8 ms·

IMO there's two ways to read this: either A) this is a baldly transparent attempt to "own the libs" and punish a company that the administration sees as a threa

IMO there's two ways to read this: either A) this is a baldly transparent attempt to "own the libs" and punish a company that the administration sees as a threat or B) they are too incompetent to understand the technical nuances of the case and are essentially morons. Maybe both? This administration can't be thrown out on their collective asses fast enough...

cwperkins 7y ago
Please elaborate on the details of the case. You seem to be keenly aware of the nuances. I haven’t been following the case, but please let me know why you have reached the conclusions that you have.
0xff00ffee 7y ago
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 trustbusters with teeth. Especially for tech. I wish the EFF was 100x larger.
- akhilcacharya 7y ago
  One of the most jarring things about the impeachment saga was Trump supporters defending him by saying "all presidents do it". Fundamentally the issue is norms are easy to break if a bunch of people don't know what they are and don't care enough to find out.
  - eldude 7y ago
    You may be missing the point. When you look past the double standard, the criminality (collusion, corruption, embezzlement, lies, favorable pardons and lack of prosecution) is disproportionately on one side. And of course there’s the tiny detail that Trump had to conquer the corruption of the Republican Party first to even broach the Democrats. See all the #nevertrump senators that prioritized #resisting Trump in spite of their constituents and his support amongst the party.
    - dwmcqueen 7y ago
      You mean "increase," not "conquer." No conquering has occurred.
      - eldude 7y ago
        Lol. Mitt Romney, John McCain, Paul Ryan, Bill Kristol, both president Bushes and Jeb, Colin Powell, Condeleeza Rice, James Comey, Robert Gates, Schwarzenegger, and literally dozens of Republican Congressmen all prove you wrong. When exactly did you realize you were living in a Fake News echo chamber where obvious facts don’t matter to you?
        dragonwriter 7y ago
        > Mitt Romney, John McCain, Paul Ryan, Bill Kristol, both president Bushes and Jeb, Colin Powell, Condeleeza Rice, James Comey, Robert Gates, Schwarzenegger, and literally dozens of Republican Congressmen all prove you wrong. In what way are those “the corruption of the Republican. party” that Trump has “conquered”? While there might be some sense that that phrase makes sense, it certainly isn't in reference to the people you name, whom are neither particularly corrupt (certainly not the scale of Trump) nor has Trump conquered them (he certainly has conquered the Republican Party at their expense, but that doesn't justify the claim about corruption.)
        eldude 7y ago
        If you read the parent, its emphasis is on no conquering occurring. Obviously I made clear in the OP that I feel the corruption of the GOP was included in that. The justification that the McCains, Bushes and Romneys are more corrupt is available for anyone with a memory that extends beyond 2016, and there’s no need for you to emphasize your point that Trump is more corrupt. Your position is clear.
      - dragonwriter 7y ago
        > > Trump had to conquer the corruption of the Republican Party > You mean "increase," not "conquer." “Conquer”, as in “forcibly assume control of”, seems quite accurate. Insofar as there was corruption in the Party before Trump, that corruption is now firmly in service to Trump.
- scarface74 7y ago
  The government caused the phone monopoly and the slap on the risk had nothing to do with Microsoft's missteps when it came to the internet and later mobile. Microsoft still has the same dominance on the desktop that they had during the 90's.
  - criddell 7y ago
    The action in the 90's wasn't to break up their desktop dominance, it was to prevent them using that power to dominating the internet too.
    - scarface74 7y ago
      That might have been their goal, but do you really think that it had anything to do with the rise of Google, Facebook, Amazon and the resurgence of Apple? What had more effect on IE being toppled by Chrome, the government or the most popular website advertising it on their front page and bundling it with third party downloads?
      - dhimes 7y ago
        If Microsoft had built adblockers into IE from the beginning there would be no Google. But that was a strategic error, not due to law. And people were definitely on the Google bandwagon in part because of Microsoft. The "do no evil" motto was a direct shot at MS, and everybody felt relief.
        scarface74 7y ago
        Only the geeks cared about the “do no evil”.
        dhimes 7y ago
        Fair point.
