171–180 of 409 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It costs her money to post on Twitter?
It costs her time, at a minimum, which comes at the opportunity cost of other money-making ventures.
Law evolves and the law of copyright in particular is ripe for "disruption" - and I say this not as one who opposes the idea of copyright but, on the contrary, as one who strongly supports it. It is right that the author of a creative work get protection for having conceived that work and reduced it to tangible form. Developers do this all the time with their code. So too do many, many others. Many today disagree wit…
Copyright maximalists realizing this have moved to circumvent democracy globally by enshrining their most draconian laws into "free trade" treaties. These treaties have the proven ability to overturn the will of national democratic bodies and are almost impossible to remove once imposed.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> We don't like the outcome, therefore we question whether the jury knew what they were doing? Actually, that's pretty much exactly it. An appellate court is capable of ruling a jury finding as contrary to the weight of evidence. It's basically a mistrial ruling -- that the jury did not perform as required -- and therefore permits a retrial. It's a pretty rare occurrence, though. EDIT: This seems to be a good review:…
That's going to get messy. Very messy. It has to be crystal clear really for that to happen, but all you'd end up with is more debate on what parts have greater weight.
But the federal circuit could surprise us yet.
Law evolves and the law of copyright in particular is ripe for "disruption" - and I say this not as one who opposes the idea of copyright but, on the contrary, as one who strongly supports it. It is right that the author of a creative work get protection for having conceived that work and reduced it to tangible form. Developers do this all the time with their code. So too do many, many others. Many today disagree wit…
Wow, your comment doesn't even fit in its entirety into my browser window without scrolling. :) For posterity you may want to edit "No one has a stake is seeing that Oracle be awarded $9", I'm not sure how to parse that. I didn't find any other typos or grammar mistakes which is pretty amazing for a chunk of prose of that length (at least it is for me.) Don't know why you're being downvoted for giving such a comprehe…
My paraphrase: ~[No one outside of Oracle is overly sympathetic to their money grab against Google. Everyone sees their claims as overly-litigious--based on the simple fact of having purchased Sun Microsystems rather than a legitimate defense of their own creative and value-creating effort.]
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Would that be like Oracle arguing jury nullification? It seems that the case law on nullification is that the jury's verdict is the definition unless vacated by procedural error. Thoughts?
It's the opposite, in that instead of the jury overruling the judge on law (normally the province of the judge), the judge overrules the jury on the ultimate factual question of liability (normally the province of the jury). The required showing is accordingly exacting (though hardly impossible to meet in practice): no rational jury could have reached the same conclusion.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
His level of insanity and hatred is beyond belief
Your statement seemed hyperbolic until I followed the link and skimmed a handful of posts. He does indeed come across as someone consumed by hatred to the level of insanity. Why wouldn't anyone link to him? Its like linking to the Westboro baptist people in a discussion about Christian theology.
At least the Oracle vs. Google case revealed that he was actually a paid consultant for Oracle and Microsoft. It might be bad form to attack his character rather than his arguments, but it does save time when dealing with Müller.
Now we have to hope this doesn't get overturned by a Circuit judge like it did before. Still, this is excellent news.
I'll admit to not really understanding the path this has taken through the courts - I haven't been following that closely though.
* Oracle sues Google on copyright grounds.
* Case is overseen by Judge Alsup, who taught himself Java in order to understand the technical merits of the case. Case is split into two phases: copyright and patents.
* A jury finds Google to be infringing on copyright, but deadlocks on the fair-use defense. The jury finds Google to be non-infringing on all patents.
* Judge Alsup breaks the jury's deadlock on copyright by ruling that APIs are not copyrightable in the first place.
* Oracle appeals the patent claim, Google simultaneously appeals the copyright claim (it wasn't 100% in their favor).
* The Federal Court of Appeals (9th Circuit) hears the case due to the patent portion. It overturns Alsup's decision, declaring that APIs are in fact copyrightable. It remands the case back down to Judge Alsup.
* Google petitions the Supreme Court to hear the case instead, but the Court declines the request.
* Judge Alsup oversees a second trial, this time solely on the fair-use merits.
* The jury finds that Google's use of the APIs indeed falls under fair use.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You can copyright APIs, but you can't tell others how they should be used. What does that mean? What privileges would such a copyright provide? What could I do with the copyright that I couldn't do without?
It is as ridiculous as it sounds. There is simply no case at all where API use cannot be sensibly argued as fair use. That's why you use an API in the first place........ What privileges would such a copyright provide? In practice? None.
An API being used by a client and an API being copied by a competitor to be used by those same clients are two completely different situations.
Can I reverse engineer the private API of a mobile app, then implement my own client to talk to its servers?
What if I create my own "bridge" API to talk to the private API? Can I then sell access to the bridge API, allowing developers to use the private API of the app through my service?
And how does this relate to, e.g. running private world of warcraft servers with modded code that allows purchasing in-game items? (See http://www.themarysue.com/blizzard-private-server-lawsuit/)
Law evolves and the law of copyright in particular is ripe for "disruption" - and I say this not as one who opposes the idea of copyright but, on the contrary, as one who strongly supports it. It is right that the author of a creative work get protection for having conceived that work and reduced it to tangible form. Developers do this all the time with their code. So too do many, many others. Many today disagree wit…
> it is a fact that simply letting any casual passer-by copy and distribute any creative work with impunity would That's not how facts work. You can't say "it is a fact that [hypothetical scenario] leads to [expected outcome]" except in the case of very well understood mechanisms narrowly applied. I don't think the sociopolitical effects of copyright law are one of those situations.
Edit: to counter DannyBee's assertion, I'm referring specifically to this statement -- "it is a fact that simply letting any casual passer-by copy and distribute any creative work with impunity would certainly work to rob those who may have spent countless hours developing such works of the commercial value of their efforts." The history of copyright starts with printing restrictions to control the flow of "dangerous" information, but the first modern copyright statute (the statute of anne) deliberately came into existence to protect ideas by granting protections to authors of content for n years. Until this point. Copyright was a grant of a printing monopoly.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_copyright_law
> The Statute of Anne had a much broader social focus and remit than the monopoly granted to the Stationers' Company. The statute was concerned with the reading public, the continued production of useful literature, and the advancement and spread of education. The central plank of the statute is a social quid pro quo; to encourage "learned men to compose and write useful books" the statute guaranteed the finite right to print and reprint those works.
Comments to DannyBee's link address this mischaracterization of modern copyright history. One example: http://questioncopyright.org/comment/8491#comment-8491