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Google and Oracle's decade-long copyright battle reaches Supreme Court

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Re: Google and Oracle's decade-long copyright battle reaches Supreme Court

#31

Post by ghaff »

memset wrote: post #17
tasubotadas wrote: post #10

I 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…

In a no copyright world, I assume you would have aggregators who vacuum up photos, books, etc. and index/package/curate them in a way that they're more easily discoverable and consumable by the people willing to pay for that service. Without paying anything to the original creators.

You've seen this on a small scale in areas like clipart. It's not a very lucrative business though and it does mean you only have creators with either "passion" or money.

Re: Google and Oracle's decade-long copyright battle reaches Supreme Court

#32

Post by bluecalm »

tasubotadas wrote: post #10

I 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.

Huge upfront investment like writing a book or composing music. It's a common moral intuition that it's not ok to take what others spent time developing and profit from it instead of them without adding much yourself.

It's the scope and duration of the protection that is a problem but I think it's too simplistic to say we don't need it at all.

Re: Google and Oracle's decade-long copyright battle reaches Supreme Court

#33

Post by protomyth »

nvarsj wrote: post #29
donmcronald wrote: post #4

> 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.

I'm not sure it is. Given that an original API might have a single method with the same signature as one used in a copyrighted API or the malicious actors we have in this industry, I can see the problems with YouTube Content ID coming to GitHub.

Re: Google and Oracle's decade-long copyright battle reaches Supreme Court

#34

Post by coldpie »

nvarsj wrote: post #29
donmcronald wrote: post #4

> 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.

You don't understand what this case is about. This is about copyrighting API descriptions. Not copying code, but reimplementing an API that someone else created. Think about how many people created each part of the various web APIs. Is XmlHTTPRequest now owned by Microsoft? Who invented the Blink tag? Who owns which parts of the SQL language? The entire software industry is built on the idea that APIs are not copyrightable. If you thought software patent trolling was bad, buddy, you ain't see nothin' yet.

Re: Google and Oracle's decade-long copyright battle reaches Supreme Court

#35

Post by vetinari »

nvarsj wrote: post #29
donmcronald wrote: post #4

> 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.

> Are you copying 10k lines of code from a licensed code base into your project without permission and using it in your commercial product?

You surely meant 9, not 10k, lines of code for rangeCheck(), didn't you?

Re: Google and Oracle's decade-long copyright battle reaches Supreme Court

#36

Post by est31 »

gonzo41 wrote: post #27
user5994461 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

EU has the copyright directive with its upload filters.

Re: Google and Oracle's decade-long copyright battle reaches Supreme Court

#37

Post by protomyth »

tonetheman wrote: post #3
blackbear_ wrote: post #2

Waiting for Oracle to patent social networks and sue Facebook...

I am always downvoted when I comment on Oracle stories but if Tiktok has any IP around social or uploading videos... you that is exactly their intention.

Anyone who has had dealings with Oracle licensing knows how bad this is going to get.

Re: Google and Oracle's decade-long copyright battle reaches Supreme Court

#38

Post by ChrisLomont »

necheffa wrote: post #15
kelnage wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not at all clear how you are comparing Linux to its closed competitors, but frankly, if that’s the best example you can pick, I’d suggest copyright is largely winning that battle. Yes, Linux has probably “won” in some markets (servers/IoT being the obvious ones), but there are plenty of markets where that is not even close to being true.

> plenty Actually, just one, the desktop. In virtually every other market, Linux is either dominating or has a firm share.

Phones, billions of devices running various embedded real-time os, gaming like Xbox and playstation, watches, smart TVs, medical devices, space systems, and many other places are not Linux dominated, and many of these have almost zero Linux presence.

Re: Google and Oracle's decade-long copyright battle reaches Supreme Court

#39

Post by diffeomorphism »

ubercow13 wrote: post #26
tasubotadas wrote: post #10

I 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.

I guess the argument is that "copyleft" is not needed without "copyright". In particular, look at the four freedoms:

0) free to run the program as you wish, for any purpose

1) The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish.

2) The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help others.

3) The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others.

The only thing taking away these freedoms is copyright and public domain software gives you all these freedoms. The only caveat is with 1) in that one could use digital restrictions management to make this harder. However, there is a difference between "circumventing DRM is difficult" and "circumventing DRM is illegal".

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