Excellent Review of "most prolific scholar of copyright in history"

"Moral Panics and the Copyright Wars: A Worthless Book" is an excellent book review by Tom Sydnor of the book by the strikingly modest Google VIP William Patry. (The book's trade "description" which we must assume was written or approved by the unpretentious Google VIP himself tells us "Just as Wall Street must serve Main Street, neither can copyright be left to a Reaganite 'magic of the market.'" Well...when Wall Street starts serving Main Street, we will check back. Call for Mr. Geithner...Call for Mr. Geithner.....)

The reviewer says "I began [the book] hoping for a slanted-yet-thoughtful analysis of how to reconcile the potential of both copyrights and the Internet. I got the same shopworn Scary Stories, sophomoric and droning lectures on cognition and economics, no solutions, and the self-anointed 'most prolific scholar of copyright in history' venting venom...." Now, me, I'm not as smart as all these guys, so I just assumed the book would be snake oil to grease Google's slide to global terminator status combined with dog whistles for Willard to use while summoning his four legged friends. But that's just me. I'm from a fly-over state. (And then there's that "war" word.)

As Tom Sydnor points out, the demure Google VIP Patry overlooks so many inconvenient facts, it's almost comical (it actually is comical, but I was always taught not to mock the afflicted, so let us attenuate).

The central point in the review is the point made by the ever-genial Google VIP Patry that creators and the companies who support them are essentially unable to innovate and they owe their survival to technologists. We can understand why the unobtrusive Google VIP Patry would dearly like this to be true, but I am reminded of a conversation I had once with a Silicon Valley VC about the protracted arguments over the Internet radio royalty rates.

He told me that if the "RIAA" didn't give the webcasters what they wanted, investment in content would vanish. They'd take their ball and go home.

Of course--the "RIAA" weren't involved in the deal, but one can understand that a VC accustomed to dealing with engineers who live on ring dings in cubicles and create on a work for hire basis would have a hard time understanding artists, much less unions. I tried to explain to him that collective bargaining wasn't a bunch of VCs setting a valuation--to no avail. Just did not compute.

Then it dawned on me--oh, you think that you are the ones who are "investing in content". Actually--the "investing in content" is in all those deals you pass on routinely that involve creating "content". If you stopped "investing in content" no one would notice, because that's not what you do.

And so it is with the retiring Google VIP Patry's book--as well noted by Tom Sydnor. Thankfully someone is separating the tech from the dirt.