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

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

#301

Post by jeremyjh »

TheDong wrote: post #272
tachyonbeam wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's bad for programmers everywhere. If Oracle wins, you couldn't reimplement a compatible version of anything that's not open source. You couldn't make a third-party implementation of a corporate-owned programming language without putting yourself at risk. Imagine you're a company using some Oracle database, and you want to reimplement some component of that system in order to migrate and escape their vendor lock-in…

> If Oracle wins, you couldn't reimplement a compatible version of anything that's not open source It's worse than that. OpenJDK, including the java standard library, is GPL. It's open source. Oracle is claiming that even though source code defining the API is open source, they retain copyright to the API itself.. regardless of the open source implementation of the API by themselves. If this case goes through, you wo…

> Oracle is claiming that even though source code defining the API is open source, they retain copyright to the API itself..

Are you sure they are claiming that? A weaker claim could be that Google's usage does not conform to the GPL. Indeed if you were correct and the ruling is in Oracle's favor then the GPL is broken as designed, I haven't heard anyone express that concern in connection with this case.

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

#302

Post by bitwize »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #222
bitwize wrote: post #93

If the Supreme Court does not find in favor of Oracle, it could undermine the basis for copyright law entirely. Google copied Oracle's code. The CAFC found, correctly, that API declarations are as expressive and protectable by copyright, as any other code. Therefore, finding that the Java APIs are not covered by copyright, or that copying them was fair use, undermines copyright entirely: if the unique expression of t…

Literally everything else? That's like saying that if the table of contents and index are't copyrighted, what is? Um, the entire rest of the book ?

If you cannot build a case for protecting the significant creativity and unique expression in the design of an API, then there is little you can build a case for copyrighting.

If techies want APIs to be uncopyrightable, the solution is to go to Congress and seek a carve-out exception in statute. Asking the courts to affirm what they assume to be the case undermines all of copyright. I know some Hackernews are okay with that, but I have friends and family who are artists and musicians, and they want to be able to put food on the table doing what they love.

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

#303

Post by mehrdadn »

tsimionescu wrote: post #288
salawat wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Java namespaces fall into the latter category, since there is an embedded graph of symbolic coordinates. The existence of Refactoring negates that it can be seen as an accidentally creative act.

Refactoring is somewhat similar to translation, and it similarly does nothing to affect the notion of copyright. A novel is copyright-able even though it can be mechanically translated into a different language. The fact remains that APIs are creative works. This can also be seen from discussions about APIs in the industry - everyone knows that the Unix APIs are often seen as elegant while the Windows APIs are seen a…

> everyone knows that the Unix APIs are often seen as elegant while the Windows APIs are seen as ugly

I think people consider the UNIX CLIs ("do one thing and do it well") to be elegant, not UNIX APIs. UNIX APIs have quite massive (and well-known) warts in them.

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

#304

Post by boplicity »

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…

Let's compare this to a completely different field: cookbooks.

Recipes themselves aren't copyright protected. However, specific instructions for the recipes are protected.

In addition, though individual recipes aren't protected, a collection of recipes is protected.

There is a line, though, between copying a few recipes, and an entire collection. That line is not easy to define, but that doesn't preclude the existence of such a line.

So – is an API considered a single recipe? Or is it a "recipe collection?" That seems to me to be an important distinction.

If you were to copy one set of API function names that cover a limited area, then it could be argued that you used just one "recipe" and that it would be OK. However, if an entire collection of API function names across a very broad range of categories was copied, then it is harder to argue that you didn't copy any entire collection, and not just an individual recipe.

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

#305

Post by foota »

jcranmer wrote: post #281
foota wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh, that last note is pretty interesting. You seem pretty tuned in, do you know when we might be able to expect a written decision?

The decision can theoretically come anytime between now and the end of next June, largely dependent on how complex the decision is. My personal guess is somewhere between January and March of next year.

Interesting. If there is a new judge appointed before that time would they join the decision or would it only be those judges that heard the case?

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

#306

Post by dragonwriter »

bitwize wrote: post #302
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Literally everything else? That's like saying that if the table of contents and index are't copyrighted, what is? Um, the entire rest of the book ?

If you cannot build a case for protecting the significant creativity and unique expression in the design of an API, then there is little you can build a case for copyrighting. If techies want APIs to be uncopyrightable, the solution is to go to Congress and seek a carve-out exception in statute. Asking the courts to affirm what they assume to be the case undermines all of copyright. I know some Hackernews are okay wi…

> If techies want APIs to be uncopyrightable, the solution is to go to Congress and see a carve-out exception in statute.

