Patents and Open source is Oxymoron
Jury in Oracle v. Google finds in Google's favour
351–360 of 409 posts
Re: Jury in Oracle v. Google finds in Google's favour
#352Earlier quoted context omitted.
Market sizes isn't the same as societal benefit. I'm arguing that copyright-supported creative effort overall produces and distributes significantly more and significantly better works than creative effort supported in other ways. If that doesn't imply societal benefit to you, what does?
What's the argument based on? Compared to for example software projects under permissive licenses, Creative Commons, etc, can you show that copyright does more than to simply help somebody popularize (through marketing) things that likely already would have existed?
How many AAA games have been created with permissive licences?
What permissively licensed software is available to design ships or office buildings or integrated circuits?
When Adobe created a gap in the market by making Creative Cloud subscription-only, it took just a few years for several quite slick and professionally well-regarded alternative products to appear, with feature sets catering to former users of Creative Suite products in specific areas. Those new products are all commercial and funded by copyright-protected sales. How long have FOSS products like the GIMP or Inkscape been trying to do the same thing, without ever succeeding?
Re: Jury in Oracle v. Google finds in Google's favour
#353This is 100% inaccurate That story leaves out significant details, and his description of the reason is wrong. He leaves out significant prior sources and reasons, to the point your statement "It was not created to help artists or whoever" is simply wrong. Wikipedia provides a far better history with extensive sources [1]. Note for example the section "Early Developments" where they list precursors to anything in you…
Using Wikipedia as an authoritative source is actively discourage by Wikipedia project itself and by basically every university and research body in existence. The Early Developments section you talk about is about the concept of copyright as it exist today, rather than the history of copyright law as it was made. The French law, while tangential, followed a different path and focus heavily on the concept of moral ri…
>Using Wikipedia as an authoritative source...
Which is why you can check the references. When the article linked above about copyright is clearly coming from an anti-copyright source, and does not mention multiple important things Wikipedia does, I think any intelligent person realizes the Wikipedia source is more credible.
As to overall accuracy of Wikipedia, many, many studies show it is quite accurate. Google and read the evidence.
>You claim that the US copyright law was started by authors guild
It's not my claim - Wikipedia sourced it. Since you don't like it, here [3] are some details with names and dates you can check, and here [4] is a paper titled "The Anti-Monopoly Origins of the Patent and Copyright Clause" with significant details.
>three states had already enacted copyright statutes prior to the Continental Congress resolution
"The Copyright Act of 1790 was the first federal copyright act to be instituted in the United States, though most of the states had passed various legislation securing copyrights in the years immediately following the Revolutionary War." [1]
And....
"Twelve states passed copyright laws prior to the work of the Continental Congress. Delaware chose not to pass a copyright law." [2]
Here [2] is the text of the 1790 Copyright Act. It is completely about protecting author rights - every single section details this. The word author occurs 21 times in a page and a half.
For example, (cutting out wordy clauses - go read the original if you doubt this)
Section 1 - "the author...shall have the sole right ... of printing, reprinting, publishing and vending..."
Section 2 - "any person .. without the consent of the author...shall forfeit all and every sheet and item.. and pay the sum of fifty cents for every sheet..."
Section 6 - "any person .. who shall print ... without consent ... of the author.. shall be liable to suffer and pay ... all damages.."
>the final text which focuses on the commercial aspects and not the rights of the authors
I have no idea how you arrived at this statement. I just cited the law which clearly, in every section, enumerates authors rights. Care to cite this "final text" which does not?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Act_of_1790
[2] http://www.copyright.gov/history/1790act.pdf
[3] http://eduscapes.com/bookhistory/intellectualproperty/4.htm
[4] http://digitalcommons.law.scu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?articl...
Re: Jury in Oracle v. Google finds in Google's favour
#354If Oracle decides to drop Java development, I wonder who will bother to pick it up. Surely not Google, if they hadn't bothered the first time around.
Considering IBM/SAP are vowing to bring Swift to masses on servers and clients. Apple/MS dropped Java quite a while back. I do not see any big vendor with serious money to pick Java development. Redhat is there but I doubt they will when they might be looking to push Ceylon. Of course it is hypothetical as I absolutely do not think Oracle will consider doing such thing.
Oracle had already a big bet on Java before they bough Sun.
Many of the Oracle-hate group aren't aware of the NC Computer and the JavaStation, or that already in 2000 most of the Oracle GUI tools were Java based.
So on one hand they have lots of interest in Java and have been better than Sun in its last years, but they also have not been handling JEE, JavaFX and mobile support on iOS and WP that well.
Also many of the nice goodies in language evolution have been postponed for Java 10 (AOT, value types, JNI replacement).
Being too old at this game I have the same feelings that Java might follow Clipper or Delphi footsteps, if Oracle looses interest in the tech stack and no one picks it up, regardless how ingrained Java is nowadays.
IBM is not only looking at Swift, they also have made J9 modular as a framework for implementing language runtimes.
Re: Jury in Oracle v. Google finds in Google's favour
#355Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's not relevant to fair use analysis. What's relevant to fair use analysis is if Java's market would have been bigger if Google neither bought a license nor produced Android. Obviously, any unlicensed use of a copyright protected work is going to reduce the caller of the protected work compared to the exact same behavior coupled with paying for a license, but that's not what the market effect factor is about.
