Goodbye Kim Weatherall
p2pnet.net News:- “Kim Weatherall, whose blog has been an influential, must-read for months on all things to do with Australian IP reform, has decided to scale back with no further postings (though she plans to post less frequently at LawFont), posts Michael Geist, telling us:
“She concludes her last post by thanking her readers, but it is clearly us who owe her a great deal of thanks.”
Here’s what Weatherall has to say:
The Last Post (and five things you didn’t know about me)
I have been tagged by the ‘Five Things You Don’t Know About Me’ Meme that is doing the rounds (thanks Abi). (Like Starkoff, I’m not tagging anyone else). So here goes:
1. I have two brothers. They are both doctors. I have two sisters-in-law. They, too, are doctors. I studied law to be different from my older brother. Little did I know…
2. The only computer programming I have ever done was in Basic, on my first family computer: a C64. Secretly, I’m hoping that one day someone will teach me some more programming.
3. My first exposure to computers came when my private girls school did something really weird way back in 1985: it gave my (guinea pig) 5th grade class C64s to take home for a year. We were taught to type, do word processing, and some Basic programming. Sadly, or fortunately, this did not lead to me becoming a secretary.
4. There have been two men in my life who really broke my heart. And that is about the most personal thing you will ever find on this blog. And no, I’m absolutely not naming names. A girls’ gotta keep some mystery.
And here’s the last thing you didn’t know about me: I am now writing my last ever post on Weatherall’s Law. Yes, I’ve decided (and I’ve told a few people this recently) that it’s time for Weatherall’s Law to retire. Like Shane, Glenn and Justin, it’s time for me to move on.
Why? Firstly, because I’m tired! In the four years I have been blogging (thanks to Jason Soon), I have written:
* 1005 posts on topics like patent, copyright, and FTAs;
* spilled approximately 385,000 words onto the pages of this blog. That’s over 800 pages at 12 point font, single spaced, in a Word Processing Document.
She’s had her day, I think. Weatherall’s Law started purely as an experiment, which I began because I was teaching IT law. From February 2004 (the month the FTA with the US was concluded) it became my way to communicate analysis and commentary on legal developments that were simply happening too fast for other publication media like journals and the like. When new laws were coming down all the time, the only way to get analysis ‘out there’ in time for it to make an impact was via the blog. When the Attorney-General decides that the consultation period for a piece of legislation is 3 weeks, the only way to provide analysis in a way that helps people has been the blog.
The last 12 months have been particularly insane. Just over a third of the ‘words’ I have written on the blog have happened in the last 12 months. So I’m tired. And I need to do other academic-y stuff. you know, like write journal articles and books. I’ve not done enough of that, because of the blog and the law reform involvement. I need to give myself a bit of time to think about things more broadly and deeply. It doesn’t happen when you’re desperately trying to keep up with things and have views on every development.
It seems like the right time. The Copyright Amendment Bill has passed. With this, we have seen the last of the changes that had to happen because of the FTA, which was the catalyst for me reviving the blog. It’s a neat place to draw a line. The kind of analysis this particular blog has offered just isn’t as necessary any more. Neat too because I’ve just moved to Brisbane. You know; new start, new life, new obsessions……
Being a bit of an addict, I’m not able to entirely give up the game. I also think the medium is important enough that I want to keep a hand in. And the medium HAS been good to me. It’s got me involved in all kinds of interesting things. Think of it as a downsizing. I’m just – well, shifting home, and downgrading the level of commitment.
From now on, find my thoughts, less frequently, but no less deeply, on LawFont. Which has some big advantages: better technology, particularly for comments, categories for posts, better searchability via Google, and some co-bloggers to take up some of the slack. I won’t be posting daily anymore, but I will post on LawFont when something important happens, or when I have some particular bugbear. If you are still interested in what I have to say, I suggest you point your blogreader over in that direction. There’s also my bepress site: you can subscribe to emails or an RSS feed to let you know when I have new academic papers out. There might be more now that I won’t be blogging as much!
And, of course, there’s a new generation of academic bloggers interested in IP in Australia. I’m sure the ground will be well and truly covered by the able members of the House of Commons, Pete Black, and of course, my fellow, Warwick Rothnie.
Thanks for everything. Thanks for the emails, the comments, for reading, for paying attention. Thanks particularly to the people who’ve contacted me personally or spoken to me personally to tell me that they found the blog useful. I’m going to miss this clunky old website, and its loyal readers.
But, Last Post? Not quite. This, the day after.
Postscript
I know, it kind of ruins the symmetry to post again, after ‘The Last Post’.
However, just after posting that last post, I got an email from Bill Patry, to let me know of the publication of his new treatise. It can’t pass without comment. Bill, whose blog is filled with interesting points of statutory history on copyright, is one of the relatively small number of US academics who genuinely pays some attention to what goes on elsewhere – including here in Australia. The publication of his 6,000 page treatise, for which he did 100% of the research, is a significant achievement and a real milestone. I’m looking forward to looking at it. It even comes with a blog.
I also wanted to thank, publicly, fellow bloggers Michael Geist, Pete Black, and the House of Commons for their kind comments. Blogging wouldn’t be the same without them!
Also See:
Michael Geist – Weatherall’s Law, January 10, 2007
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