By the same token, if we are rejecting judge made law that isn't expressly in the statute, if technies want APIs (or, for that matter, computer programs!) to be copyrightable, the solution is to go to Congress and get an explicit carve-in put in the statute. As it is, the only things explicitly included in copyright protection are:

--quote--

(1)literary works; (2)musical works, including any accompanying words; (3)dramatic works, including any accompanying music; (4)pantomimes and choreographic works; (5)pictorial, graphic, and sculptural works; (6)motion pictures and other audiovisual works; (7)sound recordings; and (8)architectural works.

--end quote--

Now, certainly some computer programs include things that fall on that list as components, and some might arguably be described as being interactive forms of one or the other category.

But APIs, themselves, don't fall into any of those categories, so why would they need an explicit carve-out when they aren't carved-in in the first place?

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

#307

Post by dragonwriter »

bitwize wrote: post #93

If the Supreme Court does not find in favor of Oracle, it could undermine the basis for copyright law entirely. Google copied Oracle's code. The CAFC found, correctly, that API declarations are as expressive and protectable by copyright, as any other code. Therefore, finding that the Java APIs are not covered by copyright, or that copying them was fair use, undermines copyright entirely: if the unique expression of t…

> If the Supreme Court does not find in favor of Oracle, it could undermine the basis for copyright law entirely.

If the Supreme Court does not find in favor of Google, it most likely will do so by finding that the trial jury acted reasonably (not necessarily correctly -- because the litigants have a Constitutional right to a jury trial, judges or appellate courts aren't Constitutionally, or under the Rules of Civil Procedure, supposed to substitute their judgement of correctness as long as a jury could reasonably conclude as it did from the evidence) that Google's use was Fair Use, and that the CAFC was wrong to negate the jury verdict and act as the jury itself.

Now, sure, the Court could reach Google's copyrightability argument on APIs, but its a stretch to assume it would.

And even if it did, ruling that APIs are functional elements not subject to copyright for that reason would not "undermine the basis of copyright law entirely". It might weaken the basis for copyright applied to computer programs entirely, but that's a very different thing.

> if the unique expression of those Java APIs are not protectable by copyright

In order for use to be "fair use", the thing used must, in fact, be protectable by copyright.

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

#308

Post by bruckie »

cturner wrote: post #138
hyper_reality wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The truth is somewhere between your statement and parent's, in my opinion. Copyright is necessary but the laws today are draconian and far too extensive. For works since 1978, copyright lasts for the entire length of the author's life, plus an additional 70 years. The "Mickey Mouse" protection act ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act ) increased this even further for some works. There's a need…

"There's a need to allow artists and writers to make money" The current system does not satisfy that standard. Artists and writers don't make money due to far-reaching copyright. Musicians make money by selling tickets to concerts and contract performances. Journalists make money from newspaper pay-walls and advertising.

Your music argument is plausible, but the journalism one doesn't hold water: if there were no copyright, it would only take one paywall subscriber to copy the contents to a paywall-free site (e.g. wsj.com -> freewsjarticles.com), and poof: journalists aren't making money anymore.

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

#309

Post by CobrastanJorji »

treis wrote: post #300
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesnt make sence - you jyst replaced the textual API used at compiletime with a binary API used at runtime. Its literally same difference.

They're clearly different. In this example Google independently developed a language and made it compatible with the JVM. In the real world Google wanted Java and didn't like the licensing terms. So they copied the Java API and from that starting point built out their own version of Java.

But "making it compatible with the JVM" would involve implementing the Java standard library, right? Recognizing terms like "java.lang.String" or "java.lang.Math.max" and doing the right thing? To do that, aren't you creating a copy of the Java API?

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

#310

Post by dragonwriter »

jeremyjh wrote: post #301
TheDong wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If Oracle wins, you couldn't reimplement a compatible version of anything that's not open source It's worse than that. OpenJDK, including the java standard library, is GPL. It's open source. Oracle is claiming that even though source code defining the API is open source, they retain copyright to the API itself.. regardless of the open source implementation of the API by themselves. If this case goes through, you wo…

> Oracle is claiming that even though source code defining the API is open source, they retain copyright to the API itself.. Are you sure they are claiming that? A weaker claim could be that Google's usage does not conform to the GPL. Indeed if you were correct and the ruling is in Oracle's favor then the GPL is broken as designed, I haven't heard anyone express that concern in connection with this case.

> A weaker claim could be that Google's usage does not conform to the GPL.

At the time at issue, Java wasn't under the GPL. That Google did not have a (public offer or private) license to Java is not in dispute.

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