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

arstechnica.com

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

#401

Post by dragonwriter »

rayiner wrote: post #396
dragonwriter wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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: h…

> A big majority of Democrats support Medicare 4 All

Sure, a big majority of Democrats in the electorate do.

The description of the center or center-right nature of the Democratic Party is not a description of the party-in-the-electorate but the institutional party. In fact, it's frequently expressly contrasted with the views of the party-in-the-electorate to argue that the institutional party is a poor agent of its membership.

Turning to polls of the party-in-the-electorate to argue against the characterization is, at best, not understanding what the discussion is about and, at worst, the fallacy of equivocation.

> netting transfers mixes up the tax system from the welfare system.

In every state, taxes and the welfare system are already mixed up, and the division of function between them isn’t consistent fromm state to state. Viewing them separately miscasts differences in preferred vehicle with differences in preferred function. Or vice versa.

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

#402

Post by sharkmerry »

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…

I think OPs idea was where is the smallest unit. A recipe for chocolate chip cookies is a curated collection of recipes for each ingredients, chocolate chip being one.

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

#403

Post by abvdasker »

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…

I understand that applying utilitarian principles to a strictly deontological framework like the law is pointless, but the API issue is a situation where, regardless of the precedent or ideas about authorship, the adverse impact of a ruling in favor of Oracle on the broader tech sector seems like it should be the cardinal consideration.

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

#404

Post by nojito »

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…

>What's worse for Google is that code has always been considered copyrightable so arguing that APIs are non-copyrightable is essentially carving out an exception for a specific type of code.

Congress would have made that exemption when they made the law in the first place.

>A “computer program” is a set of statements or instructions to be used directly or indirectly in a computer in order to bring about a certain result.

This is an important fact people keep forgetting. Asking the Court to bluntly create legislation is never ever going to happen.

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

#405

Post by AnthonyMouse »

mumblemumble wrote: post #395
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 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…

> The law understands that the whole is more than the sum of its parts.

My point is that "the whole" is the implementation of the Java standard library and the API is really still just the recipe.

> 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."

The line is clear even if the language puts them both in the same file.

  public class Foo {
    public static void Hello(String[] args) {
        System.out.println("Hello World");
    }
  }
"public static void Hello(String[] args)" is part of the API. "System.out.println("Hello World");" is the implementation of that function.

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

#406

Post by nobodyandproud »

mumblemumble wrote: post #395
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 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…

>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.

Which in of itself is a long avoided question that sorely needs to be addressed.

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

#407

Post by nojito »

abvdasker wrote: post #403
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…

I understand that applying utilitarian principles to a strictly deontological framework like the law is pointless, but the API issue is a situation where, regardless of the precedent or ideas about authorship, the adverse impact of a ruling in favor of Oracle on the broader tech sector seems like it should be the cardinal consideration.

This entire topic was discussed during the oral arguments. Google can not prove these adverse effects that they continue to claim will happen.

They have had 6 years to do so and yet they can not state a single instance.

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

#408

Post by FartyMcFarter »

R0b0t1 wrote: post #160
phkahler wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> If APIs become copyrightable, what happens to any open source software the implements a proprietary API? That has implications for language implementations too. Who would own the standard library for any given language? What about programs that call API functions? Are they derivative works too? An API is necessarily functional first and foremost. It would cause chaos and some weird dystopian future if Oracle wins.

Another interesting take: Machine architectures expose an API, and it may become impossible for anyone but a chip manufacturer to distribute a compiler.

I don't see the similarity.

A compiler outputs machine code, it doesn't implement machine code.

Google's Java implementation implements Java APIs.

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

#410

Post by nojito »

xoxoy wrote: post #211
doesnotexist wrote: post #128

Should Oracle win this case, I predict that Free Software licenses will emerge as the clear market choice. Licenses that enshrine interoperability along with the freedom to modify or reimplement in part or wholesale will suddenly provide significantly more value over non-Free software which will be a proprietary minefield and the value will not be for technical but purely from legal liability. Anyone setting out to d…

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.

Giving a lawyer an unwinnable case does not take away from the fact that he is one of the most successful SC lawyers in the world.
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