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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

#331

Post by sushshshsh »

sgc wrote: post #193
zingermc wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

void DocumentScribbler.scribble(String s)

Using String as a ProgType(tm)? That's a paddlin'. We use CharGroup around here, which we are willing to license for a small fee. For a limited time, get 10% off when you license three or more ProgTypes(tm)! Indemnification licensed separately. Contact our enterprise relations desk for details.

And then when you contact them it goes to voicemail, they call you back 9 times 3 days later and sell your email address to everyone under the sun :)

OH and then when theyre about to drop in stock price because they dont know how to deliver valuable products, they use the US government to force other companies to buy their product otherwise the US government will kick that prospective customer out of US markets ^.^

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

#332

Post by mehrdadn »

throwaway373438 wrote: post #330
mehrdadn wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're saying a car that's 1 inch narrower somehow wouldn't fit the same roads?

What does "1 inch narrower" mean to you, in the context of this analogy? Are you suggesting the interfaces have different names? Different sized arguments? None of those things would work. Besides, creating minor differences do not solve this problem as they would still be derivative works.

> What does "1 inch narrower" mean to you, in the context of this analogy? Are you suggesting the interfaces have different names? Different sized arguments?

Your question is exactly my point. I'm suggesting what I said earlier:

>> I don't think that's a good analogy at all.

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

#334

Post by anigbrowl »

Sigh...I've been commenting on this case almost as long as I've been on HN. At this point I enjoy fantasizing about a coronal mass ejection causing an electrical storm that would obviate everything to do with it. Well, there's always n-gate.

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

#335

Post by monocasa »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #218
partingshots wrote: post #168

Why does Oracle care so much about Android in the first place? Does it even make any money for Google?

It can make a lot of money for Oracle (by suing Google). That, and only that, is why Oracle cares.

It's deeper than that. Ellison and Jobs were best friends (to the point that they could be seen in public occasionally wearing matching best friends tshirts).

Jobs died thinking that Android (and particularly Eric Schmidt's part in sitting on the Apple board while Android was being cooked up at Google) was a personal affront to his magnum opus of iPhone, and the rumor is that Ellison agreed to hurt Android any way he could more or less without regard for the costs.

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

#338

Post by gpm »

nimish wrote: post #336

The solution here is to pass a law that exempts APIs from copyright, not to rely on a geriatric body of lawyers to interpret laws not designed around technology

The current law does exempt APIs from copyright via sensible general principles (you can't copyright functional things, which as applied in this case is known as the merger doctrine).

If the court gets it wrong congress should fix it, but ideally we don't want a law that is a patchwork of tiny little exceptions because that fails to generalize to new things, so we would rather that the court just properly understands how to apply general principles.

Even if the court gets it wrong, my favored way of fixing it would be to modify the general principle to be less ambiguous to this case, not to explicitly make an api exception.

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

#339

Post by gpm »

foota wrote: post #305
jcranmer wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The decision can theoretically come anytime between now and the end of next June, largely dependent on how complex the decision is. My personal guess is somewhere between January and March of next year.

Interesting. If there is a new judge appointed before that time would they join the decision or would it only be those judges that heard the case?

They would typically not join the decision.

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

#340

Post by dragonwriter »

nimish wrote: post #336

The solution here is to pass a law that exempts APIs from copyright, not to rely on a geriatric body of lawyers to interpret laws not designed around technology

> The solution here is to pass a law that exempts APIs from copyright

But APIs were never included, explicitly, in copyright in the first place. Why do they need to be explicitly excluded?

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