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Google and Oracle's decade-long copyright battle reaches Supreme Court

314 points by mehrdadn 6y ago

blackbear_ 6y ago
Waiting for Oracle to patent social networks and sue Facebook...
- tonetheman 6y ago
  I am always downvoted when I comment on Oracle stories but if Tiktok has any IP around social or uploading videos... you that is exactly their intention.
  - protomyth 6y ago
    Anyone who has had dealings with Oracle licensing knows how bad this is going to get.
    - teddyh 6y ago
      “Do not anthropomorphize Larry Ellison.” — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc#t=38m34s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc#t=38m34s
donmcronald 6y ago
> Those in Oracle's camp say if its copyright is not protected, that will discourage innovation. Look at the way YouTube Content ID encourages innovation and then imagine GitHub Content ID. “Your repository contains 3 copyrighted method calls. You’ve been issued a copyright strike.” I’d love to see every open source repo on the internet go private for 1 day as a demonstration of what could be lost if copyright is allowed to weasel its way into APIs. GitHub and NPM should give users the option to block their repos for a day. A bazillion failing builds would open some eyes IMO.
- segfaultbuserr 6y ago
  In this timeline, the Wine repo mirror will be instantaneously banned on GitHub.
  - swiley 6y ago
    Wine's userspace being legal is probably what keeps the gamers from just running the available userspace source code from Microsoft. I doubt getting it banned would be something Microsoft actually wants.
    - Wowfunhappy 6y ago
      But unless Microsoft actually embraces Wine, that would still leave the project in a weird legal gray area. Will e.g. Valve want to support the project, knowing that at any moment Microsoft could theoretically have a shift in strategy and become litigious?
      - GoblinSlayer 6y ago
        Originally Microsoft was on the Oracle side in this case.
    - segfaultbuserr 6y ago
      It's an interesting perspective. Microsoft already promised not to harm Mono, so if the lawsuit is won by Oracle, it's certainly possible for Microsoft to promise not to harm Wine as a PR move without addressing the actual issue, and this strategy can actually work better for Microsoft to keep its control on APIs! It can be similar to how Apple had broadened the scope of its repair program to weaken the Right to Repair movement. Really scary.
- user5994461 6y ago
  Then imagine the outrage from European companies and users getting hit by this ludicrous US copyright thing that doesn't apply to them (the European court rejected oracle claims long ago).
Kednicma 6y ago
> Google argues that no one should be allowed to claim ownership of this kind of code. Imagine if we took Google's argument seriously and extended it. What if code were inherently less copyrightable when it is more structural and boilerplate-filled? That could be a great thing, but Google themselves might be surprised at how little of their proprietary code qualifies for copyright under this standard. For example, would Google's protobuf schemata still be copyrightable? They're needed for interoperability, after all. Would Google's client-side code for Youtube and Google Docs still be copyrightable? It's delivered in textual form to the end-user. Would Android's interface code be copyrightable? Probably not, by exactly the same argument that Google has been making before the courts! If Google wins, then not only does Oracle lose, but the institution of copyright might also lose, which is an exciting proposition.
- donmcronald 6y ago
  Id rather have nothing copyrighted than everything copyrighted. I also don’t have a huge problem with interfaces = no copyright and implementations = copyright.
- flohofwoe 6y ago
  Getting rid of copyright restrictions for everything software-related (as a first step at least) would be a win-win for everybody involved.
- Zigurd 6y ago
  That is an absurd position. APIs are facts, like sports scores, or the amounts and ingredients in a recipe. Those are not protectable, and making them protectable is plainly ridiculous.
  - Kednicma 6y ago
    Careful there. Source code to a program is also a fact; it's merely the proof of some statement in some theory. This is one way to view the Curry-Howard-Lambek isomorphism. So, then, what is it about source code which would make it copyrightable again? Are systems like Metamath and Opentheory eligible for copyright or not? To me, the current copyright regime is what's "absurd" and "plainly ridiculous"; I am merely drawing conclusions based on what exists.
molticrystal 6y ago
Scotus Blog did a great job describing the case for those who need to know a case preview before it goes up to the Supreme Court: https://www.scotusblog.com/2020/10/case-preview-justices-to-weigh-in-on-landmark-copyright-battle-between-google-and-oracle/ https://www.scotusblog.com/2020/10/case-preview-justices-to-...
tasubotadas 6y ago
I think it is quite likely that we as a society would be better off without any kind of copyright or IP. This might prevent some of the parties doing huge upfront investments in some of the projects, but if we learned something from OSS and, most importantly, Linux is that gradual and tiny improvements over 30 years can compound to a behemoth that eats any commercial solution for lunch.
- pojntfx 6y ago
  True. IMHO IP law is based on a moral and not a utilitarian basis, and as we know from almost all recent FLOSS projects especially in Cloud (Linux, Kubernetes, ...) IP is just a massive hindrance to productivity and has a net negative effect on the industry.
