Google and Oracle's decade-long copyright battle reaches Supreme Court • Hacker News Board

Re: Google and Oracle's decade-long copyright battle reaches Supreme Court

#241

Post by orangecat » Wed, Oct 07, 2020, 5:18 PM UTC

Eyas wrote: post #226

Spivak wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it would be infringement. The main difference between WINE and Android is where the interoperability integration points are. WINE is using the Windows names for the purposes of allowing Windows programs to run. This is a case where a judge would easily grant fair-use because you have to use the API surface area to provide compatibility for existing programs. Android is using the Java names for the purpo…

It's not just about "developer interoperability" vs "program interoprability". Implementing Java APIs means that entire libraries can run. Sure you might not be able to take a legacy SWING Windows Java app and run it on android, but you can run entire libraries in your android app. It absolutely _is_ about interoperability in both cases. Perhaps to varying degrees

Correct, and I was always surprised that Google didn't argue this point more. In my Android apps I've used Java libraries that were created years before Android even existed, and they work perfectly. And vice versa; I've reused code I originally wrote for Android in a Java desktop app with zero changes.

Re: Google and Oracle's decade-long copyright battle reaches Supreme Court

#242

Post by jayd16 » Wed, Oct 07, 2020, 5:20 PM UTC

treis wrote: post #239

jayd16 wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn't they though? They've had their own vm and bytecode for as long as Android has been released. The use of Java is for making libraries compatible.

They did have their own vm and byte code but not a programming language.

Is bytecode not a language?

Re: Google and Oracle's decade-long copyright battle reaches Supreme Court

#243

Post by CobrastanJorji » Wed, Oct 07, 2020, 5:21 PM UTC

treis wrote: post #230

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From everything I've read, Wine would quite clearly be illegal if the court rules in favor of Oracle. I am very worried about this case.

Wine makes programs written for Windows work on Linux. The key difference is that Linux is an independently developed system. The extent that wine copies Windows code is limited to a compatability layer. It doesn't transform Linux into just a copy of Windows. In contrast, Google didn't have their own independently developed programming language. They needed one so they copied the Java api and created one from there.…

If I'm understanding your argument, if Google independently developed a programming language, and then they implemented a compatibility layer that accepted Java bytecode invoking Java APIs and translated it in realtime to their not-Java programming language, then this would be okay?

How would such a programming language be detectably different from being an implementation of Java?

Re: Google and Oracle's decade-long copyright battle reaches Supreme Court

#244

Post by CobrastanJorji » Wed, Oct 07, 2020, 5:24 PM UTC

I have what's maybe a stupid question, but this is a stupid issue, so let's give it a whirl.

If writing Java programs is okay, but the issue is copying the API, would it be okay to take 10,000 popular Java programs, read through their byte code, and use that to construct a set of classes and functions that those programs would need to run? It would, of course, be a nearly complete subset of the Java API, but it would be produced without any reference to the Java API itself. Instead, it'd be produced simply by examining programs you wanted to support.

Re: Google and Oracle's decade-long copyright battle reaches Supreme Court

#245

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Oct 07, 2020, 5:25 PM UTC

threatofrain wrote: post #88

jasode wrote: post #49

>This is a complete dramatization. Are you copying 10k lines of code from a licensed code base into your project without permission and using it in your commercial product? To point back to the substance of the thread and Oracle's claims... Google didn't copy any of Oracle/Sun's Java source code base into Android Java. Oracle lawyers acknowledge this. Instead, Google copied the API of function name spellings and also…

There will likely be no such thing as "drop-in" replacement anymore either.

[deleted]

Re: Google and Oracle's decade-long copyright battle reaches Supreme Court

#246

Post by jcranmer » Wed, Oct 07, 2020, 5:25 PM UTC

Oral arguments have already happened: https://www.c-span.org/video/?469263-1/google-v-oracle-ameri...

I wasn't able to listen to all of the arguments, but some general takeaways I had:

* The justices seemed to be asking mostly technical legal questions of Google (e.g., discuss merger doctrine) and mostly doom-and-gloom questions of Oracle (e.g., how does your argument impact QWERTY keyboards?). This suggests to me that they're more in favor of Google's position, and are querying how to arrive at that decision from a legal basis.

* Some of the questions suggest to me that the justices agree with Google's view that declaring code is categorically distinct from implementation code, and perhaps that copyright for the former doesn't exist.

