I for one would like to have a public digital recording of the actual trial available...
Jury in Oracle v. Google finds in Google's favour
251–260 of 409 posts
Re: Jury in Oracle v. Google finds in Google's favour
#252Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think it's fair to call this law suit frivolous. From a developer perspective, the ideal and just end result has always seemed rather obvious. However, the multi-year history of this case demonstrates the correct legal answer not so obvious, at least from a legal perspective. For example, settling the issue on fair use was definitely not how most people thought/hoped this would shake out way back in the begin…
This law suit is frivolous based on the assumption that APIs are not copyrightable (a very reasonable assumption in 2009).
But the result of the trial was that they are copyrightable, so clearly it wasn't frivolous.
Re: Jury in Oracle v. Google finds in Google's favour
#253What I don't understand about this: Why didn't Google/Android use Java under the Open Source license under which it has been provided. Wouldn't that have saved all the trouble?
Probably because that would force them and anyone extending Android to license their extensions under the GPL. Phone OEMs would probably keep away from that can of worms.
Re: Jury in Oracle v. Google finds in Google's favour
#254Law 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…
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…
"We, the US public, out of the goodness of our hearts and wanting to foster art"
I was not part of that, and neither was I part of some minority complaining while the majority did this. I don't think this ever happened. Just because there's a pretense of democracy doesn't mean the general public is actually to blame for everything.
Re: Jury in Oracle v. Google finds in Google's favour
#255Earlier quoted context omitted.
No. He's a paid consultant to Oracle and Microsoft (see: http://www.businessinsider.com/oracle-to-google-which-blogge... ) and his employers get their money's worth.
He still seems like a sociopath. Taking money to poison communities does not glorify it.
I didn't say he's not scummy, just that he's not insane. It's my belief that he's get paid well to say scummy things, which is rational if not tasteful.
Re: Jury in Oracle v. Google finds in Google's favour
#256Earlier 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…
> I guess the risk of fewer Taylor Swifts. Fewer Kany Wests. Fewer Oracles. Fewer Microsofts. Fewer Steve Jobs. Those are such small consequences that, to be honest, they might be additional benefits. Most of the public would consider those pretty enormous consequences. Heck, I'd be upset if I had to switch away from a MacBook Pro to a commodity-PC-hardware + Linux solution for personal use today, even without any of…
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Re: Jury in Oracle v. Google finds in Google's favour
#257Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 fre…
At IBM, the Watson, Almaden and other research labs used to be the place to be.
Re: Jury in Oracle v. Google finds in Google's favour
#258Earlier quoted context omitted.
Phones have had Java since 2001.
Google argued that feature phones only had Java ME, which only included a small subset of Java's APIs, in contrast to Android, which includes significantly more Java (SE) APIs, as well as Android-specific APIs. My layperson understanding of that argument was that their use of Java was transformative because feature phones running Java ME were completely different from Android smartphones.
Indeed, Google spent a lot of time making this case to the jury. I could be mistaken, but I fear this is going to be the basis of a reversal on appeal, because what "transformative" means is ultimately a matter of law (indeed, the word itself comes from a Supreme Court decision rather than the text of a law), and to me Android looks completely different from previous things considered "transformative":
http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/fair-use-what-transfo...
Re: Jury in Oracle v. Google finds in Google's favour
#259Earlier quoted context omitted.
It wasn't even really a case (like say, Samba) where copying was necessary to interoperate with a closed, proprietary system. Samba never copied anything. The interoperability argument was simple. Google wanted to use a language that was familiar to most and where developers could take existing code and port trivially. There are developer tools on the market that have done that for decades. Davlik isn't drop-in compa…
If you automatically throw out cases, what's the point of having a law enabling and encouraging those cases in the first place? Or maybe a better question is: what would legitimate infringement look like, if what Google did is fair use? I don't know if APIs should be subject to copyright or not. I certainly don't want them to be. But since APIs have been found copyrightable, it's hard to understand how this wasn't op…
Thus far, APIs have only been found copyrightable by the court that is specifically about patents. It's highly doubtful that any court capable of setting binding precedent on the matter will agree, especially to the same industry-destroying extent.
It should be expected that when a district court and its jury have their hands tied by a bad appeals court decision, the outcome will look a bit odd. In many ways our system of case law functions like a body of software where patches can only add lines of code, not remove them. Convoluted solutions to work around previous mistakes end up practically set in stone and refactoring is at best a once in a lifetime opportunity.
Re: Jury in Oracle v. Google finds in Google's favour
#260Law 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…
Well meaning laws that are in practice nearly impossible to meaningfully enforce should not exist - from the beginning as well as when then this reality kicks in. Copyright shares many traits with the war on drugs.
They were implemented and then continue to stick around way too long in an archaic non-working state - because they were well meaning. But making sure it will actually have the intended effect is not a requirement. The enforcement side is always left to figure it out after the fact. The reality of the law is something that can be delayed, what matters is moral gratification of the policy makers.
This is sadly prevalent in American policy: laws always start with good intentions but often ultimately a) causing net-negative via side-effects or b) not enforcable so a giant money/time sinkhole. Serious scrutiny beforehand could probably detect the majority of this stuff but that's not a requirement in office apparently.