  - srtjstjsj 6y ago
    The US Constitution explicitly cites utilitarian goals in the Copyright Clause.
    - teddyh 6y ago
      True, but that motivation was based on assumptions which are no longer true. Things no longer take effort to copy, and information can flow across the world in an instant. There is no longer any need to encourage copyright in order to get better information from foreign countries.
    - pojntfx 6y ago
      Sure! But the US Constitution wasn't written in a time where software was a thing, right?
- kelnage 6y ago
  It’s not at all clear how you are comparing Linux to its closed competitors, but frankly, if that’s the best example you can pick, I’d suggest copyright is largely winning that battle. Yes, Linux has probably “won” in some markets (servers/IoT being the obvious ones), but there are plenty of markets where that is not even close to being true.
koolba 6y ago
Due to the pandemic, we’ll actually be able to hear the arguments and SCOTUS questions live as well. Possibly an acquired taste, but I found the last round of phone hearings very interesting and entertaining.
- warmwaffles 6y ago
  I actually find it fun to listen to. Generally because the argument process and retorts are always well calculated. Wishing I could be that good.
tapoxi 6y ago
If this (somehow) succeeds, could IBM sue Oracle over SQL compatibility?
- josefx 6y ago
  There are specific exceptions for compatibility. Android Java never tried to be compatible, various required APIs were replaced or are just flat out missing from the runtime library.
  - ysleepy 6y ago
    Of course it's about compatibility, about code-reuse of existing libraries. – Which is done a lot to this day.
  - curt15 6y ago
    Where are such compatibility exceptions articulated? Section 107 lists four factors for fair use, including "the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole." Trying to achieve full compatibility would seem to require copying more of the original API, not less.
    - wtallis 6y ago
      Usually when someone on Oracle's side brings up compatibility, they are referring indirectly to the test suite required for using the Java trademarks. And they usually are also implying that compatibility should be defined solely by Sun/Oracle, ie. that Oracle should be allowed to require your own Java implementation to be fully functional and 100% compliant to their spec before it is in any way legal, and implementing a mere subset of relevant functionality is not permissible.
    - josefx 6y ago
      After going over the laws(i am not a lawyer) my reasoning might be a bit backwards. I think it would not be a 107 exception but an argument over the technical facts and the creative work contained in an API. To be compatible you have to create a copy of the facts an API describes and copyright is rather limited on collections of facts.
totaldude87 6y ago
I think we would be better off, if we follow the pharmacy world. Like they have full controls over a new vaccine for x years and then it becomes generic! Problem is that technology space moves so fast that if x year term is say 5-10 years , that would nullify entire process!
- srtjstjsj 6y ago
  That's exactly how Copyright works, which is to be expected because Copyrights and Patents are governed by the same overarching law.
  - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
    Except that copyright is 95 years. That's insanely long for software.
- webmaven 6y ago
  > I think we would be better off, if we follow the pharmacy world. Like they have full controls over a new vaccine for x years and then it becomes generic! Problem is that technology space moves so fast that if x year term is say 5-10 years , that would nullify entire process! That is, in fact, how copyright works, and the original term was 14 years. Since then, the term has been extended several times in the name of "harmonization", and the term is currently so long it might as well be infinite, as far as software is concerned.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
jasode 6y ago
>This is a complete dramatization. Are you copying 10k lines of code from a licensed code base into your project without permission and using it in your commercial product? To point back to the substance of the thread and Oracle's claims... Google didn't copy any of Oracle/Sun's Java source code base into Android Java. Oracle lawyers acknowledge this. Instead, Google copied the API of function name spellings and also the hierarchy of organization (tree of namespaces) of those API methods. I asked about this in a previous comment and some folks more familiar with the case replied with citations of court opinions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7852100 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7852100 So to give a flippant summary of the current situation: you _can_ copy some exact spellings of API function names (e.g. other browsers Chrome/Firefox/Safari can copy Microsoft IE XMLHttpRequest() exactly without renaming it to RetrieveHttpXtensibleMarkupLang()) -- as long as you don't copy too much of the API surface area. The threshold of "too much" and getting in legal trouble is yet to be determined by The US Supreme Court. If Oracle ultimately wins, it seems like millions of programmers will have to reach for a thesaurus to find synonyms to name functions. We'll have to waste brain cycles coming up and alternative spellings of methods to stay away from copyright infringement.
- st1x7 6y ago
