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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

#41

Post by dragonwriter »

TallGuyShort wrote: post #17
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...

> Is the term "White House" often used to refer to anything within the executive branch?

Only when people are being sloppy, either through ignorance, or, e.g, because its convenient for spin they'd look to put on something.

Less sloppily, referring to an entity rather than a building, it refers to either the White House Office within the Executive Office of the President, or the whole Executive Office of the President (both of which are headed by the White House Chief of Staff.)

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

#42

Post by schoen »

angersock wrote: post #3

What can we do? Is there a place we can (as an economic sector) throw money to make this happen? Fucking hell. EDIT: Thanks Obama! "The Justice Department is weighing in on the hot-button intellectual property dispute between Google and Oracle, telling the Supreme Court that APIs are protected by copyright. The Obama administration's position means it is siding with Oracle and a federal appeals court that said applic…

The current posture of this case is a petition for certiorari (Google asking the Supreme Court to hear its appeal). These are not merits briefs (about who should win) because the Supreme Court hasn't agreed to hear it yet. They might decline to hear it and then it would go back to a lower court for further proceedings in the underlying case, but with arguably an adverse precedent out of the Federal Circuit on the books.

While I think it's now too late to file amicus briefs on the cert petition, if certiorari is granted (as Google hopes and the Solicitor General just argued against), anyone can file amicus briefs on the merits. Companies, trade associations, nonprofits, individual experts.

I don't know exactly whom people should write to in the government expressing their displeasure with the Solicitor General's position. (It's supposedly a completely nonpolitical decision, so it's unusual for people to openly lobby about it or express opinions about it to elected officials.) You can certainly write to Congress saying that you want to see legislative clarification that APIs are noncopyrightable.

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

#43

Post by briantmaurer »

Programming is in this odd position somewhere between the structure of math and the creativity of writing. Some things feel as obvious as basic addition, which clearly should not be copyrightable, while other things feel as clever as complex poems, which clearly should be copyrightable.

I am not a copyright expert, but in my opinion APIs usually fall closer to the structured math half of programming.

ex. GET, POST, PUT, or DELETE to the following:

/users

/messages

/comments

/login

/logout

/signup

/payments

etc.

Who gets those copyrights?

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

#45

Post by dunstad »

bch wrote: post #5

s/^\([a-zA-Z_]*\)(\(.*\))$/ggl_\1(\2)/ ?? This ruling sounds horrible... very curious to hear point-of-view of people who think otherwise. Edit: my regexp joke is mangled by markup, but who cares ? Edit: fixed regexp display (not that it affects joke).

I don't know if I'm failing to read regexes or failing to see the humor. Can someone explain/kill the joke for me?

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

#46

Post by Spooky23 »

TallGuyShort wrote: post #17
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...

DOJ people don't just wake up and submit opinions to the Supreme Court at the approval of some random middle manager.

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

#47

Post by nickysielicki »

soup10 wrote: post #36
TallGuyShort wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

You gotta remember Obama hasn't written a line of code in his life and has someone literally tells him what his opinions and stances are on technology issues.

That's not true! He has pair programmed a line of Javascript, and even went as far as watching 3rd graders play with Scratch!

http://www.wired.com/2014/12/obama-becomes-first-president-w...

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

#48

Post by Zikes »

briantmaurer wrote: post #43

Programming is in this odd position somewhere between the structure of math and the creativity of writing. Some things feel as obvious as basic addition, which clearly should not be copyrightable, while other things feel as clever as complex poems, which clearly should be copyrightable. I am not a copyright expert, but in my opinion APIs usually fall closer to the structured math half of programming. ex. GET, POST, P…

Well...

POST /cart

http://www.google.com/patents/US5715314

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

#49

Post by shit_parade2 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #41
TallGuyShort wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

> Is the term "White House" often used to refer to anything within the executive branch? Only when people are being sloppy, either through ignorance, or, e.g, because its convenient for spin they'd look to put on something. Less sloppily, referring to an entity rather than a building, it refers to either the White House Office within the Executive Office of the President, or the whole Executive Office of the Presiden…

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synecdoche

'Sloppy' seems the wrong word to use to me.

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

#50

Post by dragonwriter »

shit_parade2 wrote: post #49
dragonwriter wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is the term "White House" often used to refer to anything within the executive branch? Only when people are being sloppy, either through ignorance, or, e.g, because its convenient for spin they'd look to put on something. Less sloppily, referring to an entity rather than a building, it refers to either the White House Office within the Executive Office of the President, or the whole Executive Office of the Presiden…

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synecdoche 'Sloppy' seems the wrong word to use to me.

That something is synecdoche doesn't mean its not sloppy, and vice versa.
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