    - 2J0 7y ago
- ticmasta 7y ago
  how many hands do you have :) The story could largely be reduced to: Giant Multinational sues Giant Multinational; both gain support of other Giant Multinationals while World's Most Powerful Government sides with plaintiff Giant Multinational. The EFF needs to 100,000x larger to influence this level of game.
  - foobar_ 7y ago
    Throw shoes at Ellison. 10000s of shoes with flyers in them about FSF ;) This is just another iteration of BSD vs UNIX. This is so silly. It's like every toy compiler has to pay a license because it looks like "C", even if you make money and other software with it. As long as they did not "literally" steal the code, I don't see any reason to bother with Oracle's defense. The same thing happens with MPAA and others, where the actual creators hardly get much but "abstract" corporates get a lot. How long should the copyright law hold? No more than the lifetime of the author. They have made a corporation an abstract person, giving it all sorts of inalienable rights. Lulz ... if that's how you want to go, every time someone in a company commits suicide, the entire corporation needs to be charged with murder and the entire team needs to be thrown in jail and be charged for murder. Every privacy violation would be espionage charges .....
    - 2J0 7y ago
      Actually as a corporate person companies are restricted in a very important way: they cannot represent themselves in court, whereas a general partnership can present a partner in court. The fact that directors are employees and only some shareholders may be members actually divided the powers innate to a real person and causes it to be impossible to present a single individual capable of acting in full cognisance and responsible liability for the incorporated company. This saves the law from unimaginable pain.
      - foobar_ 7y ago
        > they cannot represent themselves in court So a corporation can screw many people with legalese, pretending to be everyone's friend and no one gets blamed. It sounds like a convenient loophole to me. What the fuck is the CEO for then? Its comical because most people treat corporations as the CEO. A vs B is very different from naming names.
- jorblumesea 7y ago
  > 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.
  - chrisco255 7y ago
    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.
    - jorblumesea 7y ago
      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?
      - skrowl 7y ago
        Partisanship bias confirmed! Obama had plenty of evidence of corruption, and that's just ONE past president. - Benghazi - Ordering IRS to target conservative groups - AP Phone Records Scandal - Obamacare / You can keep your doctor - NSA PRISM Surveillance System - ATF Fast and Furious - Rosengate - Holder committing perjury multiple times - VP Biden forcing Ukraine to fire that prosecutor... If you haven't heard of some or all of these, you need to bust out of your echo chamber / comfort zone and start looking at more diverse news sources.
        okaram 7y ago
        Except that ... Benghazi was an error, no corruption ; the IRS did not target conservative groups, Obamacare did not mandate you change doctors in any way .. Normally I assume it is stupidity rather than malice, but now ...
- ta999999171 7y ago
  It's been continuously escalating, like a ratchet strap, and I don't understand how you see this as much different than what previous administrations have done. They just don't care about hiding shit anymore because nobody understands/does anything significant to revolt.
jsight 7y ago
Don't forget the fundraising efforts by Ellison for the same administration supporting them in this.
- gadders 7y ago
  From the article: >> At an earlier stage in litigation, the Obama administration took a similar position, urging the Supreme Court not to accept Google's appeal. Did Ellison do a fundraiser for Obama as well?
  - ajross 7y ago
    He did not. Ellison has been a reliable (though not particularly partisan) republican for years.
    - gadders 7y ago
      Well, that kind of casts doubt on the whole "Trump is doing this for contributions" if Obama was on the same side of the issue then.
      - ajross 7y ago
        The Holder DoJ never weighed in on this case at all, to my knowledge. This is a civil suit.
        gadders 7y ago
        I'm going by what the article said.
        ajross 7y ago
        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.
mattkevan 7y ago
Or C) Money. There's the whole Ellison/Trump fundraiser thing which might make Oracle's argument fall on more accommodating ground. https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/2/12/21135722/larry-ellison-donald-trump-endorsement-fundraiser https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/2/12/21135722/larry-ellison-... Edit: Beat me to it!
