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Let Oracle own API's, Justice Dept tells top court in surprise filing

fortune.com

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Re: Let Oracle own API's, Justice Dept tells top court in surprise filing

#101

Post by mc808 »

username3 wrote: post #85
mc808 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither one of those is substantial enough for copyright. They should be considered in the context of a whole body of work. Using books as an analogy, an API most closely resembles chapters and headings. Is it copyright infringement to write a new book that follows the same outline as a previous book? (I don't know...)

Search results resemble chapters and headings. Are search results protected by copyrights?

I would hope not but wouldn't be surprised if they are, at least in the presentation. The ranking and selection of snippets are original but ultimately machine-generated content, so I could see a court leaning either way.

Re: Let Oracle own API's, Justice Dept tells top court in surprise filing

#102

Post by cromwellian »

ChairmanZach wrote: post #25
mikecmpbll wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That FOSS Patents piece is the best commentary I've seen on the subject, thanks for bringing to my attention.

Finding non-shill opinions on this whole issue is quite hard. Once you check the facts of the case it's really quite open-and-shut in Oracle's favor.

Says the account that seems to have been specifically created to shill on this issue.

Re: Let Oracle own API's, Justice Dept tells top court in surprise filing

#103

Post by mikecmpbll »

dragonwriter wrote: post #87
mikecmpbll wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't care how involved he is in the case, I read his writing and I found it to be illuminating -- far more so than anything else I'd read on the subject. You can happily take the opposing view simply because he is involved and is probably biased, but that will make your viewpoint almost entirely baseless.

Mueller has a history of doing an excellent job working things that aren't actually reasonable to informed parties that seem illuminating to people that aren't informed. It's actually a fairly key skill for a professional propagandist. I haven't actually read the piece on question here, but appearing illuminating and actually being deceptive propaganda are not mutually exclusive traits.

if that's the case, it's the job of the 'informed' guys to write similarly illuminating counter-arguments, because I've not found any yet.

Re: Let Oracle own API's, Justice Dept tells top court in surprise filing

#104

Post by dragonwriter »

mikecmpbll wrote: post #103
dragonwriter wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mueller has a history of doing an excellent job working things that aren't actually reasonable to informed parties that seem illuminating to people that aren't informed. It's actually a fairly key skill for a professional propagandist. I haven't actually read the piece on question here, but appearing illuminating and actually being deceptive propaganda are not mutually exclusive traits.

if that's the case, it's the job of the 'informed' guys to write similarly illuminating counter-arguments, because I've not found any yet.

The illusion of illumination is greatly enhanced by having a strong guiding narrative, which is easy with propaganda, harder with reality.

Re: Let Oracle own API's, Justice Dept tells top court in surprise filing

#105

Post by mikecmpbll »

dragonwriter wrote: post #104
mikecmpbll wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if that's the case, it's the job of the 'informed' guys to write similarly illuminating counter-arguments, because I've not found any yet.

The illusion of illumination is greatly enhanced by having a strong guiding narrative, which is easy with propaganda, harder with reality.

You cannot cry propaganda without providing some evidence as to what is misleading or factually incorrect, because otherwise anyone can say anything is propaganda.

Re: Let Oracle own API's, Justice Dept tells top court in surprise filing

#106

Post by harryh »

RexRollman wrote: post #30
markvdb wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that one shouldn't ascribe to malice what can be ascribed to incompetence. ("The Solicitor General does not understand...") BUT! At the White House level, incompetence equals malice. We have every right to expect competence from a level as high as the White House.

Well, these are the same people who think you can safely backdoor encryption.

Justice department officials and congressmen are most definitely not the same people.

