LWN: Comments on "White House sides with Oracle, tells Supreme Court APIs are copyrightable (ArsTechnica)"

White House sides with Oracle, tells Supreme Court APIs are copyrightable (ArsTechnica)

dlang — Tue, 02 Jun 2015 23:20:48 +0000

The issue at question in front of the Supreme Court was if a Corporation was allowed to do things (IIRC, donate to political campaigns), and the ruling was that the individuals making up the Corporation were allowed to do so, and so the individual acting together in the form of a Corporation were also allowed to do so.

This was talking only about what the Owners of the Corporation are allowed to have the Corporation do with it's money. There is nothing in this case or the decision about trampling the rights of their employees or saying that they have fewer rights.

White House sides with Oracle, tells Supreme Court APIs are copyrightable (ArsTechnica)

Cyberax — Tue, 02 Jun 2015 21:53:06 +0000

Which is stupid, since in private companies employees do not actually have most rights normally accepted in the Constitution. And company's owners can freely trample the rights of their employees.

White House sides with Oracle, tells Supreme Court APIs are copyrightable (ArsTechnica)

dlang — Tue, 02 Jun 2015 20:56:15 +0000

What the US Supreme Court actually said was that people have rights and those people don't loose those rights when acting jointly in the form of a company.

White House sides with Oracle, tells Supreme Court APIs are copyrightable (ArsTechnica)

sramkrishna — Tue, 02 Jun 2015 20:31:35 +0000

It gets worse.. people in a group tend to collectively lose their ethics because you're representing an entity other than yourself. The entity itself has no morals and is not expected to have morals. That's why the idea that a company could be considered a person seems so asinine. That too, the entity is collectively more wealthy than any single person in the country.

White House sides with Oracle, tells Supreme Court APIs are copyrightable (ArsTechnica)

dvdeug — Mon, 01 Jun 2015 01:26:29 +0000

The UK and other countries have extended copyright and had it include works in the public domain, but the US hasn't, with the exception of the URAA and the URAA was specifically meant to cover the case where the US had set up a system designed to dump foreign works in the public domain in the US, which other nations were justifiably annoyed about.

White House sides with Oracle, tells Supreme Court APIs are copyrightable (ArsTechnica)

jzb — Sun, 31 May 2015 11:08:43 +0000

"the fact is Congress has done this hundreds of times when the courts ruled in a way that harmed markets"

That was then, this is now. I don't have much confidence in the current crop of lawmakers to look beyond their next campaign donation, or the largest.

White House sides with Oracle, tells Supreme Court APIs are copyrightable (ArsTechnica)

dlang — Fri, 29 May 2015 23:54:31 +0000

If you were to swap 'power' for 'wealth' in your statements I would agree more.

I fear people who are after power more than those after money (when the two don't overlap), but the biggest issue is what they will (or rather what they won't) do to achieve the power

White House sides with Oracle, tells Supreme Court APIs are copyrightable (ArsTechnica)

mathstuf — Fri, 29 May 2015 23:47:32 +0000

I would say "rich" is too broad here. There are those who are rich but aren't evil (in the "greedy" way) and there are those who are greedy but aren't rich. The people you need to avoid are those addicted to wealth. It tends to manifest as sociopathic behavior where people, their wellbeing, and emotions are all subservient to obtaining more wealth. You can see the behavior in corporations too (ISTR there being a documentary to the effect). Witness the (leaked) trade agreements under discussion where there are clauses to the effect of corporations being allowed to sue states for imposing laws that cause a loss in future earnings (real or actual).

It's not too different from other addictions, but I don't think others are as hard on those not addicted while not also harming the sociopath in some way (acting as a negative feedback loop). And since power is usually associated with wealth (it seems much more strongly in the US than elsewhere, but maybe I'm not well-traveled enough) and it tends to be a positive feedback loop, the sociopaths are elevated into a "too big to fail" kind of situation. I remember reading some articles about it, but I don't remember the research (if any) behind it.