todd3834 7y ago
> At an earlier stage in litigation, the Obama administration took a similar position, urging the Supreme Court not to accept Google's appeal. Am I understanding this correctly that this has been a bipartisan position?
- jayd16 7y ago
  What is this even referring to? Google didn't file this petition until 2019. It had previously petitioned the Supreme Court in 2014 before Oracle's appeal. The circumstances were quite different then.
- entee 7y ago
  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/trump-visit-larry-ellisons-rancho-mirage-estate-fundraising-event/4743576002/ https://www.desertsun.com/story/news/politics/2020/02/12/tru... https://www.desertsun.com/story/news/politics/2020/02/18/barack-obama-returned-rancho-mirage/4796035002/ https://www.desertsun.com/story/news/politics/2020/02/18/bar... Edit: some suggest Ellison doesn’t play golf, that said Obama visited his courses regularly and I’m sure there were plenty of occasions where they interacted closely before or after the round.
  - ajross 7y ago
    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 regulate that and disclose the activity (where disclosure of routine meetings are, in fact, protected by law as executive privilege)! It's different. It's not the same. Saying "Trump did a favor because Ellison drove $2M to his campaing" has a stronger basis than "Obama did a favor because Ellison let him win at golf." And I'll just say it: at the end of the day, people who believe "everyone is just as bad" are the ones who are likely to excuse the worst corruption in government via "well, at least it's my candidate doing the cheating".
scarface74 7y ago
Does it matter? Every time without fail when I argue on HN that government involvement in tech is usually negative I get downvoted to oblivion. But then when the same government interferes and is on the "wrong" side of popular geek opinion there is an uproar.
- Apocryphon 7y ago
  That's how issues work, there are different stances that people feel positively and negatively about. People here are generally pro-net neutrality, which involves at least some FCC intervention and enforcement. It's not a blanket libertarian vs. statist situation.
- ASalazarMX 7y ago
  they're not incompatible: All industries have to be regulated, because they are made to make money, not to regulate themselves. When the regulator is not doing their job properly, there's the uproar. TL;DR: Government should regulate industries, but it should do it for the greater good or people will complain.
  - scarface74 7y ago
    Yes and industries only make money if they get customers to give it to them. The government should step in to counter negative externalities. For example was different phone manufacturers using different cables really enough of a negative externality for the EU to step in?
    - ASalazarMX 7y ago
      > Yes and industries only make money if they get customers to give it to them. That only works if you have choices that aren't just the same megacorporation with different names. In reality, most people have less voting power in their wallets than it appears.
- projectramo 7y ago
  Wait, when people disagree with you on an issue then they downvote you. However, when you are talking about the same government, when they agree with you, will upvote you? This, right here, is a broken system. People should only be able to upvote or downvote another person, but not both, whenever they are talking about the same government!
sremani 7y ago
If one observes Trump presidency, Trump amplified previous admin policy rather than changed direction. If I have to bet a $1000 dollars on this - the previous administration has similar policy but much tamer version of it. Trump doing this for Larry Ellison doing a fund raiser for him, is simplistic mid-manager level thinking!
- henryw 7y ago
  Just curious, why are all the comments mentioning Larry Ellison's fund raiser downvoted?
Pigo 7y ago
I know Trump is a politician, but he seems to focus on the culture war and Twitter, not high level corporate battles the masses rarely pay attention to.
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  Yes, Trump distracts with those things while his administration does the consequential stuff. Whether that's a deliberate strategy or just a personally corrupt buffoon who has put the worst of the worst in subordinate position with no meaningful central strategy except for impulsive reshuffles and dismissals is...ultimately unimportant to the end result.
- jonny_eh 7y ago
  He's not a politician, he's a reality show host. He just happens to be president too.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - Pigo 7y ago
