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Trump administration backs Oracle in Google fight

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Re: Trump administration backs Oracle in Google fight

#91

Post by chrisco255 »

jorblumesea wrote: post #80
0xff00ffee wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both. 50 years of people cynically saying "all politicians are crooks". And now we have legitimate sleazeballs running the country and nobody believes it. On the one hand, Google is huge and needs competition. On the other hand: not this way. Antitrust and monopoly laws exist for a reason, but if you look at telephones in the 80's and microsoft & intel in the 90's, better lawyers get you around that. We need trustbus…

> now we have legitimate sleazeballs running the country and nobody believes it I don't think "no one believes it", just enough ignorant partisans or malicious people to enable it. Either they get their news from Fox News, Breitbart and other highly biased sources, or they know exactly what they're doing, and want to loot the country for gain.

Partisanship cuts both ways and if you're too ignorant to see your own bias and through the narrative spin on your own side of the aisle, then you're like a fish that doesn't know its wet.

Re: Trump administration backs Oracle in Google fight

#92

Post by ajross »

gadders wrote: post #69
ajross wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Holder DoJ never weighed in on this case at all, to my knowledge. This is a civil suit.

I'm going by what the article said.

OK, I looked it up. These are pretty different briefs. The Holder DoJ petition asked the supreme court not to take the case, in a situation where the Federal Circuit had reversed a previous win at trial for Google by saying that "APIs can be copyrighted", something the trial court had assumed not to be the case. So the DoJ was basically taking a position on copyright law here. The supreme court agreed, refused to hear the case, and the net effect was that the Federal Circuit sent it back for another trial on whether or not the court-declared copyright infringement was fair use or not.

The situation now is that Google won at court again. The jury found the API reimplementation was fair use. And the Federal Circuit overturned the trial court again, saying (I'm not making this up, though obviously I'm paraphrasing) "The jury trial we demanded before was invalid because this infringement cannot be fair use as a matter of law, we just forgot to tell you that earlier."

That is, the Federal Circuit is behaving badly here, effectively shopping around for a basis to force a trial court to find for Oracle. The time for principled legal arguments was literally six years ago, this is just partisan hackery.

So obviously Google is appealing to SCOTUS (they took the case this time, for obvious reasons), and the DoJ is jumping in to pick a side in the substance of the actual case, something they really didn't do earlier by requesting that the appelate victory stand.

Re: Trump administration backs Oracle in Google fight

#94

Post by flomo »

deathanatos wrote: post #85
seren wrote: post #6

I did not follow every step, but assuming Oracle win this, will it also apply to Amazon proposing DocumentDB with the same API that MongoDB ?

And Windows, whose APIs are from OS/2's Presentation Management layer. And Linux/OS X, many of whose APIs are from Unix! I don't know where Oracle thinks the madness should end, and I don't think they care.

OS/2 I think was visa-versa, but IBM and Microsoft were in bed with each other so that was all contractual.

You guys need to find an example where one company offered licensing and the other simply refused to negotiate.

Re: Trump administration backs Oracle in Google fight

#95

Post by nhebb »

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 and related legal precedents. My preference would be that public interface part of API's would be public domain. But that's a preference, not a legal opinion.

Re: Trump administration backs Oracle in Google fight

#96

Post by knodi123 »

djannzjkzxn wrote: post #70
quotemstr wrote: post #39

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.

> I’m really skeptical that Republicans know or care about politics in Google’s work culture.

I agree, but there's the additional angle that Trump and Fox have been accusing Google of putting a liberal bias into their search results.

THAT, I believe, is the background that can make so many of his followers "see red" at the idea of Google winning something.

Re: Trump administration backs Oracle in Google fight

#97

Post by tzs »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #41

> At an earlier stage in litigation, the Obama administration took a similar position, urging the Supreme Court not to accept Google's appeal. It seems the Trump administration position is not really all that different than the previous administrations.

Different appeals concerning different issues. The first one was over the outcome of the first trial.

When the Supreme Court did not step in and overturn CAFC's overturning of the first trial, there was a second trial to determine whether Google's use was fair use. The first trial had not reached that issue.

The trial court said it was, CAFC overturned that. This present appeal is on that issue.

Re: Trump administration backs Oracle in Google fight

#98

Post by entee »

ajross wrote: post #32
entee wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ellison hosted a big fundraiser for Trump literally yesterday and Obama regularly golfed with Ellison. I’m not usually a conspiracy theorist but it’s clear the guy is connected and it stands to reason it might influence the government position. https://www.desertsun.com/story/news/politics/2020/02/12/tru... https://www.desertsun.com/story/news/politics/2020/02/18/bar... Edit: some suggest Ellison doesn’t play golf, t…

This kind of false equivalence is what drives me nuts about the modern media environment. Presidents meet with people all the time, sometimes when playing golf. No doubt Obama had similar meetings (links or no) with Google execs on multiple occasions, right? No one cares when Trump golfs with people. Clearly running a political fundraiser sits at a different level of influence peddling. We literally have laws to regu…

That’s not quite my point, it could be Obama and he could have had a bunch of conversations over the course of a game where Ellison explains his take. I’ve heard that take in person from people close to him, superficially it’s not a crazy take especially if you don’t know the technical background.

Trump is unusual in how grossly and overtly transactional he is. Most other politicians are nowhere near as corrupt. Most of the corruption ends up due to access to the politician and of course secondarily to a more broad, “I may lose access to a bunch of money” rather than the specific person or amount of money.

Still not ideal, and the outcome may be the same, but no I’m not making an equivalence here.

Edit: seems he doesn’t play golf, that said I’ll bet there were plenty of lunches/dinners and the like before or after the round.

Re: Trump administration backs Oracle in Google fight

#99

Post by jorblumesea »

chrisco255 wrote: post #91
jorblumesea wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> now we have legitimate sleazeballs running the country and nobody believes it I don't think "no one believes it", just enough ignorant partisans or malicious people to enable it. Either they get their news from Fox News, Breitbart and other highly biased sources, or they know exactly what they're doing, and want to loot the country for gain.

Partisanship cuts both ways and if you're too ignorant to see your own bias and through the narrative spin on your own side of the aisle, then you're like a fish that doesn't know its wet.

If you honestly believe that Trump is in any way on the same "corruption level" as any previous sitting President you're delusional. I'm sorry that reality is getting in the way of the narrative, but it's fairly obvious that he's far worse than any side has elected within living memory. Maybe Nixon is a distant second?

Re: Trump administration backs Oracle in Google fight

#100

Post by entee »

CalChris wrote: post #65
entee wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ellison hosted a big fundraiser for Trump literally yesterday and Obama regularly golfed with Ellison. I’m not usually a conspiracy theorist but it’s clear the guy is connected and it stands to reason it might influence the government position. https://www.desertsun.com/story/news/politics/2020/02/12/tru... https://www.desertsun.com/story/news/politics/2020/02/18/bar... Edit: some suggest Ellison doesn’t play golf, t…

Larry Ellison doesn't play golf. He does own golf courses though. He is a fine athlete but golf is not one of his sports.

Fair enough but I bet there were plenty of times before/after a round where they interacted closely.
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