Double linking an excellent post today from Open... about Copyright. Recently Google's top Copyright consultant closed his blog. William Patry signs off with an acerbic characterization of the state of copyright and blogs. Click through for a sumamry on Open... or go right to Patry's post.


Here's a snippit,which I believe is still ok to do under the "fair use" doctrine (another blogger makes a good case for why):

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.

Image by Erik J. Hells