    What does that have to do with my point? I know Trump is a reality show host, but he seems to focus on the culture war and Twitter, not high level corporate battles the masses rarely pay attention to. Does that make my observation worth thinking about?
zeruch 7y ago
It's both. Ellison is fundraising for Trump (ironic how an actual billionaire is helping subsidize a fake one to re-election), and Trump is technologically an imbecile who doesn't use email and uses Twitter...poorly.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 7y ago
  Trump has some glaring flaws, but you simply cannot claim with a straight face that he is unable to use social media to his advantage. As an influencer, he is practically impossible to ignore. Granted, some of that comes from the status of the president, but it just seem petty to say that he does not use Twitter well. I would argue he is the only thing keeping Twitter afloat.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
zuckluni 7y ago
Respectfully, ( that's a cool name ) but I think you're missing the point here by reducing it to this bipolar conflict between politically insecure acting out and idiocy. I think it's a much cooler and bigger picture. I think the case is actually very interesting, and not clear cut. It's going to be interesting to find out what the law means as applied to software in this way. I think it's fascinating. A real test between the 'old power' of the law, and the 'new power' of software, I think seeing this play out and considering the implications is incredibly interesting, and as tech people, we're the best placed to enjoy how interesting is. All the shrill rhetoric of both sides and press aside, I think it's a very significant case even if they weren't massive companies (...tho maybe it couldn't have come this far if the companies hadn't been able to afford it). In a similar, but less glamorous vein was the LinkedIn vs somebody data scraping case, the outcome of which was very interesting and meaningful. Anyway, I hope people can appreciate the significance of the case without dismissing or simplifying it in this shrill, childish way, and can think about the software implications, which are probably going to be very interesting. I mean when it's all done we'll probably get to know where we all stand more clearly with software, licensing, re-use and so on, and probably new opportunities we don't see clearly now will become possible because of how the law is figured regarding this. I think that's fascinating, and has nothing to do with idiocy or politics.
raincom 7y ago
Another reason: IP fights in the geopolitical arena esp with China, who can provide their implementations for any commercial APIs.
sitkack 7y ago
If Oracle wins it cements monopoly control of the computing ecosystem. Each megacorp will have their own API moat around their business. LEGO will be stoked.
- disintegore 7y ago
  It really just extends the x86 status quo to the software world.
nostromo 7y ago
Google and Amazon both fucked up by weighing in on political campaigns. And now they're shocked, shocked, that getting political with your monopolistic companies carries some political risk. The solution is easy enough -- don't talk about politics at work -- and in particular not if you're the CEO.
- sixothree 7y ago
  Is it too much to expect our government to not play political games?
  - nostromo 7y ago
    Is it too much to expect politicians to not play political games? Sure, that'd be great, but it's never happened before and will likely not happen for the foreseeable future.
    - sixothree 7y ago
      I expect better.
- ratsmack 7y ago
  This is the best point I've seen in this thread so far. Companies should just stick to their business interests and leave politics and social engineering to others.
  - magduf 7y ago
    Um, isn't this exactly what Microsoft did up until they got slapped with that antitrust trial in the late 90s? They found out the hard way that not playing the game can be very costly for the company. It'd be nice if it wasn't like this, but it just isn't; this country is too corrupt for huge players to just ignore politics, when their competitors don't.
- paulgb 7y ago
  > Google and Amazon both fucked up by weighing in on political campaigns. What are you referring to here? The fact that executives had and expressed political opinions, or are you alleging that they put their fingers on the scales?
svieira 7y ago
> At an earlier stage in litigation, the Obama administration took a similar position, urging the Supreme Court not to accept Google's appeal. Both parties don't seem to understand the issue, for what it's worth.
rdudek 7y ago
Mostly because Larry Ellison, Oracle's CTO hosting a fundraiser for Trump.
mathattack 7y ago
1) Oracle is about as sleazy as it gets. 2) Oracle’s Chief Sleazeball recently hosted a fundraiser for Trump.