* Thomas had an interesting question that went unanswered: "the four factors to determine fair use are not exhaustive, can you think of any other factors?" (paraphrased).

Re: Google and Oracle's decade-long copyright battle reaches Supreme Court

#247

Post by Wowfunhappy » Wed, Oct 07, 2020, 5:26 PM UTC

treis wrote: post #230

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From everything I've read, Wine would quite clearly be illegal if the court rules in favor of Oracle. I am very worried about this case.

Wine makes programs written for Windows work on Linux. The key difference is that Linux is an independently developed system. The extent that wine copies Windows code is limited to a compatability layer. It doesn't transform Linux into just a copy of Windows. In contrast, Google didn't have their own independently developed programming language. They needed one so they copied the Java api and created one from there.…

But one of the reasons Android chose Java was for compatibility with existing Java software. It was code rather than binary compatibility, but I'm not convinced that's a meaningful distinction.

I mean, a programming language is fundamentally a set of instructions that produces output, right? So, a Java programmer writes `System.out.print("Hello")` and the Java implementation does the work to make "Hello" appear on screen. Similarly, a Windows executable running via Wine will tell the Windows API to print "Hello", and Wine will do the work to make that message appear on the screen.

Re: Google and Oracle's decade-long copyright battle reaches Supreme Court

#248

Post by matthewdgreen » Wed, Oct 07, 2020, 5:28 PM UTC

jasode wrote: post #121

mantap wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If Oracle ultimately wins, it seems like millions of programmers will have to reach for a thesaurus to find synonyms to name functions. We'll have to waste brain cycles coming up and alternative spellings of methods to stay away from copyright infringement. This isn't how copyright works though. It's neither necessary or sufficient. If you copy an API but change the words using a thesaurus you are still copying it…

>If you copy an API but change the words using a thesaurus you are still copying it so it would still be infringement. From the previous thread I referred to, a commenter cited an excerpt from a circuit court opinion about alternative naming : [...] Using the district court's "java.lang.Math.max" example, Oracle explains that the developers could have called it any number of things, including "Math.maximum" or "Arith…

My vague recollection of this case is that Oracle was kind of up a creek with the "java.lang.Math.max" argument, because max() itself is such a well-understood mathematical function and has been defined in numerous programming languages before Java. This put some constraints on Oracle, and thus "the name is the copyrightable contribution" became their (weak) argument. This does not necessarily mean that changing the function name (as opposed to calling interface and interface organization) would have been sufficient to avoid copyright infringement in every case (in Oracle's opinion.)

Re: Google and Oracle's decade-long copyright battle reaches Supreme Court

#249

Post by npsimons » Wed, Oct 07, 2020, 5:28 PM UTC

tasubotadas wrote: post #10

I think it is quite likely that we as a society would be better off without any kind of copyright or IP. This might prevent some of the parties doing huge upfront investments in some of the projects, but if we learned something from OSS and, most importantly, Linux is that gradual and tiny improvements over 30 years can compound to a behemoth that eats any commercial solution for lunch.

> I think it is quite likely that we as a society would be better off without any kind of copyright or IP.

This is pretty much the FSF's argument in a nutshell. It's pretty obvious what the end game for "intellectual property" is once you read RMS's "Right to Read."

Re: Google and Oracle's decade-long copyright battle reaches Supreme Court

#250

Post by npsimons » Wed, Oct 07, 2020, 5:30 PM UTC

regulation_d wrote: post #123

tasubotadas wrote: post #10

I think it is quite likely that we as a society would be better off without any kind of copyright or IP. This might prevent some of the parties doing huge upfront investments in some of the projects, but if we learned something from OSS and, most importantly, Linux is that gradual and tiny improvements over 30 years can compound to a behemoth that eats any commercial solution for lunch.

It seems to me very intuitive that a lack of IP protection of some sort discourages innovation. I cannot imagine wanting to write a book if I didn't have some recourse against people distributing my book freely. The policy concerns around IP protection for both patent and copyright are clear: the minimum amount of protection that doesn't discourage innovation. Lawmakers know or should know that we all benefit from a…

> I cannot imagine wanting to write a book if I didn't have some recourse against people distributing my book freely.

Your lack of imagination is disappointing, and also hints at a failure of empathy.