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Google’s Supreme Court faceoff with Oracle was a disaster for Google

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Re: Google’s Supreme Court faceoff with Oracle was a disaster for Google

#391

Post by TheDong »

tjchear wrote: post #59
sjg007 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To play devil's advocate: Architectural diagrams/design specifications for physical buildings are copyrightable. The implementation is obviously whatever the builder does. But in general, I think that is a pretty close analogy to APIs and implementation code. APIs also capture some sense of overall system design as well. So that may lend further credence to support copyrights.

I disagree that the IRL analogy of API is architectural diagrams. A better analogy for API would be an agreement on how to communicate what needs to be done (and what has been done) between two persons. The aggregate effect of that over thousands of people is a working system, coordinated by the mastermind (programmer) who dictates the actual orchestration of the entire system. If API is copyrightable, I'd love to be…

Copyright violation requires copying, and independent derivation is a valid defense.

Patents don't require proof of copying and are always infringed, even with no knowledge.

If you wrote that API, and I wrote that exact same API without having seen yours, you wouldn't be able to sue me for copyright violation.

All I'd have to show in court is that there's a decent probability that I independently created the same API, at which point we'd both have full copyright over our own (identical) APIs, and more likely it would be ruled un-copyrightable due to being too trivial / not creative enough.

Re: Google’s Supreme Court faceoff with Oracle was a disaster for Google

#392

Post by eastbayjake »

nodamage wrote: post #240

I'm not sure why so many people here seem to be surprised by this, I got the exact same impression from the hearing. The problem for Google on the copyrightability front is that "compilations" of non-copyrightable items can be copyrightable even if the underlying items themselves are not, if the "selection, coordination, or arrangement" of those items involves sufficient creativity to be considered an "original work…

> As is common when HN discusses legal matters I see a lot of people blaming the judges for not understanding tech, but the problem here isn't really the judges so much as the law itself.

Or to state it more plainly: the problem is legislators not understanding tech, and not updating our laws to account for the way computers and the internet have transformed society over the last 40 years. This was a similar gripe in the Net Neutrality arguments on HN. It's truly insane that regulatory bodies are using public utility laws from 1934 - before even the mass adoption of television - to create the rules that govern the internet.

Re: Google’s Supreme Court faceoff with Oracle was a disaster for Google

#393

Post by blunte »

1123581321 wrote: post #335
blunte wrote: post #327

It is absurd that "judges" should be in the position to judge issues which they have no understanding of. I would bet that at least some of the members of the Supreme Court do not even know how to check and send email. In the same way they depend on others to perform basic and advanced computer tasks, they should depend on a "jury" of tech experts to filter the cases and provide suggestions or hopefully reasonable an…

You are describing Supreme Court clerks with your first suggestion. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_law_clerks_of_the_S...

I find it hard to believe that even a top performing law school grad would be a subject matter expert comparable to a 5 or 10+ year developer for this topic.

Re: Google’s Supreme Court faceoff with Oracle was a disaster for Google

#394

Post by dragonwriter »

shmerl wrote: post #374
dragonwriter wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This court hasn't decided anything on the issue, so that's a bit premature unless its a response to the general concept of the Supreme Court deciding anything, in which case its a bit...tangential.

Yeah, I corrected the comment. I also find it weird that "conservative" judges are expected to support APIs copyrightability. Is it because conservative is supposed to mean opposed to progress? Declaring APIs copyrightable is going to hurt the progress and technology.

> I also find it weird that "conservative" judges are expected to support APIs copyrightability.

They aren't expected to because they are conservative.

The judges that acted in a way which (the writer believes) suggests they support Oracle's position happen to also be the conservative justices.