cwperkins 7y ago

Please elaborate on the details of the case. You seem to be keenly aware of the nuances. I haven’t been following the case, but please let me know why you have reached the conclusions that you have.

0xff00ffee 7y ago

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 trustbusters with teeth. Especially for tech. I wish the EFF was 100x larger.

akhilcacharya 7y ago
One of the most jarring things about the impeachment saga was Trump supporters defending him by saying "all presidents do it". Fundamentally the issue is norms are easy to break if a bunch of people don't know what they are and don't care enough to find out.
- eldude 7y ago
  You may be missing the point. When you look past the double standard, the criminality (collusion, corruption, embezzlement, lies, favorable pardons and lack of prosecution) is disproportionately on one side. And of course there’s the tiny detail that Trump had to conquer the corruption of the Republican Party first to even broach the Democrats. See all the #nevertrump senators that prioritized #resisting Trump in spite of their constituents and his support amongst the party.
  - dwmcqueen 7y ago
    You mean "increase," not "conquer." No conquering has occurred.
    - eldude 7y ago
      Lol. Mitt Romney, John McCain, Paul Ryan, Bill Kristol, both president Bushes and Jeb, Colin Powell, Condeleeza Rice, James Comey, Robert Gates, Schwarzenegger, and literally dozens of Republican Congressmen all prove you wrong. When exactly did you realize you were living in a Fake News echo chamber where obvious facts don’t matter to you?
      - dragonwriter 7y ago
        > Mitt Romney, John McCain, Paul Ryan, Bill Kristol, both president Bushes and Jeb, Colin Powell, Condeleeza Rice, James Comey, Robert Gates, Schwarzenegger, and literally dozens of Republican Congressmen all prove you wrong. In what way are those “the corruption of the Republican. party” that Trump has “conquered”? While there might be some sense that that phrase makes sense, it certainly isn't in reference to the people you name, whom are neither particularly corrupt (certainly not the scale of Trump) nor has Trump conquered them (he certainly has conquered the Republican Party at their expense, but that doesn't justify the claim about corruption.)
        eldude 7y ago
        If you read the parent, its emphasis is on no conquering occurring. Obviously I made clear in the OP that I feel the corruption of the GOP was included in that. The justification that the McCains, Bushes and Romneys are more corrupt is available for anyone with a memory that extends beyond 2016, and there’s no need for you to emphasize your point that Trump is more corrupt. Your position is clear.
    - dragonwriter 7y ago
      > > Trump had to conquer the corruption of the Republican Party > You mean "increase," not "conquer." “Conquer”, as in “forcibly assume control of”, seems quite accurate. Insofar as there was corruption in the Party before Trump, that corruption is now firmly in service to Trump.
scarface74 7y ago
The government caused the phone monopoly and the slap on the risk had nothing to do with Microsoft's missteps when it came to the internet and later mobile. Microsoft still has the same dominance on the desktop that they had during the 90's.
- criddell 7y ago
  The action in the 90's wasn't to break up their desktop dominance, it was to prevent them using that power to dominating the internet too.
  - scarface74 7y ago
    That might have been their goal, but do you really think that it had anything to do with the rise of Google, Facebook, Amazon and the resurgence of Apple? What had more effect on IE being toppled by Chrome, the government or the most popular website advertising it on their front page and bundling it with third party downloads?
    - dhimes 7y ago