  I wonder how a meaningful discussion about namespace trees and API spelling takes place at the Supreme Court considering the background of the justices.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
    They're smart people and these are not hard concepts.
    - kemonocode 6y ago
      It still requires domain-specific knowledge and there are vested interests from both sides. I'm afraid because the world has little to gain and much to lose from the outcome of this case.
shmerl 6y ago
APIs shouldn't be copyrightable. European courts got that right.
bosswipe 6y ago
It's shocking to me that two jury trials spent months considering arguments from lawyers and experts from all sides and carefully came to a decision only to have the appeals court throw that all away and impose the opposite ruling, twice. What was the point of the trials? I don't know why the Federal Circuit court is so biased towards maximalist interpretations of IP law but I really hope the Supreme Court slaps it down hard. Again.
- belorn 6y ago
  The Federal Courts Improvement Act of 1982 did that. District judges are about geographical boundaries and need to make decisions about every kind of subject area, but Federal Circuit court judges operate based on subject area. That way a patent lawyer that want to be a judge handling patents can go to the Federal Circuit court, and unsurprising a very large portion of Federal Circuit court judges are past lawyers working in industry with companies within the same subject area. As a result it is not very strange that a court packed with past IP lawyers are biased towards maximalist interpretations of IP law.
- ford_o 6y ago
  What happens if I expose a Java FFI ( i.e. thin wrapper around Java stdlib) in my toy language. Do I break their license?
  - gpm 6y ago
    It would be a derivative work of the api, so per Oracle's argument you would be violating their copyright absent a license. (You could use the gpl OpenJDK license if your code was GPLed, I think). You could try and argue fair use, and it would be distinct from the case at hand so you might win, but fair use is always a fact intensive analysis and it's certainly not obvious that you would win.
    - tmccrary55 6y ago
      yep although the openjdk stdlib is licensed with a linking exception, so you can relicense it entirely when linking against it.
jariel 6y ago
Does anyone have any indication as to how long the ruling will take for this? It's not articulated and this is a very big ruling.
- capital_guy 6y ago
  Could happen any time until June 2021
- jcranmer 6y ago
  For a case argued in October, a quick decision for a 9-0 case (or I guess 8-0 in the current court) that involves settling a circuit split or something else that's just simple textual analysis would come out in late November or December. This is probably going to be complicated. I wouldn't be surprised to see a 8-0 outcome, but there's likely to be a concurring opinion or two, which will make the decision take longer. My expectation is that the opinion will come out in the January-March timeframe. By way of comparison, Bilski v Kappos (the first big patent case in recent years) was a 9-0 case argued in November whose opinions only came out in the end-of-year opinion blitz.
tiffanyh 6y ago
Question: so if Oracle wins, does that mean no one can create compatible APIs in general? I know a lot of folks have created compatible APIs for Amazon S3, including Oracle themselves. Does this become against the law if Oracle wins? https://docs.cloud.oracle.com/en-us/iaas/Content/Object/Tasks/s3compatibleapi.htm https://docs.cloud.oracle.com/en-us/iaas/Content/Object/Task...
- coldpie 6y ago
  Sort of. Copyright is a civil matter, not criminal, so it requires two to tango. What I mean is, you can copy the API, but then the creator can choose to sue you. Or not. It turns our mostly-open computing landscape into a stand-off, exactly like the current software patent situation. The big guys have all the guns to hold each other off, but they can all take out the small guys who threaten them.
  - gpm 6y ago
    Copyright is both civil and in the case of wilful infringement criminal...
- frant-hartm 6y ago
  AWS SDK is under Apache 2 license, so anyone is able to use it (suppose you comply with the license - attribution etc..). Google did a similar thing with OpenJDK (which is GPL) starting with Android N, why they didn't do it in the first place I don't know, Sun published OpenJDK under GPL in 2007, first 1.0 Android release was in 2008.
  - gpm 6y ago
    Though for the purposes of this case it is interesting to note that oracle did copy the aww api and did not comply with the apache 2 license (nothing, including distributed derivative works like their api documents, contains attribution).
- ford_o 6y ago
  And what about FFI?
bitL 6y ago
If Google paid some reasonable sum to SUN for using Java in Android, they could have avoided all of this. I bet their lawsuit expenses are now higher.
- Zigurd 6y ago
  Having been across the table from Sun licensing people when using an open source Java in a project, "some reasonable sum" is optimistic. In fact any transparency about what sum they might demand is optimistic.
  - bitL 6y ago
    AFAIK they were pretty open to some reasonable sum as they were internally fans of Google, but due to Google's arrogance the upper management relationship with them soured, then opportunistic Oracle bought them and here we are.
    - pjmlp 6y ago
