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Computer Scientists Ask Supreme Court to Rule APIs Can’t Be Copyrighted

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Re: Computer Scientists Ask Supreme Court to Rule APIs Can’t Be Copyrighted

#21

Post by dragonwriter »

DevX101 wrote: post #6
wyager wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Or perhaps a trial by jury where the selection criteria is employment in the relevant discipline for at least 10 years (academia or corporate). This could be egregiously abused without too much cleverness. "Oh, you're self employed in software? No jury duty for you." "Oh, you don't work for GE, the only company approved by the 'What Counts As Corporate Software' board? No jury duty for you." One must be very careful…

You might be right. But our current system is already egregiously abused with minimal cleverness. One can predict with high accuracy a SC Justice's vote on most cases based on the political party of the president who appointed him/her.

> One can predict with high accuracy a SC Justice's vote on most cases based on the political party of the president who appointed him/her.

Having taken a number of law and judicial politics courses, I can say this has been studied and its not at all true. You can tell with some accuracy a SC Justice's vote on issues that had high political salience at the time the individual justice was appointed by the position of the appointing administration on those issues, but predicting votes by party identification fails rather drastically for most other issues. There's a few evergreen issues that have had both high political salience and fairly consistent partisan breakdown of positions over a long time (e.g., abortion, gun control), and so these issues tend to be pretty consistently predictable by party ID.

OTOH, most issues aren't like that (though issues that get lots of mainstream news coverage are disproportionately likely to be -- though even there many aren't), and issues like the particular one here (whether APIs are within the scope of copyright) haven't ever had high political salience.

Re: Computer Scientists Ask Supreme Court to Rule APIs Can’t Be Copyrighted

#22

Post by stonogo »

pdabbadabba wrote: post #15
kybernetyk wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> avg. age ~70 Why is that a problem? It's certainly possible that the judge was an avid home computer enthusiast in the 1980s and knows about tech. Old age doesn't automatically mean technological incompetence anymore.

Yes, and remember that each justice has an office full of clerks who will typically be in their late 20s and early 30s advising them.

The problem is the reprehensible ageism inherent in claiming older people are not capable of understanding technology. The same ageism you are implicitly supporting by "reassuring" us that young people (hence, magically tech-savvy people) will have input.

Re: Computer Scientists Ask Supreme Court to Rule APIs Can’t Be Copyrighted

#24

Post by bstrand »

woofyman wrote: post #11
DevX101 wrote: post #3

Although these issues are very important, something feels wrong about having the Supreme Court justices (avg. age ~70) rule on tech matters like this. We need a new legal system for arbitrating disputes in technical disciplines overseen by a panel of technical experts. Or perhaps a trial by jury where the selection criteria is employment in the relevant discipline for at least 10 years (academia or corporate).

Why is the average age of the Supreme Court justices relevant ?

Good question. It probably is not relevant. I presume it's predicated on the notion that olds are generally less tech savvy (and therefore less capable of fairly & reasonably adjudicating technology cases.)

Sarah Jeong has written thoughtfully on whether justices need be tech savvy: http://sarahjeong.net/2014/04/23/scotus-is-bad-at-computers-...

Re: Computer Scientists Ask Supreme Court to Rule APIs Can’t Be Copyrighted

#25

Post by rayiner »

DevX101 wrote: post #3

Although these issues are very important, something feels wrong about having the Supreme Court justices (avg. age ~70) rule on tech matters like this. We need a new legal system for arbitrating disputes in technical disciplines overseen by a panel of technical experts. Or perhaps a trial by jury where the selection criteria is employment in the relevant discipline for at least 10 years (academia or corporate).

I disagree.

This is not a case where you're digging around in the weeds trying to figure out which function does what. You don't need to be a computer scientist to understand the legally-relevant concepts in a case like this. Especially at the appellate level, where you're working with high-level concepts, and where you have people with the relevant technological background submitting amicus briefs explaining the concepts. I don't think anyone on the panel read the amicus briefs in this case and simply failed to understand what an API is.[1]

The real issue in this case is that a judge, applying the copyright law, simply does not care about whether finding API's to be copyrightable hinders interoperability or cloning of software. It's simply not legally relevant. The lynchpin of copyright is originality and creativity. Are the Java API's original and creative? That's the only relevant question.[2]

[1] And I would posit that software is easier to understand for a lay-person than a complex reinsurance arrangement or financial instrument. How would Hacker News react to the proposition that we should have specialized courts to decide financial disputes, with judges required to have a minimum of 10 years experience in Wall Street?

[2] Having written internal API's for software products, I would say they definitely are! API design is hard work that requires a lot of careful thought. Making a beautiful API is as much a creative expression as writing a sonnet or a short story, and is no less deserving of copyright protection.

Re: Computer Scientists Ask Supreme Court to Rule APIs Can’t Be Copyrighted

#26

Post by jofer »

snarfy wrote: post #2

Map makers should just copyright the lines that represent the borders of states, counties, and cities. Heck, copyright lines, points, and legends too.

This is actually a very major issue. They are copyrighted to varying degrees.

The fact that feature "z" is located at "x,y" can't be copyrighted, but the data file that describes exactly that can be and is. (There are good reasons for this. It's not as simple as the straw man I set up there.)

