THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Tuesday, June 17, 2008

This week in the creation of private law…

Non-sports post.  Enter at your peril, avoid at your pleasure…

Fair use doesn’t seem to exist as a doctrine anymore, according to AP, the newsmaker, newsreporter, and lawmaker.

The government defines it as best they could by citing case law.  What the AP is doing, it seems to me, is to define the boundaries so that someone can sue them, at which point they will lose.  It’s a big joke, and they haven’t obviously clearly thought this out. 

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I suppose AP has lawyers that drafted all this.  AP Lawyer dudes: why?  This is why people hate lawyers.  As much as you are there to protect us when we need you, often times it’s to protect us from your peers.  I was recently involved in a matter where I had to hire a lawyer, to make sure the other lawyer wasn’t going to eat me alive.  It’s like I’m hiring an intellectual bodyguard!

You (AP lawyers) are like Tom Glavine, complicit in creating a situation that you didn’t want to begin with.  Why don’t other lawyers simply denounce AP lawyers, and distance themselves from such ideas?

I’ll take down MGL if I have to (and vice-versa), and we’re business partners!  There’s such a thing as intellectual honesty here.