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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

#31

Post by indymike »

wyager wrote: post #5
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).

>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…

The entire US system is predicated on regular citizens making the most important decisions to protect against unjust and corrupt decisions made by experts (judges). You example is EXACTLY the problem with the idea of special courts or special juries.

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

#32

Post by rayiner »

acqq wrote: post #28

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. Brenda…

I think it was a tactical mistake to include the folks affiliated with Google. Amicus briefs are supposed to be from parties who have an interest in the dispute, but not a personal stake in either party. Including so many people affiliated with Google will come across negatively.

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

#33

Post by woofyman »

shangxiao wrote: post #27
woofyman wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Good question. Luck and hard work mostly.

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

#34

Post by justifier »

> justices should review a disastrous appellate court decision finding that application programming interfaces (APIs) are copyrightable

when the federal circuit originally ruled i read the ruling and walked away with a completely different understanding than the eff touts in their headlines

this whole farce hinges on fair use stead copyrights

in terms we understand :

  checkFairUse(GOOG_USE){
    FAIR_USE=[http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html]
    for (rule in FAIR_USE)
      for ( usage in GOOG_USE) )
        if ( usage
so alsup says that even though API_COPY==undefined the statement still passes because he found GOOG_USE to be "fair", the federal circuit is saying GOOG_USE!="fair"

why does the eff consistently tout copyrightability of apis? this case has yet to rule on copyrights was alsup being clever attempting to end the suit quickly using the mature, uncontroversial fair use clause, or was it a spineless way to avoid making a ruling on the question that the tech community really wants: are apis copyrightable?

slightly off topic, this whole debacle just screams avoid java at all costs because if you write anything financially successful in the language oracle is going to drag you through courts

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

#35

Post by kchoudhu »

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).

People from their generation got us to the moon and birthed the internet.

What have we done recently?

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

#36

Post by flebron »

rayiner wrote: post #32
acqq wrote: post #28

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. Brenda…

I think it was a tactical mistake to include the folks affiliated with Google. Amicus briefs are supposed to be from parties who have an interest in the dispute, but not a personal stake in either party. Including so many people affiliated with Google will come across negatively.

Unfortunately, it's just a background fact that Google employs a lot of well-known computer science figures. So this was bound to happen unless they explicitly forbade them from signing this, which I also don't think is good.

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

#37

Post by WildUtah »

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).

You don't want a special purpose court with supposed experts running anything. We have a special purpose patent court with technically experienced experts and they're the ones with the agenda to destroy the startup and independent software ecosystem by expanding patents to cover every aspect of software.[0]

[0]arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/09/how-a-rogue-appeals-court-wrecked-the-patent-system/

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

#38

Post by musesum »

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).

Seems like a tradeoff between fluid intelligence and pattern recognition. In my 20's it was easier to pick up new concepts, with longer short term memory. In my 50's, I have acquired more patterns to apply. The downside, when I was younger, was going down blind alleys that wound up as a dead ends. The downside, when I got older, is misapplying an old pattern instead of synthesizing a new one. That's why I liked working with older people, in my 20's, and now working with younger people. To balance both tradeoffs.

The Supreme Court spends much of its time interpreting the patterns that are laid out in the constitution and laws passed by congress. Sometimes it synthesizes a new pattern, which will be interpreted for the next 10's or 100's of years.

For copyright, there is some value in recalling patterns from the last few decades. For example, the film industry thought that TV and later VHS would kill their business. Another is when the music industry thought that radio, cassette tapes, and MP3 files would kill their business.

The problem of employing experts as the final judge is their bias towards a particular pattern. The time spent going deep in a particular field would mean that they have less time to go broad across all fields. IMO, how to benefit US commerce is about as broad as it gets.

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

#39

Post by andrewljohnson »

jofer wrote: post #26
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…

This issue is rapidly coming to a close. The disruption of the mapping companies (and sovereign mapping efforts) is going power law now because of mobile devices.

Five years ago, www.OpenStreetMap.com started getting comparable to commercial maps in many places. And we have not even entered the golden age of OSM, when all of these sensor-laden devices we carry will be automatically feeding the map updates and corrections.

Open data will be the best for nearly all applications on a 20-year timeframe. Google, TomTom, Russia, etc will not be able to make money on the actual map data.

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

#40

Post by [deleted] »

flebron wrote: post #36
rayiner wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it was a tactical mistake to include the folks affiliated with Google. Amicus briefs are supposed to be from parties who have an interest in the dispute, but not a personal stake in either party. Including so many people affiliated with Google will come across negatively.

Unfortunately, it's just a background fact that Google employs a lot of well-known computer science figures. So this was bound to happen unless they explicitly forbade them from signing this, which I also don't think is good.

[deleted]
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