Re: Google’s Supreme Court faceoff with Oracle was a disaster for Google

#395

Post by mumblemumble »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #368
nodamage wrote: post #240

I'm not sure why so many people here seem to be surprised by this, I got the exact same impression from the hearing. The problem for Google on the copyrightability front is that "compilations" of non-copyrightable items can be copyrightable even if the underlying items themselves are not, if the "selection, coordination, or arrangement" of those items involves sufficient creativity to be considered an "original work…

> As applied to Java, individual method signatures like min and max might not be copyrightable, but someone had to go in and organize those individual methods into classes, and organize those classes into packages. That act of organization likely implies that the Java API (taken as a whole) constitutes a copyrightable work, even if the individual method signatures are not. The problem with this theory is that class a…

You seem to have misread what was being said, because you seem to be arguing against something that was explicitly stated to not be the case:

> individual recipes are generally not copyrightable, but if you compile a set of recipes and publish them in a cookbook, the cookbook itself becomes copyrightable.

(emphasis mine)

The law understands that the whole is more than the sum of its parts. And Java adds up a lot of parts. It's also an interesting model case because it's inherently so very open, without (particularly pre-Jigsaw) a clearly demarcated dividing line between "API" and "implementation." Alito's not unreasonable to suggest that a Supreme Court ruling in Google's favor might raise difficult questions about how copyright law applies to software in general.

Re: Google’s Supreme Court faceoff with Oracle was a disaster for Google

#396

Post by rayiner »

dragonwriter wrote: post #356
rayiner wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on how you define things. For example, do you measure by where Democrats end up in practice, or where they want to go? For example, the United States is to the right of Germany in terms of universal healthcare. But Medicare 4 All, where many Democrats appear to want to go in the long term--though they disagree about how quickly they want to get there--would be quite to the left compared to the multi-payor…

> But Medicare 4 All, where many Democrats appear to want to go in the long term--though they disagree about how quickly they want to get there Democrats generally agree that there should be universal access to health care, and a mostly agree that that should involve a public plan (not just a private subsidy) available to at least some section of the population beyond the current Medicaid population. There is not gen…

> There is not general agreement within the Democratic Party on universal single-payer as even a long-term goal. The currently dominant neoliberal faction of the Democratic Party supports a public option as a long-term component of healthcare policy to acheive universal access, but does not generally support single-payer as a goal, in either the near or long term.

A big majority of Democrats support Medicare 4 All: https://www.kff.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/9394-Figure-3.... They support a public option somewhat more, but to me it seems more like they do so to soften the transition to a single-payer system. A “public option” wouldn’t be like the multi-payer systems of Germany, Switzerland, or the Netherlands. Since it would kill private competitors in the long run, it’s just a slower road to single payer.

Regarding taxes: netting transfers mixes up the tax system from the welfare system. As the article points out, our taxation is progressive but our spending is regressive. It’s a system designed to redistribute money from the rich to the middle class, not the middle class to the poor.

As to Germany, I use that as an example because it’s a large European country and I’m familiar with it. CDU has been moving left for the last 15 years: https://fivethirtyeight.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/hazar....

Like the above, various international party comparisons show Democrats moving left of center by 2012: https://fivethirtyeight.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/hazar...

As to social or religious issues, Italy or Spain would be more conservative in some respects. (Islam isn’t a recognized religion in Italy.)

The recent rise of progressives has moved Democrats sharply left in part because Europe has been moving to the right economically for decades. Low corporate and investment taxes and deregulation is gospel across the European center, but it’s disappeared among progressive Democrats. That wasn’t remarkable in 1975 but it’s remarkable today. Macron, for example, is campaigning on deregulation and a government takeover of Islam, and his major competition is to his right. Center left parties in France aren’t questioning the country’s fairly low corporate and investment taxes. Neither are those in Spain. Democrats (in particular Warren’s utterly cockamamie proposal) really stand out in that area as a throwback.

Green New Deal is a great example of this. It’s an FDR era jobs program. It stands in stark contrast to Europe, which is doing carbon pricing. Progressives seem to have developed an allergy to markets, and while the center isn’t there yet it’s not pushing back either.