      If Microsoft had built adblockers into IE from the beginning there would be no Google. But that was a strategic error, not due to law. And people were definitely on the Google bandwagon in part because of Microsoft. The "do no evil" motto was a direct shot at MS, and everybody felt relief.
      - scarface74 7y ago
        Only the geeks cared about the “do no evil”.
        dhimes 7y ago
        Fair point.
  - 2J0 7y ago
ticmasta 7y ago
how many hands do you have :) The story could largely be reduced to: Giant Multinational sues Giant Multinational; both gain support of other Giant Multinationals while World's Most Powerful Government sides with plaintiff Giant Multinational. The EFF needs to 100,000x larger to influence this level of game.
- foobar_ 7y ago
  Throw shoes at Ellison. 10000s of shoes with flyers in them about FSF ;) This is just another iteration of BSD vs UNIX. This is so silly. It's like every toy compiler has to pay a license because it looks like "C", even if you make money and other software with it. As long as they did not "literally" steal the code, I don't see any reason to bother with Oracle's defense. The same thing happens with MPAA and others, where the actual creators hardly get much but "abstract" corporates get a lot. How long should the copyright law hold? No more than the lifetime of the author. They have made a corporation an abstract person, giving it all sorts of inalienable rights. Lulz ... if that's how you want to go, every time someone in a company commits suicide, the entire corporation needs to be charged with murder and the entire team needs to be thrown in jail and be charged for murder. Every privacy violation would be espionage charges .....
  - 2J0 7y ago
    Actually as a corporate person companies are restricted in a very important way: they cannot represent themselves in court, whereas a general partnership can present a partner in court. The fact that directors are employees and only some shareholders may be members actually divided the powers innate to a real person and causes it to be impossible to present a single individual capable of acting in full cognisance and responsible liability for the incorporated company. This saves the law from unimaginable pain.
    - foobar_ 7y ago
      > they cannot represent themselves in court So a corporation can screw many people with legalese, pretending to be everyone's friend and no one gets blamed. It sounds like a convenient loophole to me. What the fuck is the CEO for then? Its comical because most people treat corporations as the CEO. A vs B is very different from naming names.
jorblumesea 7y ago
> 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.
- chrisco255 7y ago
  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.
  - jorblumesea 7y ago
    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?
    - skrowl 7y ago
      Partisanship bias confirmed! Obama had plenty of evidence of corruption, and that's just ONE past president. - Benghazi - Ordering IRS to target conservative groups - AP Phone Records Scandal - Obamacare / You can keep your doctor - NSA PRISM Surveillance System - ATF Fast and Furious - Rosengate - Holder committing perjury multiple times - VP Biden forcing Ukraine to fire that prosecutor... If you haven't heard of some or all of these, you need to bust out of your echo chamber / comfort zone and start looking at more diverse news sources.
      - okaram 7y ago
        Except that ... Benghazi was an error, no corruption ; the IRS did not target conservative groups, Obamacare did not mandate you change doctors in any way .. Normally I assume it is stupidity rather than malice, but now ...
ta999999171 7y ago
It's been continuously escalating, like a ratchet strap, and I don't understand how you see this as much different than what previous administrations have done. They just don't care about hiding shit anymore because nobody understands/does anything significant to revolt.

