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Jury in Oracle v. Google finds in Google's favour

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Re: Jury in Oracle v. Google finds in Google's favour

#191

Post by gohrt »

Eric_WVGG wrote: post #130
grellas wrote: post #120

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…

> The Bono law may have slipped through Congress with nary a dissent in its day but this will not happen again, whatever the lobbying power of Disney and others. What makes you think so? This is one of my greatest fears of another Clinton presidency.

You fear that a Clinton presidency will make Congress pass bad laws?

Re: Jury in Oracle v. Google finds in Google's favour

#192

Post by nl »

farcical_tinpot wrote: post #166
monocasa wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Samba never copied anything. According to this case, they did.

Nope. Not sure where you're getting that from.

Samba is API compatible with Windows file server.

Unless you are arguing that network protocol compatibility is a different thing? It seems to me that there is a lot of overlap, since Samba relies on re implementing the same behavior as a Windows file server.

Re: Jury in Oracle v. Google finds in Google's favour

#193

Post by dguaraglia »

a3n wrote: post #158
tostitos1979 wrote: post #125

Despite the win, I think it would have been far better for the computer industry if Google had bought Sun. Unlike other companies with crap (IMHO ... Nokia, Motorola), Sun actually had stuff of value. This is a lesson that geeks get but I'm not sure MBAs do or will ever get.

Yeah. Thank you Sun, for ... everything, including employing the people you employed.

Interesting that you mention that. When I was back in university (early 2000s) there were a few "big companies" to work for. If you cared about having the perks, the money and a cool office, you wanted to work for Microsoft. If you were more of a reclusive neckbeard with a love for the more arcane aspects of computing and networking (like I was), you wanted to work for Sun. It was seen as the place where you'd be free to work on cool research projects rather than (god forbid!) consumer software. That's where the luminaries were.

Of course, even back then nobody wanted to work for IBM or HP. Heh.

Re: Jury in Oracle v. Google finds in Google's favour

#194

Post by brianwawok »

rayiner wrote: post #181
appleflaxen wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People complain about the special interests, but some fail to realize that the major backers of Extreme Copyright (TM) are a special interest that we created. We, the US public, out of the goodness of our hearts and wanting to foster art, gave up our right to "repeat what we heard" (copying, when what you hear is digital) in return for incentives to create art. And then bam ; decades later the incentives are the de f…

> Fewer Oracles. Fewer Microsofts. Fewer Steve Jobs. Was it so bad back when you could just buy software for money? Before business models built on eyeballs and data mining instead of copyright?

Like when windows extended Java then started adding incompatibile methods to the windows Java extension that would be on all windows computers? Or maybe when office used a hidden format to store files so no one could share files without buying a license? They were not great times at all...

Re: Jury in Oracle v. Google finds in Google's favour

#195

Post by coldpie »

chatmasta wrote: post #179

What impact does this have on reverse engineering private APIs and reimplementing them? And selling those reimplementations? 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 h…

These kinds of questions are why this court case is so incredibly disastrous. Oracle has really done humanity an enormous disservice here, and any clients of theirs should immediately sever contracts in return for their blatant attempt to destroy software development. I'm not fucking exaggerating. If you thought software patents were bad, Oracle just unleashed a whole new level of hell.

Re: Jury in Oracle v. Google finds in Google's favour

#196

Post by Natanael_L »

dragonwriter wrote: post #167
farcical_tinpot wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is irrelevant. There was a ridiculous notion going around a while back that if Oracle lost then the GPL would become unenforceable. The GPL does not depend on copyrightable APIs, and says nothing about what Oracle is trying to argue. Linking to a library and merely using an API are two different things. The GPL depends on the former and says the latter is neither here nor there.

> The GPL does not depend on copyrightable APIs True in terms of the GPL as such , but the FSFs interpretation that the GPL applies to works that link, even dynamically, to a GPL covered work, which it holds to be derivative works, depends absolutely on the API presented by a library being a copyright-protected element (it also probably can't stand even then without an extremely narrow interpretation of "fair use".)

This is not a much a question of the API as it is of the effect during execution. If the API would be considered to be what was protected then copyleft code can never be cloned in an interoperable manner under permissive licenses.

Instead the idea is that the code linking to GPL'ed code generates a new work during execution that's a derative of it AND the GPL'ed work, inheriting the copyleft license, requiring a compatible license on the linking code.

Re: Jury in Oracle v. Google finds in Google's favour

#197

Post by farcical_tinpot »

jdmichal wrote: post #164
farcical_tinpot wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only thing they would need to rule on is whether a particular fact was weighted properly by the jury. Good luck with that here.

You are presenting a very cynical view of the justice system and judges without any reasoning backing your claim. "Good luck with that" is not really a valid debatable response. There's a huge backlog of fair-use cases for them to base their decision on. I don't think it would be particularly difficult or nasty in this case, given that the ability to copyright APIs was a presumed fact during the trial. Also, the judg…

I'm presenting reality I'm afraid.

It is going to have be be very clear and something that can be ruled on in a short space of time. There is no way you can argue at all that anything clear has been missed here, or argue in clear terms how things have been weighted.

Stuff like arguing that commercial reasons haven't been weighted properly is entirely subjective, because it depends on arguing how transformative use is - and that is what has happened here. The jury have already decided on that one. The 'backlog' of fair use cases will simply throw up the same subjective issues.

An application like that to a court is not going to impress any judge one iota. You can't just wander back into court and argue "The jury has been unreasonable" without some totally solid evidence. The jury also ruled unanimously, so it wasn't even close.

Re: Jury in Oracle v. Google finds in Google's favour

#198

Post by rayiner »

nl wrote: post #192
farcical_tinpot wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. Not sure where you're getting that from.

Samba is API compatible with Windows file server. Unless you are arguing that network protocol compatibility is a different thing? It seems to me that there is a lot of overlap, since Samba relies on re implementing the same behavior as a Windows file server.

Copyright doesn't care about the software's behavior, just the text and structure of the code. Samba implemented CIFS without looking at or copying any Microsoft code.

Re: Jury in Oracle v. Google finds in Google's favour

#199

Post by coldpie »

pavpanchekha wrote: post #23

This is possibly my best-case scenario. APIs are copywriteable (so says the Supreme Court), and this seems reasonable, since some APIs really are very good and treating them like an artistic work has benefits. But implementing them is fair use, preserving the utility of APIs for compatibility. Great news!

> some APIs really are very good and treating them like an artistic work has benefits

Name one benefit. Keep in mind we've been working on the opposite assumption for the entire duration of computing history.

Re: Jury in Oracle v. Google finds in Google's favour

#200

Post by farcical_tinpot »

xenihn wrote: post #171
cheald wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It costs her time, at a minimum, which comes at the opportunity cost of other money-making ventures.

She's strengthening her personal brand and potentially gaining access to new clients for future work. I have absolutely no problem with her asking for donations, but let's not be disingenuous :)

Ahhhh, yes, the 'giving exposure' argument.
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