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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

#231

Post by JoshTriplett »

Silhouette wrote: post #210
Natanael_L wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not a sufficient answer. The claim assumes that copyright and patents are proven to be beneficial, measurably better than the prior situation. Are they? If so, how? Not to mention, is there any proof there's no better solution?

Proving that there's no better solution is impractical. However, the size of the copyright-backed creative industries today, by any reasonable metric I can think of, is vastly greater than the size of the creative industries built around the alternative models that have been tried noticeably often so far. That seems to include all of volunteer-based, crowd-funded, mass donation-funded, traditional patronage where som…

> However, the size of the copyright-backed creative industries today, by any reasonable metric I can think of, is vastly greater than the size of the creative industries built around the alternative models that have been tried noticeably often so far.

Even assuming that "market size" is the right metric for comparison, that comparison assumes that the existence of copyright law has had no negative effect on those "alternative" models. Numerous readily available examples suggest that it has, however.

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

#232

Post by michaelmrose »

Silhouette wrote: post #210
Natanael_L wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not a sufficient answer. The claim assumes that copyright and patents are proven to be beneficial, measurably better than the prior situation. Are they? If so, how? Not to mention, is there any proof there's no better solution?

Proving that there's no better solution is impractical. However, the size of the copyright-backed creative industries today, by any reasonable metric I can think of, is vastly greater than the size of the creative industries built around the alternative models that have been tried noticeably often so far. That seems to include all of volunteer-based, crowd-funded, mass donation-funded, traditional patronage where som…

The problem is that proving that copyright as it stands is the cause of the prosperity of the current market is problematic. You don't and can't have an equivalent control.

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

#233

Post by toyg »

c_c_c wrote: post #207
rplnt wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> tweets > reporting done right I'm not sure. Surely it would only benefit her if she weren't limited by 140 characters, right?

No. You're allowed more than 140 characters because you can tweet more than once. The real time updates were invaluable.

How so? This isn't something where you'll have to decide in a split-second wether to take to the streets in response to this or that development. You could argue that there is some value for stock traders (and tbh, given the result, even for them it's basically the same as it was before), but that's about it.

It's just the "breaking news" frenzy applied to social media. Nothing to celebrate, imho.

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

#234

Post by [deleted] »

farcical_tinpot wrote: post #119
gpm wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google didn't base their implementation on OpenJDK, even if they had they didn't follow the terms in the GPL so (given it was copyrightable and not fair use) this wouldn't be a defence.

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.

[deleted]

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

#235

Post by icebraining »

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?

Your argument works against your position, since that happened right as copyright laws were strengthened (even making DRM illegal to circumvent), not weakened.

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

#236

Post by toyg »

jerf wrote: post #228
toyg wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Clintons are famously close to Hollywood and have been quite bad for anti-copyright causes. One word: DMCA.

The law would come out of Congress. I have no compelling reason to believe at this time that any candidate for this Presidential election wouldn't just sign it and move on with life. (I can read tea leaves and hypothesize as well as anyone else, but I have no real facts that leads me to believe otherwise.) If that is the case, there's very little advantage to the industry getting close to the President; all they can…

> all they can do is sign it

The US legislative process lives and dies on building alliances and horse-trading. A word from the President and/or his/her promise of future help in other matters is hugely valuable. A law going through Congress and a law going through Congress with support from the President are two very different things in practice, and would be disingenuous to say that's not the case.

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

#237

Post by rodgerd »

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.

Sources at the time told me IBM were planning on buying Sun (for the hardware/Telco business) and avoiding anti-trust problems by spinning software off to Red Hat (Java, ZFS, Solaris, etc). They got cold feet over the spectre of bribery investigations against Sun.

I weep for the parallel universe in which Red Hat had been in a position to open all of Sun's technologies properly.

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

#238

Post by icebraining »

rayiner wrote: post #198
nl wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How can you copy an API without looking at the original API? They might not have looked the implementation, but if the API itself is copyrighted, won't looking at it suffice to be infringement?

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

#239

Post by Silhouette »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #231
Silhouette wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Proving that there's no better solution is impractical. However, the size of the copyright-backed creative industries today, by any reasonable metric I can think of, is vastly greater than the size of the creative industries built around the alternative models that have been tried noticeably often so far. That seems to include all of volunteer-based, crowd-funded, mass donation-funded, traditional patronage where som…

> However, the size of the copyright-backed creative industries today, by any reasonable metric I can think of, is vastly greater than the size of the creative industries built around the alternative models that have been tried noticeably often so far. Even assuming that "market size" is the right metric for comparison, that comparison assumes that the existence of copyright law has had no negative effect on those "a…

Numerous readily available examples suggest that it has, however.

Would you share some of those examples? I've heard this argument made before, and I agree that undermining alternative models is both logically possible and a plausible concern in practice. However, the only examples anyone has come up with so far have been some form of derivative work with questionable added value.

Lacking any more compelling evidence, I tend to come back to balance that copyright is one economic principle that clearly can support the production of many useful works, and there is little empirical data to suggest either greater harms or better alternatives. But of course that position ceases to hold if and when such data is found.

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

#240

Post by chatmasta »

coldpie wrote: post #195
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.

I'm not sure if you misread my questions or I misread your answer. I'm asking about new opportunities this precedent allows, not existing ones it forbids. For example, the private WoW server case was ruled in favor of Blizzard. With this new precedent, would a court come to the same conclusion?
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