You miss the case where Google had produced Android with a different platform (LLVM, Objective-C, or their own language). Since Java was in decline on mobile, it should have just entirely ripped Java from the mobile market.
I don't miss that case, I just don't believe it's the relevant one for fair use analysis. Though, if it were, that would weigh even more heavily in Google's favor.
Re: Jury in Oracle v. Google finds in Google's favour
#356This is 100% inaccurate That story leaves out significant details, and his description of the reason is wrong. He leaves out significant prior sources and reasons, to the point your statement "It was not created to help artists or whoever" is simply wrong. Wikipedia provides a far better history with extensive sources [1]. Note for example the section "Early Developments" where they list precursors to anything in you…
"That story leaves out significant details, and his description of the reason is wrong. He leaves out significant prior sources and reasons, to the point your statement "It was not created to help artists or whoever" is simply wrong.
"
If you want to point out details, i'm sure Karl will correct it.
"Wikipedia provides a far better history with extensive sources [1]. Note for example the section "Early Developments" where they list precursors to anything in your source as having significant components of individual and author rights. "
These citations are, honestly, mostly BS. Read the early documents yourself, and you'll see they pretty much make it up as they go along.
"Note also in the US copyright law was started by author guilds wanting author protection, and the first federal copyright act in 1790 was about protection for authors, not for printers."
This is kind of irrelevant to why copyright law came to be, since by then it was already a thing, and part of the entire point is that by then, authors and others had started trying to convince others that it was needed for protectionist reasons, claiming that history also felt a need to be protectionist, when this is completely inaccurate.
Re: Jury in Oracle v. Google finds in Google's favour
#357Earlier quoted context omitted.
Using Wikipedia as an authoritative source is actively discourage by Wikipedia project itself and by basically every university and research body in existence. The Early Developments section you talk about is about the concept of copyright as it exist today, rather than the history of copyright law as it was made. The French law, while tangential, followed a different path and focus heavily on the concept of moral ri…
>Using Wikipedia as an authoritative source... Which is why you can check the references. When the article linked above about copyright is clearly coming from an anti-copyright source, and does not mention multiple important things Wikipedia does, I think any intelligent person realizes the Wikipedia source is more credible. As to overall accuracy of Wikipedia, many, many studies show it is quite accurate. Google and…
"Which is why you can check the references. When the article linked above about copyright is clearly coming from an anti-copyright source, and does not mention multiple important things Wikipedia does, I think any intelligent person realizes the Wikipedia source is more credible.
"
You can also check the references from the article i cited. But apparently, those references are somehow wrong, and yours, somehow right, simply because they are cited by wikipedia?
Would you care to point how they are wrong?
Instead you simply say it's "100% inaccurate", because a few other law articles say something else. That is quite a claim!
(Note, the ones Karl is citing in his article are in much larger law journals, books on copyright history, etc. The things Wikipedia is citing are mostly pretty niche)
I think any intelligent person realizes wikipedia is mostly astroturfed these days, and also usually represents popular opinion on things, not accurate history.
Re: Jury in Oracle v. Google finds in Google's favour
#358Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Many today disagree with this because they grew up in a digital age where copyright was seen as simply an unnecessary impediment to the otherwise limitless and basically cost-free capacity we all have to reproduce digital products in our modern world and hence an impediment to the social good that would come from widespread sharing of such products for free. As a creator, I agree with the idea of copyright, but as…
That's alright for mere consumption, but what about derivatives? I mean, take a look at fan-fiction - it's practically a violation of copyright by definition, and yet it provides a template for budding authors so they don't have to invent their own characters and world from scratch to start writing interesting interactions - there are an awful lot of major authors that wouldn't have started writing if it weren't for…
The world would have missed out on Gilbert Gottfried reading this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkLqAlIETkA
Re: Jury in Oracle v. Google finds in Google's favour
#359Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Many today disagree with this because they grew up in a digital age where copyright was seen as simply an unnecessary impediment to the otherwise limitless and basically cost-free capacity we all have to reproduce digital products in our modern world and hence an impediment to the social good that would come from widespread sharing of such products for free. As a creator, I agree with the idea of copyright, but as…
That's alright for mere consumption, but what about derivatives? I mean, take a look at fan-fiction - it's practically a violation of copyright by definition, and yet it provides a template for budding authors so they don't have to invent their own characters and world from scratch to start writing interesting interactions - there are an awful lot of major authors that wouldn't have started writing if it weren't for…
Derivatives are particularly difficult, that's for sure.
In the software world we have licenses that explicitly lay this out.
The music industry does actually have this sorted out, with ways to license music for covers (mechanical licenses) or remixing -- although the latter is definitely complicated [1] and is similar to fan fiction in that many artists/DJs get started by making remixes.
There's an entire wikipedia page on legal issues relating to fan fiction [2].
It's definitely not an obvious thing. Using your example, how do you decide if 50 Shades of Grey is a legitimate new work or a rip-off of the next part of the story Twilight was going to tell? If a similar story was released by the author(s) of Twilight would it be considered a rip-off of 50 Shades of Grey? What if it was revealed to be in the works prior to the release of 50 Shades of Grey?
[1] http://djtechtools.com/2012/03/25/legal-concerns-for-digital... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_issues_with_fan_fiction
Re: Jury in Oracle v. Google finds in Google's favour
#360IANAL