been one of the clearest, most reasoned, erudite, passionate, and scholarly.  Whenever some copyright related issue has come up that I haven’t quite been able to get my mind around I’ve hoped that Patry would blog about it, knowing that if he did I would get an intelligent, thoughtful analysis that would help me understand just what the heck was at stake. I also consistently read the comments on Patry’s blog because he could always be counted upon to respond to even the most unhinged commenter with patience, tact, and, of course, his dazzling intellect.  I had intended to link to some of my favorite posts from the archives to illustrate but it seems he’s removed all the archives and left only his sad goodbye post.  I guess one of these days I’ll see what the waybackmachine can offer up in the way of solace.

Georgia Harper, another breathtakingly intelligent observer of copyright, writes movingly about her reaction to the news that Patry is stopping his blog.  She focuses on the second reason Patry offered for quitting his blog - the fact that the state of copyright is just so bloody depressing that he couldn’t stand listening to his own negative tone anymore.  I think she says everything I could think to say about that reason and, of course, says it better so I’ll focus on his first reason, the reason that makes me want to cry salty little tears of despair.

Patry’s blog was, from the beginning, the personal blog of a super-smart copyright geek.  In Patry’s words:

“I started the blog when I was still in private practice with the above goals in mind and one more: I felt there was no blog devoted to the geekery of copyright; meaning a blog where people who loved copyright could come and discuss copyright issues in a non-partisan way.”

This worked out pretty well until Patry took a new job.  As senior counsel for Google.  Patry put a disclaimer on the blog, making it clear that the blog was in no way associated with Google and that the opinions he expressed were not Google’s opinions.  He was strict with himself about never writing about cases involving Google.  He did, essentially, everything he could do to make it clear that he was writing as Bill Patry: Private Citizen.  But that distinction between Patry the man and Patry the Google-lawyer was, far too often, ignored.  Again in Patry’s words:

“When other blogs or news stories refer to the blog, the inevitable opening sentence now is: “William Patry, Google’s Senior Copyright Counsel said,” or “Google’s top copyright lawyer said… .” There is nothing I can do to stop this false implication that I am speaking on Google’s behalf. And that’s just those who do so because they are lazy.”

He goes on to talk about those who misdescribe the blog intentionally, for partisan reasons, but I want to focus on the laziness here.  Because its this laziness that worries/enrages me more than anything.  People are, or at least can be, pretty good bullshit detectors when it comes to deliberate manipulation of the kind that Patry describes but we’re far less adept at coping with the kind of laziness in reporting that ultimately brought down the blog.  After all, it’s true.  Patry is Google’s Senior Copyright Counsel.  Patry said the things that the articles say he said.  But he didn’t say those things as Google’s Senior Copyright Counsel.  The kind of vigilance required on the part of the reader to call bullshit on that kind of reporting is kind of unreasonable. All of the hand-wringing about people getting bad information from bad writers without an editor by using things like blogs and wikipedia and whatnot ignores the fact that the traditional media is filled to the brim with this kind of malarky.  Because it wasn’t just fellow-bloggers that did this to Patry, it was also old-school mainstream media.  A quick search in Academic Search Premier and in Lexis Nexis turns up quotes of this sort in articles from the Washington Post, Business Week, a number of law reviews and journals, Information Today.  And I really have to conclude that we’re doomed, just doomed, if the press continues to fall down on its job on just every, every front.  I mean, we’ve seen pretty damn recently that the press failing to do its job can lead to some serious badness like, oh, unnecessary wars.  But Patry closing up his blog shows us how these smaller, quieter failures that seem like nothing, just some sloppy reporting, can have really ugly consequences.  The loss of Patry’s regular honest commentary on copyright is a real loss.   It will, without a doubt, diminish the public conversation about copyright in this country.  We all know people who have been told by their employers that they cannot have a public blog, even if that blog is personal and done on their own time.  These attempts to stifle speech have seemed to me to be among most objectionable intrusions on employees, like drug testing.  But Patry’s experience would suggest that people really aren’t able or willing to honor those kinds of distinctions between personal opinion and the opinion of an employer.  Which, as I believe I mentioned before, makes me want to cry salty little tears of despair.  Goodbye, Patry blog.  I will miss you.