471–480 of 771 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Schwartz's beliefs and statements don't apply. Schwartz didn't write the controlling law.
Schwartz's was the CEO of the company that held the "copyright" should one exist at the time of the alleged "infringement" Thus Schwartz's beliefs are and should be relevant
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…
Naive question: how and why is this different from the various precedents which allowed "clean room" reimplementation of an interface/API?
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…
Having read multiple perspectives, some pro-Google and some pro-Oracle, I cannot reconcile this sort of argument with the Baker v. Selden precedent. [1] Perhaps my understanding of APIs is different because I'm an engineer and not a lawyer, but how is this not an open and shut case? The cookbook analogy is not applicable for the same reason one could not apply it in Baker , accounting methods are not of themselves co…
I have designed hundreds of APIs and SDKs myself as well and I could not disagree with you more.
API design is about deliberately and creatively considering the domain model of your user (whether that domain is Int or Float for a user who is a low level system programmer or the domain is CheckingAccount and SavingsAccount for a user who is a banking application developer, or anything in between or beyond). You creatively set up APIs so that composition of the API primitives allows direct expression of solutions in the user’s domain.
This is exactly like arranging recipes in a recipe book, to organize sections for different styles, meals or amount of prep time, holiday themes, etc. That is exactly software API design to a tee.
This article highlights it for me:
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…
When I learned that Java is open source, I had assumed that it was free . I guess I was wrong.
Also, I forget if openjdk or this infringement happened first, but if the latter was first than it wasn't open source at the time.
And actually I think a ruling that APIs are copyrightable would be very good for copy left licenses and languages described in open standards, because they would not leave on at the mercy of a single monopolist.
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I'm not going to argue whether I think APIs should be copyrightable, but I believe creating a good API is a work of creative design, and is artistic I design an API for graphical coding and spend significant creative energy choosing the right words, calling conventions, result types to not only make something intuitive, but emotionally pleasurable to code with Sometimes I'll spend days writing out possible forms of t…
> I'm not going to argue whether I think APIs should be copyrightable, but I believe creating a good API is a work of creative design, and is artistic But that's not what it's about. Lots of things are a work of creative design but not copyrightable. Like a recipe for chocolate chip cookies.
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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.
(speaking as a software developer) this dramatically underestimates the intelligence of top lawyers relative to average software developers, and also misunderstands the facts of how law works (the subject matter expertose required is still mostly in law rather than in software development).
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…
My least favorite part of the arguments was when the US government representative used the existence of open source licenses that explicitly allow copying declarations to claim that it's not commonly believed that such rights don't exist. "There is a prevalent practice of licensed copying of declarations and often that is done through what is called open-source licensing" ...(6 minutes later) "sometimes, often the li…
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…
https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/18/18-956/128391/2020...
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I agree. Personally, I espouse the "copyright should not exist at all" viewpoint. However, I think in the current legal framework, APIs are clearly copyrightable. However, re-implementing the APIs should obviously be allowed under fair use. Remember that copyright exists solely for the purposes of increasing the production of otherwise-easily-copyable works that take time to create but then are "worthless" (i.e. the…
> copyright should not exist at all Copyright is not just about software. Imagine a world in which you write a novel, let's call it Harry Potter, and publish it. And then I see people liking it, so I publish it too, but I can sell it cheaper because I don't have to recoup the costs of having written it. Or imagine you write and record a song, let's call it Revolution. A shoe company can use that exact recording in an…
However, society should use IP laws to maximize the societal goods of creation, not to keep the entrenched players' businesses profitable.
There are hundreds of ways to monetize creative works. It's laughable to think that creativity will cease if we don't allow 70 year rent-seeking on the products of that effort.
I think 90%+ percent of "societally useful" IP revenue would be preserved if copyright terms were only 1 year. If it was eliminated entirely, artists would move to crowdfunding and commission based methods of getting paid for creation.
I think the first half of last century's music industry is an interesting example: back then the vast majority of artists rose to prominence by playing already-popular songs before transitioning into their own songwriting. How much is creativity squelched by the current system where licensing is at the arbitrary discretion of the IP owner, and how should society weigh this against the potential reduced economic incentive to create works if cultural products become freely distributable?