White House sides with Oracle, tells Supreme Court APIs are copyrightable (ArsTechnica)

dlang — Fri, 29 May 2015 22:46:13 +0000

at the risk of feeding the troll, I'll have to say that you first need to define "rich"

But this probably isn't the right forum for a debate on these topics.

White House sides with Oracle, tells Supreme Court APIs are copyrightable (ArsTechnica)

ccchips — Fri, 29 May 2015 21:53:59 +0000

Correct. And most people in the United States didn't even know it was happening after the fact. You cannot trust rich people. You just can't. That's why Jesus said it would be easier for a camel to climb through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to attain salvation.

I'm not particularly partial to Christianity, but if there was a Jesus, and he said this, it's probably one of the most brilliant observations from ancient times.

Maybe this is why rich people in the West give a lot of stuff away before they die. Hedging their bets. Or trying to make it look that way while they pull something else behind our backs.

White House sides with Oracle, tells Supreme Court APIs are copyrightable (ArsTechnica)

mathstuf — Fri, 29 May 2015 20:19:56 +0000

> This gives business lots of warning of the coming potential change before it happens.

People^WHumans got no warning when companies started gaining rights.

White House sides with Oracle, tells Supreme Court APIs are copyrightable (ArsTechnica)

rahvin — Thu, 28 May 2015 21:04:17 +0000

The court is also under no requirement to even consider anything filed in an amicus brief. The court gets to decide if it's relevant and generally welcomes people telling them how a ruling could affect them. The current supreme court at least has shown extreme caution in ruling anything that will disrupt a market directly and aggressively.

If they plan to change precedent or rework a ruling that guides a market they tend to do it in steps sort of like they are doing with patents over the last several rulings where the first gutted business method patents and with subsequent rulings have chipped away at patent-ability of software while making it easier for courts to throw out bad patents. Only after chipping away at it over the years would they then turn around and provide a ruling that basically made software unpatentable (not saying they will). I consider it the "fair warning" policy in that they provide fair warning years before they change precedent by providing rulings that show that the change is happening and guide the market where they intend to rule. This gives business lots of warning of the coming potential change before it happens.

White House sides with Oracle, tells Supreme Court APIs are copyrightable (ArsTechnica)

rahvin — Thu, 28 May 2015 20:55:29 +0000

I know your reply is facetious but the fact is Congress has done this hundreds of times when the courts ruled in a way that harmed markets. They've also done the opposite and enshrined SC rulings into law by taking the SC decision and writing a law around it.

Finding API's copyrightable would be highly destructive to software production. This is an extremely large chunk of the US economy these days and it wouldn't be long before the courtroom carnage forced Congress to act. I personally don't expect that if the SC review this they will find API's copyrightable for this very reason. They court is very careful to not disrupt a market like that, IMO anyway.

White House sides with Oracle, tells Supreme Court APIs are copyrightable (ArsTechnica)

nix — Thu, 28 May 2015 15:42:41 +0000

As would the fact that this means lots and *lots* of work for lawyers, and Congress is 90% lawyers.

White House sides with Oracle, tells Supreme Court APIs are copyrightable (ArsTechnica)

ccchips — Thu, 28 May 2015 15:35:29 +0000

That would be great. Not long after that, the whole house of cards would come tumbling down because people would realize how terribly corrupt this government has become.

George Friedman thinks this is going to be "the century of America." At this point, I doubt it. We've losing in space. We're losing credibility everywhere else on the planet. And now, it seems quite possible we will be sold out to the corporate pigs who really run this place if the courts don't do the sensible thing.

Maybe a few more cases like this will wake people up. Do we really want everything in the world, including *food*, to be somebody's "intellectual property?" If that were to happen, no one in their right mind would respect that "intellectual property," and the laws would become useless.

So, yes, if neither the Supreme Court nor the Congress fixes this, maybe the rest of us will have to.

