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White House Sides with Oracle, Tells Supreme Court APIs Are Copyrightable

arstechnica.com

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Re: White House Sides with Oracle, Tells Supreme Court APIs Are Copyrightable

#11

Post by codecamper »

ridiculous. copywriter apis will breed a whole new class of lawsuits making it less feasible for smaller companies to compete.

What about POST to /login who copyrights that one first?

Of course there is the right to parody. I wonder if we'll see parodies of APIs as a way to sidestep copyright.

Re: White House Sides with Oracle, Tells Supreme Court APIs Are Copyrightable

#12

Post by JoshTriplett »

On the one hand, this would have serious implications for compatible FOSS reimplementations of proprietary APIs, such as Wine, libc, emulators, etc.

On the other hand, this would make it far easier to enforce copyleft licenses like the GPL.

I'm one of the people who provided text and examples filed in the EFF's amicus brief against, and on balance I'm not a fan of stricter copyright like this, but it's interesting to consider how this ruling could be used positively.

Re: White House Sides with Oracle, Tells Supreme Court APIs Are Copyrightable

#15

Post by codecamper »

If the federal government cannot figure out how to protect people's tax returns from hackers (yes the IRS was hacked by "criminals" recently), and if it spends hundreds of millions (billions?) on re-coding the IRS only to fail every time, then it certainly has no business trying to regulate APIs.

Re: White House Sides with Oracle, Tells Supreme Court APIs Are Copyrightable

#16

Post by codecamper »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #12

On the one hand, this would have serious implications for compatible FOSS reimplementations of proprietary APIs, such as Wine, libc, emulators, etc. On the other hand, this would make it far easier to enforce copyleft licenses like the GPL. I'm one of the people who provided text and examples filed in the EFF's amicus brief against, and on balance I'm not a fan of stricter copyright like this, but it's interesting to…

But how often are laws used positively?

Re: White House Sides with Oracle, Tells Supreme Court APIs Are Copyrightable

#17

Post by TallGuyShort »

rincebrain wrote: post #9

It's not obvious from the LWN article, but the reason it says "White House" is that lawyers from the DoJ have filed an Amicus Curiae ("Friend of the Court") brief informing them of their stance on the topic. [1] [2] [1] - http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/05/white-house-sides... [2] - http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/google...

Is the term "White House" often used to refer to anything within the executive branch? I have always assumed it meant the office of the President and perhaps his cabinet...

Re: White House Sides with Oracle, Tells Supreme Court APIs Are Copyrightable

#18

Post by pekk »

rincebrain wrote: post #9

It's not obvious from the LWN article, but the reason it says "White House" is that lawyers from the DoJ have filed an Amicus Curiae ("Friend of the Court") brief informing them of their stance on the topic. [1] [2] [1] - http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/05/white-house-sides... [2] - http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/google...

That's really misleading, but I guess I shouldn't be surprised when the next election is rapidly approaching.

Re: White House Sides with Oracle, Tells Supreme Court APIs Are Copyrightable

#19

Post by sambeau » 

  "declaring code and the structure, sequence, and organization of 
   the API packages are entitled to copyright protection."
Would this apply to REST APIs too?

Someone needs to explain to them that that would be like being able to copyright how files are organised in a drawer, how books are organised on shelves in a Library, how a book is indexed, how departments in a company are named, how streets are numbered, how campus room numbers relate to floors and buildings, roads, flights, cashier tickets, ...

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