I mean that’s before you get started on Sweden’s center-left party continuing to cut corporate taxes and partially privatizing social security.

Oh, I forgot about school choice. Democrats are far to the left compared to Europe in that.

Re: Google’s Supreme Court faceoff with Oracle was a disaster for Google

#397

Post by AnthonyMouse »

jacobkania wrote: post #387
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As applied to Java, individual method signatures like min and max might not be copyrightable, but someone had to go in and organize those individual methods into classes, and organize those classes into packages. That act of organization likely implies that the Java API (taken as a whole) constitutes a copyrightable work, even if the individual method signatures are not. The problem with this theory is that class a…

You’re misunderstanding your cookie analogy. You can’t copyright a single recipe that contains components of other recipes, but if you had written a book titled “My grandmas chocolate chip cookies from scratch”, where the first recipe is for homemade chocolate chips, the second is for how to grind your own flour for dough, and the third is for combining the previous two into a cookie, then yeah you can copyright that…

> You can’t copyright a single recipe that contains components of other recipes, but if you had written a book titled “My grandmas chocolate chip cookies from scratch”, where the first recipe is for homemade chocolate chips, the second is for how to grind your own flour for dough, and the third is for combining the previous two into a cookie, then yeah you can copyright that particular set of recipes.

Suppose I want to compile the big book of all known recipes. Then it will contain every recipe in your book, in its entirety, as well as every recipe in every other book. But if I can put the entire contents of your book in my book then what is it that you're really claiming to protect? The order the recipes appear in the book, i.e. the order the classes appear in the file? Which isn't generally regarded as part of the API.

Re: Google’s Supreme Court faceoff with Oracle was a disaster for Google

#398

Post by pessimizer »

cultus wrote: post #176
grasshopperpurp wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm no expert on RBG, but I always pegged her as a Neo-Lib, rather than a Leftist.

This is really an important distinction. Social issues like gay marriage and things like this are completely orthogonal. The Democratic Party as a whole is very much neoliberal or liberal as opposed to left. Liberal judges are much the same.

Both parties are liberal. Republicans deviate from liberalism when pandering to their religious base, and Democrats deviate from liberalism when adding to the social safety net and labor rights, pandering to their left base. Neither party takes their deviations from liberalism seriously, and both parties have an interest in not resolving those (wedge) issues to keep voters from drifting to the other party.

Re: Google’s Supreme Court faceoff with Oracle was a disaster for Google

#399

Post by biztos »

hugi wrote: post #228
xoxoy wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Google lawyer should be fired. I can’t believe you’d put the best of the best in front of the SC and the guy didn’t even sound like he could describe what an API actually is in non-technical terms. I don’t see how he represented the best legal representation Google could buy.

Indeed. This was bad representation to the point that I'm wondering if it was intentional. Google might have recently realized that, as a monopoly, fighting for API freedom perhaps isn't in their best interest.

If they wanted to lose, wouldn't it have been much easier (and possibly cheaper) to settle?

I can't imagine Oracle would have a problem with getting to say they were right, and getting a boatload of cash, without all the bother of the Supreme Court.

And doesn't intentional bad representation have weird and costly externalities, like reputation damage for the lawyer?

I love the image of Google and Oracle behaving like gangsters, but I'm having trouble imagining it being this sloppy.

Re: Google’s Supreme Court faceoff with Oracle was a disaster for Google

#400

Post by jeremyjh »

mumblemumble wrote: post #367
jeremyjh wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They've given a license to use and extend the copy-written software, including its method signatures.

Oracle has done that, too. They release the full JDK under the GPL. The law around these sorts of things can get pretty hair-splitty. My guess is that the situation here is that Amazon client libraries and OpenJDK are distributed with a license to create derivative works that are based on their respective products, but that these licenses do not necessarily grant a license to create a new thing that works the same ou…

OpenJDK did not exist when Android was developed and initially released. Google did move to using it 2016 and may not have liability after that date.
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