White House sides with Oracle, tells Supreme Court APIs are copyrightable (ArsTechnica)

mordocai — Thu, 28 May 2015 14:38:24 +0000

From what I understand if the final ruling is that "copying" an API is okay under fair use, it still causes extra issues/lawsuits.

What other people around the Internet have said is that fair use is considered a "case by case" thing, so anytime a corporation had issue with someone copying their API they'd bring a lawsuit against that person/company. The person/company would then have to have the resources to defend their fair use in court, or just stop using the API. This is an easy way to shut down small businesses and open source projects.

White House sides with Oracle, tells Supreme Court APIs are copyrightable (ArsTechnica)

tao — Thu, 28 May 2015 14:30:16 +0000

OK, I stand corrected. Thanks for the info!

White House sides with Oracle, tells Supreme Court APIs are copyrightable (ArsTechnica)

SLi — Thu, 28 May 2015 12:24:17 +0000

The Government's position is not that Google should be liable, and shouldn't be thought of in such black-and-white terms. That question they left explicitly open (as they must, since that hasn't been decided below yet). Rather, their position is that it makes more sense to analyze the permissibility of copying APIs as a fair use analysis instead of a categorical rule stating that APIs do not get any protection. Which, incidentally, is precisely what the court below ruled, hence Government opposes review. So, yes, the Government sided with Oracle, but only in this specific, rather technical question, not on what the ultimate verdict should be. So the court below decided that APIs can have copyright protection, but explicitly allowed for the possibility that Google's copying of them could be fair use, remanding on that question to the original court.

I really think the Federal Circuit decision on this was quite well-written and convincing, even if I was disappointed by it. It didn't answer the question of "what the law should say"; it merely analyzed the law and decided, quite reasonably in my opinion, that the law simply compels this result. Separation of powers. It is not the domain of courts to make law, but to interpret it. Still it's enough of a coin toss that a reasonable court could have arrived at an opposite outcome.

White House sides with Oracle, tells Supreme Court APIs are copyrightable (ArsTechnica)

SLi — Thu, 28 May 2015 12:12:01 +0000

The important point though is that no matter if they do have the expertise or not, they have no business telling the supreme court how to interpret the constitution, unless the supreme court asks for such input. TTBOMK this isn't the case here, but I might've missed something.

You have. A decision on January 12: "The Solicitor General is invited to file a brief in this case expressing the views of the United States. Justice Alito took no part in the consideration or decision of this petition."

Also, generally all interested parties are free to file amicus curiae (friend of the court) briefs to explain issues that they believe have not been addressed well because of the parties. The executive branch is naturally in a very good position to explain the practical side of things. Such briefs may be filed by either consent of the parties or permission from the court. Here the parties have consented to filing of amicus briefs (and anyway the government was specifically invited to do so by the court). It would be unusual, but probably not unheard of, to not consent to amicus briefs in Supreme Court. The court would almost certainly give permission to file amicus briefs in any case they consider reviewing.

White House sides with Oracle, tells Supreme Court APIs are copyrightable (ArsTechnica)

tao — Thu, 28 May 2015 10:35:25 +0000

It's rather common that it's frowned upon when one branch of the government (in this case the executive power) interferes with another (in this case the judicial).

It's one thing to suggest new legislation to clarify things, it's quite another thing to preempt a supreme court decision on an issue. The supreme court is the highest judicial institution in the U.S., not the government. If the White House believes that the wrong outcome would be detrimental and that such an outcome is possible they can suggest a better law. They should leave the interpretation of the existing law to the courts. The DoJ and AG shouldn't decide on what is the scope of copyright law. Copyright law should make that clear, and in cases where it doesn't, the courts should make that call.

(Though current copyright law is by and large decided upon by Hollywood, but that's not really the ideal situation now, is it?)

To answer your direct question -- yes, I find it rather unlikely that the DoJ and AG have better understanding of a legal question than experts in the field -- who cannot even agree on this particular issue -- do. The important point though is that no matter if they do have the expertise or not, they have no business telling the supreme court how to interpret the constitution, unless the supreme court asks for such input. TTBOMK this isn't the case here, but I might've missed something.

