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Trump administration backs Oracle in Google fight

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Re: Trump administration backs Oracle in Google fight

#221
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know Trump is a politician, but he seems to focus on the culture war and Twitter, not high level corporate battles the masses rarely pay attention to.

He's not a politician, he's a reality show host. He just happens to be president too.

What does that have to do with my point?

I know Trump is a reality show host, but he seems to focus on the culture war and Twitter, not high level corporate battles the masses rarely pay attention to.

Does that make my observation worth thinking about?

Re: Trump administration backs Oracle in Google fight

#222

Is there any doubt that this is some kind of score-settling? Republicans hate Google. I don't think people inside the SV bubble appreciate just how intense this hatred has become. You know the seething, implacable anger, that bile that comes up out of your stomach when you think of a politician you don't like? A lot of republicans feel that way about Google. This hatred doesn't come out of nowhere. Google's leaders c…

I’m really skeptical that Republicans know or care about politics in Google’s work culture. I think the only big story to come out about it, the James Damore one, mainly got discussed from a gender angle and most Republican politicians would prefer if that conversation didn’t happen at all.

Damore's memo was titled "Google's Ideological Echo Chamber". It definitely gets discussed as anti-conservatism in conservative circles. The only places that attack it as "Damore thinks women are worse than men" are the sort of liberal outlets that Republicans don't read much.

If you're like most people on HN you probably don't consume much conservative media. Or at least way less than the President does. If you're curious as to what sort of thing his circle are reading, go look here:

https://www.breitbart.com/tech/

Note the nature of the stories. Many of them are about tech firms apparently discriminating against or attacking conservatives and conservative politicians. Also note that people don't really distinguish between tech firms. Twitter, Facebook, Google, Amazon. They're all seen as basically the same group of people and in fairness, they kinda are ... Facebook was built in the early days by poaching lots of Googlers.

By the way, anyone who reads across the spectrum will quickly notice that Google News seems to have silently blacklisted Breitbart. It's indexed, but never ranks and doesn't auto-complete. Instead the ranking reliably pushes liberal outlets to the fore. I read across the spectrum - NYT, Guardian, Telegraph, Breitbart, Washington Post, whatever gets linked here. Google News very obviously wants me to read certain worldviews much more than others. The UI doesn't make that obvious though.

Google's institutional hatred of the Republican party is by now old news. I'll be really upset if this leads to a win for Oracle. APIs should not be copyrightable but it's not obvious why not to people who aren't developers.

Re: Trump administration backs Oracle in Google fight

#223
post #57

Is there any doubt that this is some kind of score-settling? Republicans hate Google. I don't think people inside the SV bubble appreciate just how intense this hatred has become. You know the seething, implacable anger, that bile that comes up out of your stomach when you think of a politician you don't like? A lot of republicans feel that way about Google. This hatred doesn't come out of nowhere. Google's leaders c…

I'll throw out there that I am a Republican and I don't hate google, I don't hate it with a mindless passion and seeing red at the very mention of its name type of thing. Honestly the more I am on HN the more I see that hating a company is pretty dumb, I work in a big org that big org has thousands of people making thousands of decisions, nobody has good information and half the people making decisions are incompeten…

You're right that it's just a vocal minority. But management has sided with them repeatedly, such that the minority now rules the roost there. Without anything to check them or push back they're rapidly getting on with the task of making their products politically biased.

I didn't see it on HN yet (maybe it's here and got flagged), but this story went around on Reddit yesterday:

https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/f6pyiu/cloud_v...

Google are adjusting one of their AI APIs to refuse to label men and women in images, because it's "biased".

Clearly that's a minority viewpoint, but it's being implemented formally in their products. It's safe to assume the entire company is working towards the destruction not just of the Republican party but its entire worldview.

Re: Trump administration backs Oracle in Google fight

#224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oracle winning will not destroy the tech industry, bring innovation to it's knees, or any other crazy apocalyptic concept people have. It'll mean Google will pay a huge penalty for very willfully stealing Java when they knew they were supposed to license it, and other companies will be a little more explicit about getting licenses squared away. Reliance on open source APIs and platforms will probably go up, and licen…

Riiiight. Because no lawyers have ever smelled a new ambulance to chase kicking off dozens of harassment suits when new precedents are handed down. Oracle has already threatened OSS databases, Samba was once threatened by Microsoft aggressively, and whose to say WINE and other OSS API reimplementations won't be under legal threat the way Unix reimplementations were. Any precedent that establishes clean-room API reimp…

Yes, that's possible.

