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Google and Oracle's decade-long copyright battle reaches Supreme Court
21–30 of 433 posts
Re: Google and Oracle's decade-long copyright battle reaches Supreme Court
#22I think it is quite likely that we as a society would be better off without any kind of copyright or IP. This might prevent some of the parties doing huge upfront investments in some of the projects, but if we learned something from OSS and, most importantly, Linux is that gradual and tiny improvements over 30 years can compound to a behemoth that eats any commercial solution for lunch.
True. IMHO IP law is based on a moral and not a utilitarian basis, and as we know from almost all recent FLOSS projects especially in Cloud (Linux, Kubernetes, ...) IP is just a massive hindrance to productivity and has a net negative effect on the industry.
The US Constitution explicitly cites utilitarian goals in the Copyright Clause.
Re: Google and Oracle's decade-long copyright battle reaches Supreme Court
#23I think we would be better off, if we follow the pharmacy world. Like they have full controls over a new vaccine for x years and then it becomes generic! Problem is that technology space moves so fast that if x year term is say 5-10 years , that would nullify entire process!
That's exactly how Copyright works, which is to be expected because Copyrights and Patents are governed by the same overarching law.
Re: Google and Oracle's decade-long copyright battle reaches Supreme Court
#24I think it is quite likely that we as a society would be better off without any kind of copyright or IP. This might prevent some of the parties doing huge upfront investments in some of the projects, but if we learned something from OSS and, most importantly, Linux is that gradual and tiny improvements over 30 years can compound to a behemoth that eats any commercial solution for lunch.
Those that absorb effort, resources and risk in creating something new/innovative should at least have the opportunity be compensated for their investment. The balance needs to be fair, and that’s what is being argued. It’s simply not as black and white as how you have described this issue.
Re: Google and Oracle's decade-long copyright battle reaches Supreme Court
#25> Those in Oracle's camp say if its copyright is not protected, that will discourage innovation. Look at the way YouTube Content ID encourages innovation and then imagine GitHub Content ID. “Your repository contains 3 copyrighted method calls. You’ve been issued a copyright strike.” I’d love to see every open source repo on the internet go private for 1 day as a demonstration of what could be lost if copyright is all…
In this timeline, the Wine repo mirror will be instantaneously banned on GitHub.
Wine's userspace being legal is probably what keeps the gamers from just running the available userspace source code from Microsoft. I doubt getting it banned would be something Microsoft actually wants.
Re: Google and Oracle's decade-long copyright battle reaches Supreme Court
#26I think it is quite likely that we as a society would be better off without any kind of copyright or IP. This might prevent some of the parties doing huge upfront investments in some of the projects, but if we learned something from OSS and, most importantly, Linux is that gradual and tiny improvements over 30 years can compound to a behemoth that eats any commercial solution for lunch.
Would Linux have succeeded to the extent it has without copyright? Its licensing model depends heavily on copyright law.
Re: Google and Oracle's decade-long copyright battle reaches Supreme Court
#27> Those in Oracle's camp say if its copyright is not protected, that will discourage innovation. Look at the way YouTube Content ID encourages innovation and then imagine GitHub Content ID. “Your repository contains 3 copyrighted method calls. You’ve been issued a copyright strike.” I’d love to see every open source repo on the internet go private for 1 day as a demonstration of what could be lost if copyright is all…
Then imagine the outrage from European companies and users getting hit by this ludicrous US copyright thing that doesn't apply to them (the European court rejected oracle claims long ago).
Could be a good moment for the European software industry.
Re: Google and Oracle's decade-long copyright battle reaches Supreme Court
#28I think it is quite likely that we as a society would be better off without any kind of copyright or IP. This might prevent some of the parties doing huge upfront investments in some of the projects, but if we learned something from OSS and, most importantly, Linux is that gradual and tiny improvements over 30 years can compound to a behemoth that eats any commercial solution for lunch.
I am not sure I agree with this statement in the absolute. I think about art, and artists as a musician myself. One advantage of copyright is that it does, indeed, give artists recourse when people use their works without compensation. The photographer whose picture was copied and pasted onto an advertisement. The musician trying to sell their first album. You could argue that litigation is too costly for an individu…
The truth is somewhere between your statement and parent's, in my opinion.
Copyright is necessary but the laws today are draconian and far too extensive. For works since 1978, copyright lasts for the entire length of the author's life, plus an additional 70 years. The "Mickey Mouse" protection act (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act) increased this even further for some works.
There's a need to allow artists and writers to make money from their creations and not just get their work instantly reproduced by pirates. At the same time, it's in the public interest for their work to become widely available after a short period of protection. I don't know exactly how long that period should be to maximally benefit society, but 15 years sounds a lot more reasonable than life+75 years.
It's absolutely absurd that Arthur Conan Doyle's distant ancestors can today be suing people for creating derivatives of Sherlock Holmes, a literary character conceived in 1887. Sherlock Holmes belongs to the public, not some greedy relatives trying to leech a living from him.
Re: Google and Oracle's decade-long copyright battle reaches Supreme Court
#29> Those in Oracle's camp say if its copyright is not protected, that will discourage innovation. Look at the way YouTube Content ID encourages innovation and then imagine GitHub Content ID. “Your repository contains 3 copyrighted method calls. You’ve been issued a copyright strike.” I’d love to see every open source repo on the internet go private for 1 day as a demonstration of what could be lost if copyright is all…
This is a complete dramatization. Are you copying 10k lines of code from a licensed code base into your project without permission and using it in your commercial product?
Github projects already should strive to use correct licensing, and comply with the license of code they use. There is nothing new here.
Re: Google and Oracle's decade-long copyright battle reaches Supreme Court
#30If this (somehow) succeeds, could IBM sue Oracle over SQL compatibility?
There are specific exceptions for compatibility. Android Java never tried to be compatible, various required APIs were replaced or are just flat out missing from the runtime library.
Of course it's about compatibility, about code-reuse of existing libraries. – Which is done a lot to this day.