jsight 7y ago

Don't forget the fundraising efforts by Ellison for the same administration supporting them in this.

gadders 7y ago
From the article: >> At an earlier stage in litigation, the Obama administration took a similar position, urging the Supreme Court not to accept Google's appeal. Did Ellison do a fundraiser for Obama as well?
- ajross 7y ago
  He did not. Ellison has been a reliable (though not particularly partisan) republican for years.
  - gadders 7y ago
    Well, that kind of casts doubt on the whole "Trump is doing this for contributions" if Obama was on the same side of the issue then.
    - ajross 7y ago
      The Holder DoJ never weighed in on this case at all, to my knowledge. This is a civil suit.
      - gadders 7y ago
        I'm going by what the article said.
        ajross 7y ago
        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.

mattkevan 7y ago

Or C) Money. There's the whole Ellison/Trump fundraiser thing which might make Oracle's argument fall on more accommodating ground. https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/2/12/21135722/larry-ellison-donald-trump-endorsement-fundraiser https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/2/12/21135722/larry-ellison-... Edit: Beat me to it!

todd3834 7y ago

> At an earlier stage in litigation, the Obama administration took a similar position, urging the Supreme Court not to accept Google's appeal. Am I understanding this correctly that this has been a bipartisan position?

jayd16 7y ago
What is this even referring to? Google didn't file this petition until 2019. It had previously petitioned the Supreme Court in 2014 before Oracle's appeal. The circumstances were quite different then.
entee 7y ago
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/trump-visit-larry-ellisons-rancho-mirage-estate-fundraising-event/4743576002/ https://www.desertsun.com/story/news/politics/2020/02/12/tru... https://www.desertsun.com/story/news/politics/2020/02/18/barack-obama-returned-rancho-mirage/4796035002/ https://www.desertsun.com/story/news/politics/2020/02/18/bar... Edit: some suggest Ellison doesn’t play golf, that said Obama visited his courses regularly and I’m sure there were plenty of occasions where they interacted closely before or after the round.
- ajross 7y ago
  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 regulate that and disclose the activity (where disclosure of routine meetings are, in fact, protected by law as executive privilege)! It's different. It's not the same. Saying "Trump did a favor because Ellison drove $2M to his campaing" has a stronger basis than "Obama did a favor because Ellison let him win at golf." And I'll just say it: at the end of the day, people who believe "everyone is just as bad" are the ones who are likely to excuse the worst corruption in government via "well, at least it's my candidate doing the cheating".

scarface74 7y ago

Does it matter? Every time without fail when I argue on HN that government involvement in tech is usually negative I get downvoted to oblivion. But then when the same government interferes and is on the "wrong" side of popular geek opinion there is an uproar.

Apocryphon 7y ago
That's how issues work, there are different stances that people feel positively and negatively about. People here are generally pro-net neutrality, which involves at least some FCC intervention and enforcement. It's not a blanket libertarian vs. statist situation.
ASalazarMX 7y ago
they're not incompatible: All industries have to be regulated, because they are made to make money, not to regulate themselves. When the regulator is not doing their job properly, there's the uproar. TL;DR: Government should regulate industries, but it should do it for the greater good or people will complain.
- scarface74 7y ago
  Yes and industries only make money if they get customers to give it to them. The government should step in to counter negative externalities. For example was different phone manufacturers using different cables really enough of a negative externality for the EU to step in?
  - ASalazarMX 7y ago
    > Yes and industries only make money if they get customers to give it to them. That only works if you have choices that aren't just the same megacorporation with different names. In reality, most people have less voting power in their wallets than it appears.
projectramo 7y ago
Wait, when people disagree with you on an issue then they downvote you. However, when you are talking about the same government, when they agree with you, will upvote you? This, right here, is a broken system. People should only be able to upvote or downvote another person, but not both, whenever they are talking about the same government!

sremani 7y ago

If one observes Trump presidency, Trump amplified previous admin policy rather than changed direction. If I have to bet a $1000 dollars on this - the previous administration has similar policy but much tamer version of it. Trump doing this for Larry Ellison doing a fund raiser for him, is simplistic mid-manager level thinking!

henryw 7y ago
Just curious, why are all the comments mentioning Larry Ellison's fund raiser downvoted?

Pigo 7y ago

I know Trump is a politician, but he seems to focus on the culture war and Twitter, not high level corporate battles the masses rarely pay attention to.

dragonwriter 7y ago
Yes, Trump distracts with those things while his administration does the consequential stuff. Whether that's a deliberate strategy or just a personally corrupt buffoon who has put the worst of the worst in subordinate position with no meaningful central strategy except for impulsive reshuffles and dismissals is...ultimately unimportant to the end result.
jonny_eh 7y ago
He's not a politician, he's a reality show host. He just happens to be president too.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- Pigo 7y ago
  What does that have to do with my point? I know Trump is a reality show host, but he seems to focus on the culture war and Twitter, not high level corporate battles the masses rarely pay attention to. Does that make my observation worth thinking about?

zeruch 7y ago

It's both. Ellison is fundraising for Trump (ironic how an actual billionaire is helping subsidize a fake one to re-election), and Trump is technologically an imbecile who doesn't use email and uses Twitter...poorly.