      You mean the only company that actually made an offer to buy Sun and kept it? Google could have own Java, avoid the lawsuit and keep it Go style frozen at Java 6 instead. And given Google's history they would have killed the other products even sooner than Oracle did.
      - bitL 6y ago
        IIRC IBM was in the play as well, but yes. I guess Google didn't want to inherit all the internal late-SUN problems so they passed on a chance to own it. Now Google had to switch to an alternate strategy utilizing JetBrains for Android.
        pjmlp 6y ago
        IBM withdraw their proposal shortly after coming into the buy.
byte1918 6y ago
I was making an analogy in my mind between API function names and song titles. IANAL but I thought at first that it doesn't make sense to copyright song titles, they are generic and uninteresting most of the time but after giving it further consideration I realized that some can be quite meaningful, for instance everyone recognizes 'Stairway to heaven' and 'Bohemian rhapsody' therefore, even though it seems a bit silly I wouldn't be surprised if those song titles are in fact copyrighted which could mean copyrighting function names is not that different. I then decided to actually google this and found out that: >Generally, copyright law protection does not extend to song titles because they usually are short and lack sufficient originality. Therefore, you can (and often do) have multiple songs with the same name, and the first to name their song, for example "Crazy," does not have the right to stop other people from releasing their own songs named "Crazy." An exception to this is that some long titles may be found to have sufficient originality to be afforded copyright protection. I suspect that my friend's song entitled "The Concept of the Quantum-Mechanical Bodymind Has Sparked a Great Idea" is one of them. [1] The whole article from [1] is worth reading. I wouldn't be surprised if the final verdict will be similar to song title laws from the music industry. [1]: http://www.askamusiclawyer.com/archive/is-my-song-title-protected-by-copyright.html http://www.askamusiclawyer.com/archive/is-my-song-title-prot...
bitwize 6y ago
If the Supreme Court does not find in favor of Oracle, it could undermine the basis for copyright law entirely. Google copied Oracle's code. The CAFC found, correctly, that API declarations are as expressive and protectable by copyright, as any other code. Therefore, finding that the Java APIs are not covered by copyright, or that copying them was fair use, undermines copyright entirely: if the unique expression of those Java APIs are not protectable by copyright, what is?
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  Literally everything else? That's like saying that if the table of contents and index are't copyrighted, what is? Um, the entire rest of the book?
  - bitwize 6y ago
    If you cannot build a case for protecting the significant creativity and unique expression in the design of an API, then there is little you can build a case for copyrighting. If techies want APIs to be uncopyrightable, the solution is to go to Congress and seek a carve-out exception in statute. Asking the courts to affirm what they assume to be the case undermines all of copyright. I know some Hackernews are okay with that, but I have friends and family who are artists and musicians, and they want to be able to put food on the table doing what they love.
    - dragonwriter 6y ago
      > If techies want APIs to be uncopyrightable, the solution is to go to Congress and see a carve-out exception in statute. By the same token, if we are rejecting judge made law that isn't expressly in the statute, if technies want APIs (or, for that matter, computer programs!) to be copyrightable, the solution is to go to Congress and get an explicit carve-in put in the statute. As it is, the only things explicitly included in copyright protection are: --quote-- (1)literary works; (2)musical works, including any accompanying words; (3)dramatic works, including any accompanying music; (4)pantomimes and choreographic works; (5)pictorial, graphic, and sculptural works; (6)motion pictures and other audiovisual works; (7)sound recordings; and (8)architectural works. --end quote-- Now, certainly some computer programs include things that fall on that list as components, and some might arguably be described as being interactive forms of one or the other category. But APIs, themselves, don't fall into any of those categories, so why would they need an explicit carve-out when they aren't carved-in in the first place?
dlandis 6y ago
I wouldn't be surprised if the decision is very narrow in this case or if it is even postponed again until there is a ninth justice. But I have a bad feeling it will be decided in favor of Oracle, since considering specific APIs part of the "idea" rather than the expression seems to be more of a convention among software engineers rather than actually part of the law. APIs can be "expressions", after all, it just depends on how literal or pedantic you want to be in your reading of the law. The real solution seems like it would be to update the outdated law.
- gpm 6y ago
  If they decide it narrowly I bet they overturn the federal circuits decision to override the jury (constitutional right to a jury trial, oracle waived the argument about a court ruling on legal aspects of free use when they agreed to the jury instructions) and leave all the interesting legal questions open.
josaka 6y ago
Highly recommend listening to oral arguments once posted on Oyez: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/u-s-supreme-court-oral-arguments/id1048210550 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/u-s-supreme-court-oral...