Re: Let Oracle own API's, Justice Dept tells top court in surprise filing

#107

Post by bediger4000 »

jacobr1 wrote: post #95
bediger4000 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean by "IP"? If it's "intellectual property" that strikes me (a non-lawyer) as a particularly vague and ill-defined concept. I personally find the idea of owning an idea to be risible: historically, important things have been invented or discovered multiple times, sometimes clearly independently. So, why should I as a citizen finance some monopolies that will be economically detrimental to me and to soci…

> Why should we subject ourselves to it? The traditional reason is to grant incentive for its creation in the first place. One primary example has been medical advances. With the benefit of a (temporary) monopoly on the sales of a new drug, the company has an incentive to create it in the first place. Perhaps we wouldn't have as many life saving advances without IP protection. A secondary reason is that it requires p…

The traditional reason is to grant incentive for its creation in the first place.

Most certainly, that's the nominal, and even in the USA, constitutional basis of copyright and patents. But the actual implementation over the last 100 years seems to have veered away from creating incentives, and into creating something naively akin to ownership, with state enforcement.

I hope we have more experimentation on regulatory regimes

Based on the CAFC's decision here, and it's history, we're only going to experiment with "more" and "stricter" regimes. We've (the USA) never really experimented with loosening "IP" monopolies, despite data and logic pointing towards shorter monopolies as closer to optimum.

I'd also have to take exception the "pharmacy has benefitted from long-lasting monopolies". That's probably true simplistically (When was the last time Smith Klein Glaxo didn't turn a huge profit?) but in the manner of creating tons of medicines for The Rest of Us, it seems to have failed. India and some African countries actually allow infringing compounds, because the price of authentic compounds is set high. Also, the people of the USA pay way more for medications than most other countries. This whole topic is subject to argument, but certainly pharmacy patents relate to high prices and unavailability.

Re: Let Oracle own API's, Justice Dept tells top court in surprise filing

#108

Post by glomph »

tim333 wrote: post #60
glomph wrote: post #47

Can someone give the background of why Google did what they did? Did they want to block Java compatibility or was that a side effect of some other objective?

History very approximately: > In November 2006, Sun open-sources Java. >In November 2007, Sun approves Google's use of Java in Android. > April of 2009, Oracle Corp. announced that it would be acquiring Sun Subsequently Oracle figured it could get some money from Google by requiring a license fee http://www.zdnet.com/article/the-real-history-of-java-and-an... It gets more complicted though, see http://www.zdnet.com/a…

Thanks.

Re: Let Oracle own API's, Justice Dept tells top court in surprise filing

#109

Post by nathan_long »

meesterdude wrote: post #5

> and likened the Java API’s to Charles Dickens and other literary works Never, could have I ever predicted to one day see that as an actual excerpt from an article. By the way, this is a wonderful exercise of effort on our part as a society. Really very important we sort these these nuances out. People may be dying, the poor may be getting poorer, but this is what is important. /s

False dichotomy. Society can work on solving more than one problem at once.

Also, what happens to software impacts every other realm. Software moves your money, irrigates your crops, drives your car, and runs your pacemaker. It matters.

Re: Let Oracle own API's, Justice Dept tells top court in surprise filing

#110

Post by rayiner »

bediger4000 wrote: post #68
rayiner wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's profoundly important to the U.S. as a whole. Creation of IP is the last thing that's going to be automated by robots. It's already been tremendously resistant to production being exported to China and India. We're already at the point where the primary product of the U.S. is IP in various forms (Apple designs the computers but they're manufactured in China).

What do you mean by "IP"? If it's "intellectual property" that strikes me (a non-lawyer) as a particularly vague and ill-defined concept. I personally find the idea of owning an idea to be risible: historically, important things have been invented or discovered multiple times, sometimes clearly independently. So, why should I as a citizen finance some monopolies that will be economically detrimental to me and to soci…

I mean "IP" in the broadest sense. The iPhone is "designed by Apple in California" but everything is "made in China." Whatever information flows from California to China to enable that is IP. As to your second point: having a monopoly over a thing is different than having a monopoly over a market. All property rights are state-supported monopolies. The essence of trade is exchange of monopoly rights as to things. So it doesn't make any sense to say economists are categorically against monopolies.

Existing IP regimes aren't perfect, but appropriate protections for IP are fundamental to the prosperity of the United States. You're way better off as a Californian in a world where Chinese people have to pay tons of money to California for something they build domestically.

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