White House sides with Oracle, tells Supreme Court APIs are copyrightable (ArsTechnica)

rodgerd — Thu, 28 May 2015 07:44:18 +0000

> I can't believe it wouldn't be very long before Congress changed the law because of the flurry of suits which would quickly follow such a ruling.

Why on earth would they do that? The amount of money on offer from Oracle, Microsoft, Apple, and IBM to keep a ruling that would permanently lock them in as owning the field of computing literally forever would ensure they'd see things the "right" way.

White House sides with Oracle, tells Supreme Court APIs are copyrightable (ArsTechnica)

landley — Thu, 28 May 2015 07:13:42 +0000

Before 1983, binaries were not copyrightable. They were "just a number". Then the Apple vs Franklin decision changed all that, and created proprietary software.

This is the same arguments all over again, but about APIs. Wine can't clone windows if microsoft copyrights the API. Tizen can't run android apps. Can LEON still clone Sparc as open source hardware, even after the patents expire?

(Remember, copyrights never expire anymore, they've been _retroactively_ extended to bring public domain material back under copyright...)

White House sides with Oracle, tells Supreme Court APIs are copyrightable (ArsTechnica)

dlang — Thu, 28 May 2015 06:47:14 +0000

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirtsaeng_v._John_Wiley_%26_....

if you do a bit of digging and get into the reports about the Oral arguments on the case you will see what I am talking about

White House sides with Oracle, tells Supreme Court APIs are copyrightable (ArsTechnica)

dgm — Thu, 28 May 2015 06:44:22 +0000

Time to remove my money from tech and start investing in law firms, they are the ones that will prevail in the end. Let the Silicon Valley Law Bubble begin.

White House sides with Oracle, tells Supreme Court APIs are copyrightable (ArsTechnica)

mathstuf — Thu, 28 May 2015 05:31:20 +0000

Not off hand, but it had to do with market segmentation and a student buying books in his home country (southeast Asia IIRC) and selling them here below what the publishers were asking locally.

White House sides with Oracle, tells Supreme Court APIs are copyrightable (ArsTechnica)

flewellyn — Thu, 28 May 2015 03:12:38 +0000

I missed that textbook copyright case. Do you have the case title? I'd be interested in reading it.

White House sides with Oracle, tells Supreme Court APIs are copyrightable (ArsTechnica)

dlang — Thu, 28 May 2015 00:48:28 +0000

yep. The Supreme Court is also worried about unintended side effects as well. The discussions and decision in teh textbook copyright case last year are a perfect example. It seems like a slam dunk that the textbook publishers would win, until the Justices started questioning "wouldn't this allow <ridiculous result>"

I think this is something that will be interesting to follow. I'm pretty sure that IBMs lawyers are going to bring up the problems that allowing APIs to be copyrighted would cause. This could end up being very good for the software industry if they come down with a very clear ruling allowing for interoperability. My fear is that the Justices end up deciding the case on some legal technicality and avoid addressing the API issue.

In general the Supreme Court does try to avoid things that will break healthy competition, and this is certainly something that would do that.

White House sides with Oracle, tells Supreme Court APIs are copyrightable (ArsTechnica)

rahvin — Thu, 28 May 2015 00:27:49 +0000

It would certainly be just deserts if IBM launched such a suit against Oracle and sought an injunction to halt Oracles use of SQL in all products particularly as they would probably be quoting Oracles own briefs on the matter. We can all hope that IBM shows Oracle the futility of pursing an copyright ruling on API's.

But even if the Supreme Court ultimately decides in Oracles favor I can't believe it wouldn't be very long before Congress changed the law because of the flurry of suits which would quickly follow such a ruling. Honestly it wouldn't be long before every tech company in the world was suing every other tech company and the biggies that have been around the longest could essentially shut down entire markets and categories of software. The bad press and clogging of the courts would force Congress to act.