gjsman-1000 6y ago
What may throw Oracle for a loop is that Ruth Bader Ginsburg was considered in legal circles to have a strong view of property rights and many people I've read online considered her to be a near-certain vote for Oracle. Her death makes this a much less certain Oracle victory. To quote The Verge: "The absolute least important part of Ginsburg’s legacy is that she was the most reliable vote in copyright law cases, tending to vote in favor of rights-holders. Her loss also means that Google v. Oracle is being heard by eight justices and is therefore prone to a split court. (In the 1996 software copyright case Lotus v. Borland, an eight-justice court split evenly and was unable to set national precedent)."
Zigurd 6y ago
Oracle is pursuing a dubious interpretation of copyright that puts the entire software industry at risk of chaos. This is deeply irresponsible, and would be irresponsible even if Oracle's theory had a leg to stand on. And nevermind software, allowing Oracle's position to prevail would call into question the legality of every set of facts that are freely used across many knowledge domains.
pjmlp 6y ago
Time to squash Google's own J++ variant, they can keep playing with Kotlin if they are so keen, and buy JetBrains while at it. And before the IBM example comes up, SQL is an ISO standard, that Oracle like every RDMS vendor pays for.
loourr 6y ago
This author clearly does not understand software
us0r 6y ago
If anyone is interested in hearing: https://www.c-span.org/video/?469263-1/google-v-oracle-america-oral-argument https://www.c-span.org/video/?469263-1/google-v-oracle-ameri...
partingshots 6y ago
Why does Oracle care so much about Android in the first place? Does it even make any money for Google?
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  It can make a lot of money for Oracle (by suing Google). That, and only that, is why Oracle cares.
  - monocasa 6y ago
    It's deeper than that. Ellison and Jobs were best friends (to the point that they could be seen in public occasionally wearing matching best friends tshirts). Jobs died thinking that Android (and particularly Eric Schmidt's part in sitting on the Apple board while Android was being cooked up at Google) was a personal affront to his magnum opus of iPhone, and the rumor is that Ellison agreed to hurt Android any way he could more or less without regard for the costs.
raphlinus 6y ago
My wish is that this case be decided clearly. Either APIs can be copyrighted, or they cannot. Either outcome has potentially good consequences, for open source in particular. Obviously if APIs cannot be copyrighted, then a ton of open source work geared towards making things compatible remains viable. Wine is one of the most obvious, but I can think of many others. Efforts to port CUDA code to non-Nvidia hardware. A potential effort to reimplement SwiftUI. And there are many more. On the other hand, if APIs can be copyrighted, then buyers now know that there's a single-source risk for any API that's not released under a permissive open source license. So, to continue this example, Apple has the legal right to shut down any port of code written in SwiftUI to non-Apple hardware, and similarly for CUDA. This would immediately increase interest in actually open source alternatives; Flutter already exists, a Vulkan based runtime could be developed for TensorFlow, etc. Sadly, I think this outcome is unlikely. What's more likely is that the ruling will be specific to the facts of the case. That basically means that there won't be clear guidance that you need to run away from proprietary APIs, but also not clear guidance that you can continue to rely on open source interop projects. Rather, any time any of this gets sticky, the only way through the mess will be to pay lawyers millions of dollars. That will have the effect of making it easier for the big players to dominate the market further, and harder for independent people to play. That's very much to the advantage of those in power, so I'm pretty sure that's what we'll see.
- CobrastanJorji 6y ago
  > If APIs can be copyrighted, then buyers now know that there's a single-source risk for any API that's not released under a permissive open source license. Buyers won't be very motivated to care because they are consuming the original product, not competing with it. The first mover to release an API frequently has no interest in allowing compatible, competing offerings to exist. It's the second mover, the competition, that desperately wants to be compatible with the first offering, so that they can effectively compete for the business of the customer who bought the original product.
causality0 6y ago
Does oracle actually have any function besides vampirically draining tech companies of money?
CobrastanJorji 6y ago
I have what's maybe a stupid question, but this is a stupid issue, so let's give it a whirl. If writing Java programs is okay, but the issue is copying the API, would it be okay to take 10,000 popular Java programs, read through their byte code, and use that to construct a set of classes and functions that those programs would need to run? It would, of course, be a nearly complete subset of the Java API, but it would be produced without any reference to the Java API itself. Instead, it'd be produced simply by examining programs you wanted to support.
- dylan-m 6y ago