But patents are already just as powerful, actually much more so. They cause a lot of problems but haven't caused the tech industry to collapse in a MAD Mexican standoff of lawsuits.

Re: Trump administration backs Oracle in Google fight

#225
post #95

Did anyone here bother to check the bio's of the officials listed on the amicus brief? If so, you'd discover that the many (maybe most, I didn't count) were holdovers from previous administrations. But, conspiracy theories are fun, I guess. Given the bipartisan history of the lawyers for the Copyright Office and the DOJ, one possibility is that they are basing the amicus on their interpretation of the Copyright Act a…

Your last sentence nails it.

The problem with this case is that the legally correct thing is that Oracle wins. The most desirable practical outcome is that they lose.

Copyright protects creative works. It's not clear why an API wouldn't be a creative work. Oracle's lawyers argue that it is a creative work, because different people can come up with very different designs to solve the same problem, that API design is a skilled and creative process. They're right.

The tech industry has always been in an unstable situation with respect to this consensual interpretation that APIs are facts and not creative works. That's convenient for many people, but tricky to legally support. The correct solution to this problem is an exemption in copyright law for APIs. Given no such exemption exists, why should Oracle not win this case? The judges are meant to rule on law as it is, not what it should be.

Re: Trump administration backs Oracle in Google fight

#226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a false equivalency. The overreach of the federal government is a topic worth exploring but this is different: this is a unification and consolidation of power into the hands of one man. And to avoid getting too political I'll avoid questioning the loyalties and competence of this individual. I don't care if it was Obama or Bernie or Daffy Duck, this is a dangerous situation and it's compounded by the accepta…

It’s not the consolidation of power by one man. Congress could pass a law to stop any of his executive orders anytime they wanted to. The court could stop a few of them.

In order for Congress to pass a law it needs to make it through the Senate. Mitch McConnell owns the Senate right now. Note the behavior of the President's supporters during the impeachment trial, they were all dutifully in line.

Compare that with a previous generation where the GOP leadership went to the President and told him they could not support him because he had gone too far, and Nixon therefore resigned.

Justices Roberts was a figurehead at the trial and his actions were supportive of the outcome.

This is not "normal"; this is not the democracy I learned back in the day.

Re: Trump administration backs Oracle in Google fight

#227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While the last thing I want is a “War on Guns” because it will end up just like the “War on Drugs”. It will give another excuse for the government to enforce laws much more harshly on poor and minorities. But at the same time, it’s just silly to think that a reason to own guns is in case the government wants to impose martial law. We are talking about the government with the largest military in the world - with tanks…

Why didn't we just bomb Al-Qaeda into oblivion in 2 weeks? Why couldn't we just shoot communism in North Vietnam? Martial law and occupation are ultimately enforced by infantry patrols. Plus, tanks need fuel and governments can't carpet bomb their own cities. But it's not just about resisting hypothetical martial law in the future. It's about having a free culture now . Just like encryption, it is the difference betw…

You can't bomb your way to democracy. Let's say that a foreign country bombed your farm/business and killed all of your family. Are you going to thank them for it or are you going to swear vengeance?

Are you aware of the reports that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were multi-trillion dollar failures?

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.

Re: Trump administration backs Oracle in Google fight

#228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> conspiracy theorist In my opinion, a possible connection between fundraisers/golfing and political outcomes doesn't necessarily rise to "conspiracy theorist".

This is how United States politics work. The elite give money to regulate an industry. Do elites ever give money to deregulate?

> Do elites ever give money to deregulate?

Enron lobbied for deregulation

Re: Trump administration backs Oracle in Google fight

#229
Bribe the president: Definitely not ok. What sort of backwards ass country would allow that sort of thing?

Host fundraiser inviting a couple of your friends to all donate huge amounts to the president: What on earth is the problem? That's completely fair game and I don't see any issues at all.

It seems the US Democracy is morally bankrupt at this point.

Re: Trump administration backs Oracle in Google fight

#230
post #121

Is this in anyway tied to Ellison recently hosting a trump fund raiser?

Politically correct answer: No, they are completely independent just like all other fundraising activities.

Reality: Yes, Oracle is openly bribing the president to get the administration to push their agenda.

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