White House sides with Oracle, tells Supreme Court APIs are copyrightable (ArsTechnica)

scientes — Wed, 27 May 2015 23:27:19 +0000

The problem with the White House's position is that, as Laurence Lessig repeatedly states, code *is* law. And as the Supreme Court had made clear, the law must always be publicly available, less no one be able to fallow it. The idea that copyright can be used as a barrier to interoperability is not an inch short of horrible and disastrous to basically everyone.

White House sides with Oracle, tells Supreme Court APIs are copyrightable (ArsTechnica)

flussence — Wed, 27 May 2015 23:22:37 +0000

ISTR one of the other times this topic came up, it was pointed out that Oracle would be signing their own death warrant to IBM if they won this verdict.

White House sides with Oracle, tells Supreme Court APIs are copyrightable (ArsTechnica)

jhhaller — Wed, 27 May 2015 22:51:55 +0000

Two totally different issues were confused in the article. There was some test code copied, which Google never distributed in a device and discarded. The other issue is the API structure, which is still in use, as it's the class hierarchy for Java, and instead of using A:B:C, one would have to call X:Y:C if the decision stands. They could still call C as C, but the outside package names have to change, maybe to com.google instead of com.sun. Lots of incompatibility. Oracle expects to get billions in license fees if they can get an injunction based on compatibility. But, I expect fair use to get appealed back to the Supreme Court by the losing side, so nothing will change for a few years.

I understand the White House position, in terms of what the law says, I just think the law is wrong in this case. Strict construction might come back to bite the administration on other cases of interest before the Supreme Court, or on the way there.

White House sides with Oracle, tells Supreme Court APIs are copyrightable (ArsTechnica)

Wol — Wed, 27 May 2015 22:40:03 +0000

Well, let's hope the Nazgul sue Oracle for copying the "declaring code and the structure, sequence, and organization of the API packages are entitled to copyright protection." of SQL.

It'd be nice to see them hoist by their own petard :-)

If the Supreme Court don't step in and reverse the Appeals Court, then the US has pretty much outlawed software interoperability. SCOG will have won - linux is an illegal clone of Unix...

Cheers,
Wol

White House sides with Oracle, tells Supreme Court APIs are copyrightable (ArsTechnica)

ccchips — Wed, 27 May 2015 22:19:43 +0000

Ok, so then...the Supreme Court is being dragged into a copyright issue over a few lines of code, because two very rich "people" (if you believe the Supreme Court's previous decision about corporations having all the same rights as humans) can't get along.

This is not a slippery slope, it's a vortex. I hope to god we all don't get dragged under with them.

America, no more science. Too bad.....

White House sides with Oracle, tells Supreme Court APIs are copyrightable (ArsTechnica)

gdt — Wed, 27 May 2015 22:10:17 +0000

Although the US DoJ's view on the public policy desirability of copyright applying to APIs is not shared by its international counterparts in the EU and Australia.

White House sides with Oracle, tells Supreme Court APIs are copyrightable (ArsTechnica)

gowen — Wed, 27 May 2015 22:00:45 +0000

Yes, it's inconceivable that the Attorney General, and the Department of Justice would have knowledge of, and a view on, the applicability and scope of copyright law. *sheesh*

White House sides with Oracle, tells Supreme Court APIs are copyrightable (ArsTechnica)

tao — Wed, 27 May 2015 21:45:42 +0000

The White House should stay out of issues they don't understand...

White House sides with Oracle, tells Supreme Court APIs are copyrightable (ArsTechnica)

nix — Wed, 27 May 2015 21:14:00 +0000

The few lines of infringing code, which were, uh, never actually used.

White House sides with Oracle, tells Supreme Court APIs are copyrightable (ArsTechnica)

ccchips — Wed, 27 May 2015 21:07:23 +0000

I'm confused.

From the article:

"Google's use of the code in Android—which it has subsequently abandoned using—..."

What has Google abandoned---Android, or the infringing code?