  That's the argument that always springs to mind for me, as well, and I'm curious why Google's lawyers haven't used it since it seems obvious. (That's the whole point of this, after all: we're implementing an agreed-upon interface that application developers are using. Implementing an interface happens all the time outside of computers and is not a difficult concept to turn into shitty car metaphors if you really must). So, the interface is published in every consuming application. If you look at an application which is missing a shared object and figure out how to implement the missing pieces in your own version of that shared object, you've re-implemented (part of) an API. So the question is, in doing so, have you infringed their copyright?
jcranmer 6y ago
Oral arguments have already happened: https://www.c-span.org/video/?469263-1/google-v-oracle-america-oral-argument https://www.c-span.org/video/?469263-1/google-v-oracle-ameri... I wasn't able to listen to all of the arguments, but some general takeaways I had: * The justices seemed to be asking mostly technical legal questions of Google (e.g., discuss merger doctrine) and mostly doom-and-gloom questions of Oracle (e.g., how does your argument impact QWERTY keyboards?). This suggests to me that they're more in favor of Google's position, and are querying how to arrive at that decision from a legal basis. * Some of the questions suggest to me that the justices agree with Google's view that declaring code is categorically distinct from implementation code, and perhaps that copyright for the former doesn't exist. * Thomas had an interesting question that went unanswered: "the four factors to determine fair use are not exhaustive, can you think of any other factors?" (paraphrased).
- foota 6y ago
  Huh, that last note is pretty interesting. You seem pretty tuned in, do you know when we might be able to expect a written decision?
  - jcranmer 6y ago
    The decision can theoretically come anytime between now and the end of next June, largely dependent on how complex the decision is. My personal guess is somewhere between January and March of next year.
    - foota 6y ago
      Interesting. If there is a new judge appointed before that time would they join the decision or would it only be those judges that heard the case?
      - gpm 6y ago
        They would typically not join the decision.
  - deleted 6y ago
gregorygoc 6y ago
I’ve read through the entire comments section and I’m very surprised there’s no post saying Oracle is pure evil. So here is one: f those guys.
- kubanczyk 6y ago
  Tsk, tsk, that's an argumentum ad hominem.
  - salawat 6y ago
    And thus the comment thread is complete. Pack it up, folks. We're done here.
- catsdanxe 6y ago
  I hate Google a lot more than I hate Oracle
anigbrowl 6y ago
Sigh...I've been commenting on this case almost as long as I've been on HN. At this point I enjoy fantasizing about a coronal mass ejection causing an electrical storm that would obviate everything to do with it. Well, there's always n-gate.
nimish 6y ago
The solution here is to pass a law that exempts APIs from copyright, not to rely on a geriatric body of lawyers to interpret laws not designed around technology
- gpm 6y ago
  The current law does exempt APIs from copyright via sensible general principles (you can't copyright functional things, which as applied in this case is known as the merger doctrine). If the court gets it wrong congress should fix it, but ideally we don't want a law that is a patchwork of tiny little exceptions because that fails to generalize to new things, so we would rather that the court just properly understands how to apply general principles. Even if the court gets it wrong, my favored way of fixing it would be to modify the general principle to be less ambiguous to this case, not to explicitly make an api exception.
  - nimish 6y ago
    SCOTUS interpretation of an act is case law. With a single legislative act, we need not worry about this or anything else, modulo constitutional issues which can also be fixed via amendments. No, it is not obvious that API is a "functional thing" covered by existing law by the mere fact that SCOTUS has taken it on and it was a case to begin with. I'm not sure why a trivial act of congress isn't the first thing we jump to rather than risk ruin. All the act needs to do is clarify what copyright means. A copyright act for the digital millenium, if you will -- you can call it DMCA 2.0 :)
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > The solution here is to pass a law that exempts APIs from copyright But APIs were never included, explicitly, in copyright in the first place. Why do they need to be explicitly excluded?
  - nimish 6y ago
    So we do not have to have a decade of a case that could be rendered moot with a single act.
tony 6y ago
Transcript: https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts/2020/18-956_kifl.pdf https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcr... Oral argument: https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/audio/2020/18-956 https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/audio/2020/18-95... Oyez hasn't posted it yet, but it'd be up here later: https://www.oyez.org/cases/2020/18-956 https://www.oyez.org/cases/2020/18-956
vaccinator 6y ago
Lol Google the copyright infringment master... Stealing important bits and posting them in the search results.
iamgopal 6y ago
Can't google just buy Oracle, and done with this bullshit ? And at the same time land opportunity to move all their enterprise customers to cloud ?
amaajemyfren 6y ago
This gives me memories of SCO Linux.
teruakohatu 6y ago
I wonder what the impact will be on free/GPL compatible ZFS implementations. If Oracle wins this they won't hesitate to weaponize the ruling.