A4ET8a8uTh0 7y ago
Trump has some glaring flaws, but you simply cannot claim with a straight face that he is unable to use social media to his advantage. As an influencer, he is practically impossible to ignore. Granted, some of that comes from the status of the president, but it just seem petty to say that he does not use Twitter well. I would argue he is the only thing keeping Twitter afloat.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

zuckluni 7y ago

Respectfully, ( that's a cool name ) but I think you're missing the point here by reducing it to this bipolar conflict between politically insecure acting out and idiocy. I think it's a much cooler and bigger picture. I think the case is actually very interesting, and not clear cut. It's going to be interesting to find out what the law means as applied to software in this way. I think it's fascinating. A real test between the 'old power' of the law, and the 'new power' of software, I think seeing this play out and considering the implications is incredibly interesting, and as tech people, we're the best placed to enjoy how interesting is. All the shrill rhetoric of both sides and press aside, I think it's a very significant case even if they weren't massive companies (...tho maybe it couldn't have come this far if the companies hadn't been able to afford it). In a similar, but less glamorous vein was the LinkedIn vs somebody data scraping case, the outcome of which was very interesting and meaningful. Anyway, I hope people can appreciate the significance of the case without dismissing or simplifying it in this shrill, childish way, and can think about the software implications, which are probably going to be very interesting. I mean when it's all done we'll probably get to know where we all stand more clearly with software, licensing, re-use and so on, and probably new opportunities we don't see clearly now will become possible because of how the law is figured regarding this. I think that's fascinating, and has nothing to do with idiocy or politics.

raincom 7y ago

Another reason: IP fights in the geopolitical arena esp with China, who can provide their implementations for any commercial APIs.

sitkack 7y ago

If Oracle wins it cements monopoly control of the computing ecosystem. Each megacorp will have their own API moat around their business. LEGO will be stoked.

disintegore 7y ago
It really just extends the x86 status quo to the software world.

nostromo 7y ago

Google and Amazon both fucked up by weighing in on political campaigns. And now they're shocked, shocked, that getting political with your monopolistic companies carries some political risk. The solution is easy enough -- don't talk about politics at work -- and in particular not if you're the CEO.

sixothree 7y ago
Is it too much to expect our government to not play political games?
- nostromo 7y ago
  Is it too much to expect politicians to not play political games? Sure, that'd be great, but it's never happened before and will likely not happen for the foreseeable future.
  - sixothree 7y ago
    I expect better.
ratsmack 7y ago
This is the best point I've seen in this thread so far. Companies should just stick to their business interests and leave politics and social engineering to others.
- magduf 7y ago
  Um, isn't this exactly what Microsoft did up until they got slapped with that antitrust trial in the late 90s? They found out the hard way that not playing the game can be very costly for the company. It'd be nice if it wasn't like this, but it just isn't; this country is too corrupt for huge players to just ignore politics, when their competitors don't.
paulgb 7y ago
> Google and Amazon both fucked up by weighing in on political campaigns. What are you referring to here? The fact that executives had and expressed political opinions, or are you alleging that they put their fingers on the scales?

svieira 7y ago

> At an earlier stage in litigation, the Obama administration took a similar position, urging the Supreme Court not to accept Google's appeal. Both parties don't seem to understand the issue, for what it's worth.

rdudek 7y ago

Mostly because Larry Ellison, Oracle's CTO hosting a fundraiser for Trump.

mathattack 7y ago

1) Oracle is about as sleazy as it gets. 2) Oracle’s Chief Sleazeball recently hosted a fundraiser for Trump.