MESSAGE
| DATE | 2017-05-13 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
|
| SUBJECT | Re: [Hangout of NYLXS] Fair USe
|
On 05/13/2017 09:46 PM, Ruben Safir wrote:
> On Fri, May 12, 2017 at 04:05:17PM -0700, Rick Moen wrote:
>> Quoting Ruben Safir (ruben-at-mrbrklyn.com):
>>
>>> I liked it better when the court ruled that there was no copyright
>>> violation whatsoever. Instead they are now relying on a fair use
>>> argument about APIs and that is a moving target.
>>
>> I'm sorry, but I'm unclear on what you're saying the court's reasoning
>> is. Can you be more specific?
>>
>
> No I can't. If you don't want to talk about it then don't.
>
>
>
>
http://computerworld.com/article/3070001/application-development/oracle-v-google-and-the-end-of-programming-as-we-know-it.html
Oracle v. Google, and the end of programming as we know it
The courts ruled that APIs can be copyrighted. That was bad. Now, if
APIs can’t be used with fair use, that will be even worse.
Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols By Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
Computerworld | May 16, 2016 9:27 AM PT
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I thought we were done with Oracle’s frantic attempts to monetize its
failed Sun purchase by suing profits out of Google’s use of Java in
Android. I was wrong. In 2015, the Supreme Court upheld an idiotic
decision by a U.S. Court of Appeals that Java’s application programming
interface (API) was subject to copyright. So here we go again.
In the first go-round between Oracle and Google, in 2012, a clueless
jury found that Google had infringed Oracle’s copyright by copying into
Android the “structure, sequence and organization” of 37 Java APIs.
U.S. District Court of Northern California judge William Alsup, a
programmer in his own right, tossed out the jury’s verdict, writing that
an API is merely “a long hierarchy of over six thousand commands to
carry out pre-assigned functions. For that reason, it cannot receive
copyright protection — patent protection perhaps — but not copyright
protection.” Oracle, by the by, lost its patent lawsuit. All it had left
was its copyright case.
So we’re back to court, with Oracle now wanting a mere $9.3 billion for
Google’s use of the Java APIs in Android.
Can Oracle win? I hope not.
In fact, I hope it doesn’t win a thin dime, never mind billions.
You see, as the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) observed, the Court
of Appeals decision showed a complete “misunderstanding of both computer
science and copyright law. APIs are, generally speaking, specifications
that allow programs to communicate with each other, and are different
than the code that implements a program. Treating APIs as copyrightable
would have a profound negative impact on interoperability, and,
therefore, innovation.”
You think?
For over 30 years, we’ve used open APIs for almost every program you can
imagine. Open APIs, along with open source, revolutionized the software
industry. They’ve enabled developers to easily create applications on
top of both open-source and proprietary programs. Today’s software
economy lives and dies on open APIs.
In the current case, the explicit question isn’t whether APIs can be
copyrighted. According to the Supreme Court, they can. The question is:
“Are APIs covered by the fair-use doctrine?”
The original 2012 jury didn’t see it that way. Greg Thompson, that
jury’s foreman, reported that most of the jurors thought Google’s use of
Java’s APIs was covered by fair use. This jury? Who knows?
Former Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz said at the trial that Java’s APIs were
open, as indeed was Java. Schwartz said, “It was in our interest to do
so. If you were using Java, then everything else that Sun sold, we could
sell to you. If you were using Microsoft Windows, the dominant operating
system, then we had nothing to sell you.”
Oracle, of course, doesn’t have a smartphone operating system. What it
does have are lawyers.
Legally, deciding fair use involves four equally weighted factors. These
are: whether the use was commercial; the kind of work that was copied;
how much was copied and how substantive it was; and the impact that the
copying had on the market for the original. I don’t think much of
Oracle’s chances. Oracle’s only hope is that Android’s commercial
success will persuade the jury that Google is in the wrong.
If programmers made up the jury, Oracle wouldn’t stand a chance. They
know that APIs should be open or at least freely usable under fair use.
But instead of programmers, clueless users who can’t tell an API from an
Apple iPhone will be making the decision.
Software development’s present and future lie in the hands of the
ignorant. As the tech writer Sarah Jeong put it, “The problem with
Oracle v. Google is that everyone actually affected by the case knows
what an API is, but the whole affair is being decided by people who don’t.”
Exactly. And that’s scary as hell.
Let’s hope they get it right. If they don’t, the world of software
development is in for a world of hurt.
--
So many immigrant groups have swept through our town
that Brooklyn, like Atlantis, reaches mythological
proportions in the mind of the world - RI Safir 1998
http://www.mrbrklyn.com
DRM is THEFT - We are the STAKEHOLDERS - RI Safir 2002
http://www.nylxs.com - Leadership Development in Free Software
http://www2.mrbrklyn.com/resources - Unpublished Archive
http://www.coinhangout.com - coins!
http://www.brooklyn-living.com
Being so tracked is for FARM ANIMALS and and extermination camps,
but incompatible with living as a free human being. -RI Safir 2013
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