314 points by mehrdadn 6y ago

blackbear_ 6y ago

Waiting for Oracle to patent social networks and sue Facebook...

tonetheman 6y ago
I am always downvoted when I comment on Oracle stories but if Tiktok has any IP around social or uploading videos... you that is exactly their intention.
- protomyth 6y ago
  Anyone who has had dealings with Oracle licensing knows how bad this is going to get.
  - teddyh 6y ago
    “Do not anthropomorphize Larry Ellison.” — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc#t=38m34s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc#t=38m34s

donmcronald 6y ago

> Those in Oracle's camp say if its copyright is not protected, that will discourage innovation. Look at the way YouTube Content ID encourages innovation and then imagine GitHub Content ID. “Your repository contains 3 copyrighted method calls. You’ve been issued a copyright strike.” I’d love to see every open source repo on the internet go private for 1 day as a demonstration of what could be lost if copyright is allowed to weasel its way into APIs. GitHub and NPM should give users the option to block their repos for a day. A bazillion failing builds would open some eyes IMO.

segfaultbuserr 6y ago
In this timeline, the Wine repo mirror will be instantaneously banned on GitHub.
- swiley 6y ago
  Wine's userspace being legal is probably what keeps the gamers from just running the available userspace source code from Microsoft. I doubt getting it banned would be something Microsoft actually wants.
  - Wowfunhappy 6y ago
    But unless Microsoft actually embraces Wine, that would still leave the project in a weird legal gray area. Will e.g. Valve want to support the project, knowing that at any moment Microsoft could theoretically have a shift in strategy and become litigious?
    - GoblinSlayer 6y ago
      Originally Microsoft was on the Oracle side in this case.
  - segfaultbuserr 6y ago
    It's an interesting perspective. Microsoft already promised not to harm Mono, so if the lawsuit is won by Oracle, it's certainly possible for Microsoft to promise not to harm Wine as a PR move without addressing the actual issue, and this strategy can actually work better for Microsoft to keep its control on APIs! It can be similar to how Apple had broadened the scope of its repair program to weaken the Right to Repair movement. Really scary.
user5994461 6y ago
Then imagine the outrage from European companies and users getting hit by this ludicrous US copyright thing that doesn't apply to them (the European court rejected oracle claims long ago).

Kednicma 6y ago

> Google argues that no one should be allowed to claim ownership of this kind of code. Imagine if we took Google's argument seriously and extended it. What if code were inherently less copyrightable when it is more structural and boilerplate-filled? That could be a great thing, but Google themselves might be surprised at how little of their proprietary code qualifies for copyright under this standard. For example, would Google's protobuf schemata still be copyrightable? They're needed for interoperability, after all. Would Google's client-side code for Youtube and Google Docs still be copyrightable? It's delivered in textual form to the end-user. Would Android's interface code be copyrightable? Probably not, by exactly the same argument that Google has been making before the courts! If Google wins, then not only does Oracle lose, but the institution of copyright might also lose, which is an exciting proposition.

donmcronald 6y ago
Id rather have nothing copyrighted than everything copyrighted. I also don’t have a huge problem with interfaces = no copyright and implementations = copyright.
flohofwoe 6y ago
Getting rid of copyright restrictions for everything software-related (as a first step at least) would be a win-win for everybody involved.
Zigurd 6y ago
That is an absurd position. APIs are facts, like sports scores, or the amounts and ingredients in a recipe. Those are not protectable, and making them protectable is plainly ridiculous.
- Kednicma 6y ago
  Careful there. Source code to a program is also a fact; it's merely the proof of some statement in some theory. This is one way to view the Curry-Howard-Lambek isomorphism. So, then, what is it about source code which would make it copyrightable again? Are systems like Metamath and Opentheory eligible for copyright or not? To me, the current copyright regime is what's "absurd" and "plainly ridiculous"; I am merely drawing conclusions based on what exists.

molticrystal 6y ago

Scotus Blog did a great job describing the case for those who need to know a case preview before it goes up to the Supreme Court: https://www.scotusblog.com/2020/10/case-preview-justices-to-weigh-in-on-landmark-copyright-battle-between-google-and-oracle/ https://www.scotusblog.com/2020/10/case-preview-justices-to-...

tasubotadas 6y ago

I think it is quite likely that we as a society would be better off without any kind of copyright or IP. This might prevent some of the parties doing huge upfront investments in some of the projects, but if we learned something from OSS and, most importantly, Linux is that gradual and tiny improvements over 30 years can compound to a behemoth that eats any commercial solution for lunch.

pojntfx 6y ago
True. IMHO IP law is based on a moral and not a utilitarian basis, and as we know from almost all recent FLOSS projects especially in Cloud (Linux, Kubernetes, ...) IP is just a massive hindrance to productivity and has a net negative effect on the industry.
- srtjstjsj 6y ago
  The US Constitution explicitly cites utilitarian goals in the Copyright Clause.
  - teddyh 6y ago
    True, but that motivation was based on assumptions which are no longer true. Things no longer take effort to copy, and information can flow across the world in an instant. There is no longer any need to encourage copyright in order to get better information from foreign countries.
  - pojntfx 6y ago
    Sure! But the US Constitution wasn't written in a time where software was a thing, right?
kelnage 6y ago
It’s not at all clear how you are comparing Linux to its closed competitors, but frankly, if that’s the best example you can pick, I’d suggest copyright is largely winning that battle. Yes, Linux has probably “won” in some markets (servers/IoT being the obvious ones), but there are plenty of markets where that is not even close to being true.

koolba 6y ago

Due to the pandemic, we’ll actually be able to hear the arguments and SCOTUS questions live as well. Possibly an acquired taste, but I found the last round of phone hearings very interesting and entertaining.

warmwaffles 6y ago
I actually find it fun to listen to. Generally because the argument process and retorts are always well calculated. Wishing I could be that good.