The US is very fortunate to require all government-produced cartographic data is solidly in the public domain. This is not the case in most countries.

Now there are several public-domain global datasets, but not very long ago obtaining basic cartographic data for many parts of the world was fraught with copyright issues.

It's rather annoying to have made a map of your study area and then find out that:, "Oh, wait. You can't publish that. Our license for the river locations only allows us to use the data internally. We can't publish a figure with that data on it!"

Re: Computer Scientists Ask Supreme Court to Rule APIs Can’t Be Copyrighted

#27

Post by shangxiao »

woofyman wrote: post #18
kybernetyk wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> avg. age ~70 Why is that a problem? It's certainly possible that the judge was an avid home computer enthusiast in the 1980s and knows about tech. Old age doesn't automatically mean technological incompetence anymore.

Nor does youth guarantee technical competence. As a 55 year old developer, I'm particularly sensitive to this kind of blatant ageism.

I thought developers over the age of 35 were taken out the back and shot, how did you escape??

Just curious as I turn 35 in a couple of years...

Edit: to the person who downvoted this, it's a joke in case you didn't notice

Re: Computer Scientists Ask Supreme Court to Rule APIs Can’t Be Copyrighted

#28

Post by acqq »

Signed by

        1. Harold Abelson.*
        2. Alfred V. Aho
        3. Tom Ball.*
        4. John Perry Barlow
        5. Brian Behlendorf
        6. Richard A. Belgard
        7. Jon Bentley
        8. Matthew Bishop
        9. Joshua Bloch
        10. Dan Boneh
        11. Gilad Bracha.*
        12. Eric Brewer.*
        13. Frederick Brooks
        14. Rick Cattell
        15. Vinton G. Cerf.*
        16. William Cook
        17. Ward Cunningham
        18. Mark Davis.*
        19. Jeffrey Dean.*
        20. L Peter Deutsch
        21. David L. Dill
        22. Les Earnest
        23. Brendan Eich
        24. Dave Farber
        25. Stuart Feldman.*
        26. Edward W. Felten
        27. Jeremiah Flerchinger
        28. Martin Fowler
        29. Neal Gafter
        30. John Gage
        31. Allan Gottlieb
        32. Miguel de Icaza
        33. John Hennessy.*
        34. Tom Jennings
        35. Mitchell Kapor
        36. Alan Kay
        37. Brian Kernighan.*
        38. David Klausner
        39. Ray Kurzweil.*
        40. Kin Lane
        41. Ed Lazowska
        42. Doug Lea
        43. Sheng Liang
        44. Barbara Liskov
        45. Paul Menchini
        46. James H. Morris
        47. Peter Norvig.*
        48. Martin Odersky
        49. Tim Paterson
        50. David Patterson.*
        51. Alex Payne
        52. Tim Peierls
        53. Simon Phipps
        54. Bill Pugh
        55. Larry Roberts
        56. Guido van Rossum
        57. Avi Rubin
        58. Bruce Schneier
        59. Curtis Schroeder
        60. Barbara Simons
        61. Dave Snigier
        62. Alfred Z. Spector.*
        63. Bjarne Stroustrup
        64. Gerald Jay Sussman
        65. Brad Templeton
        66. Ken Thompson.*
        67. Michael Tiemann
        68. Andrew Tridgell
        69. Josh Triplett
        70. Jeff Ullman.*
        71. John Villasenor
        72. Jan Vitek
        73. Phillip Wadler
        74. James H. “Jim” Waldo
        75. Dan Wallach
        76. Peter Weinberger.*
        77. Frank Yellin.*
Asterisk:

"presently Google employees, consultants, and/or directors. Those amici are signing this brief as individual computer scientists whose work in the field long preceded their affiliation with Google. They are not signing this brief on behalf of Google or at Google's request."

Re: Computer Scientists Ask Supreme Court to Rule APIs Can’t Be Copyrighted

#29

Post by indymike »

DevX101 wrote: post #3

Although these issues are very important, something feels wrong about having the Supreme Court justices (avg. age ~70) rule on tech matters like this. We need a new legal system for arbitrating disputes in technical disciplines overseen by a panel of technical experts. Or perhaps a trial by jury where the selection criteria is employment in the relevant discipline for at least 10 years (academia or corporate).

Actually, this is perfect for the Supreme Court because a court set precedent aside with a rather novel decision. The issue is not a matter of technology, it's a matter of law. I think the court knows what it is doing.

Re: Computer Scientists Ask Supreme Court to Rule APIs Can’t Be Copyrighted

#30

Post by gioele »

DevX101 wrote: post #3

Although these issues are very important, something feels wrong about having the Supreme Court justices (avg. age ~70) rule on tech matters like this. We need a new legal system for arbitrating disputes in technical disciplines overseen by a panel of technical experts. Or perhaps a trial by jury where the selection criteria is employment in the relevant discipline for at least 10 years (academia or corporate).

> We need a new legal system for arbitrating disputes in technical disciplines overseen by a panel of technical experts.

The good thing about non-technical courts is that they force the parties to explain what is at stake in terms that every intelligent person can understand. This process is very important because it can highlight things that are often assumed by people in the trade. It is the law equivalent of "rubber duck" debugging.

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