tapoxi 6y ago

If this (somehow) succeeds, could IBM sue Oracle over SQL compatibility?

josefx 6y ago
There are specific exceptions for compatibility. Android Java never tried to be compatible, various required APIs were replaced or are just flat out missing from the runtime library.
- ysleepy 6y ago
  Of course it's about compatibility, about code-reuse of existing libraries. – Which is done a lot to this day.
- curt15 6y ago
  Where are such compatibility exceptions articulated? Section 107 lists four factors for fair use, including "the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole." Trying to achieve full compatibility would seem to require copying more of the original API, not less.
  - wtallis 6y ago
    Usually when someone on Oracle's side brings up compatibility, they are referring indirectly to the test suite required for using the Java trademarks. And they usually are also implying that compatibility should be defined solely by Sun/Oracle, ie. that Oracle should be allowed to require your own Java implementation to be fully functional and 100% compliant to their spec before it is in any way legal, and implementing a mere subset of relevant functionality is not permissible.
  - josefx 6y ago
    After going over the laws(i am not a lawyer) my reasoning might be a bit backwards. I think it would not be a 107 exception but an argument over the technical facts and the creative work contained in an API. To be compatible you have to create a copy of the facts an API describes and copyright is rather limited on collections of facts.

totaldude87 6y ago

I think we would be better off, if we follow the pharmacy world. Like they have full controls over a new vaccine for x years and then it becomes generic! Problem is that technology space moves so fast that if x year term is say 5-10 years , that would nullify entire process!

srtjstjsj 6y ago
That's exactly how Copyright works, which is to be expected because Copyrights and Patents are governed by the same overarching law.
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  Except that copyright is 95 years. That's insanely long for software.
webmaven 6y ago
> I think we would be better off, if we follow the pharmacy world. Like they have full controls over a new vaccine for x years and then it becomes generic! Problem is that technology space moves so fast that if x year term is say 5-10 years , that would nullify entire process! That is, in fact, how copyright works, and the original term was 14 years. Since then, the term has been extended several times in the name of "harmonization", and the term is currently so long it might as well be infinite, as far as software is concerned.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

jasode 6y ago

>This is a complete dramatization. Are you copying 10k lines of code from a licensed code base into your project without permission and using it in your commercial product? To point back to the substance of the thread and Oracle's claims... Google didn't copy any of Oracle/Sun's Java source code base into Android Java. Oracle lawyers acknowledge this. Instead, Google copied the API of function name spellings and also the hierarchy of organization (tree of namespaces) of those API methods. I asked about this in a previous comment and some folks more familiar with the case replied with citations of court opinions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7852100 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7852100 So to give a flippant summary of the current situation: you _can_ copy some exact spellings of API function names (e.g. other browsers Chrome/Firefox/Safari can copy Microsoft IE XMLHttpRequest() exactly without renaming it to RetrieveHttpXtensibleMarkupLang()) -- as long as you don't copy too much of the API surface area. The threshold of "too much" and getting in legal trouble is yet to be determined by The US Supreme Court. If Oracle ultimately wins, it seems like millions of programmers will have to reach for a thesaurus to find synonyms to name functions. We'll have to waste brain cycles coming up and alternative spellings of methods to stay away from copyright infringement.

st1x7 6y ago
I wonder how a meaningful discussion about namespace trees and API spelling takes place at the Supreme Court considering the background of the justices.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
  They're smart people and these are not hard concepts.
  - kemonocode 6y ago
    It still requires domain-specific knowledge and there are vested interests from both sides. I'm afraid because the world has little to gain and much to lose from the outcome of this case.

shmerl 6y ago

APIs shouldn't be copyrightable. European courts got that right.

bosswipe 6y ago

It's shocking to me that two jury trials spent months considering arguments from lawyers and experts from all sides and carefully came to a decision only to have the appeals court throw that all away and impose the opposite ruling, twice. What was the point of the trials? I don't know why the Federal Circuit court is so biased towards maximalist interpretations of IP law but I really hope the Supreme Court slaps it down hard. Again.

belorn 6y ago
The Federal Courts Improvement Act of 1982 did that. District judges are about geographical boundaries and need to make decisions about every kind of subject area, but Federal Circuit court judges operate based on subject area. That way a patent lawyer that want to be a judge handling patents can go to the Federal Circuit court, and unsurprising a very large portion of Federal Circuit court judges are past lawyers working in industry with companies within the same subject area. As a result it is not very strange that a court packed with past IP lawyers are biased towards maximalist interpretations of IP law.
ford_o 6y ago
What happens if I expose a Java FFI ( i.e. thin wrapper around Java stdlib) in my toy language. Do I break their license?
- gpm 6y ago
  It would be a derivative work of the api, so per Oracle's argument you would be violating their copyright absent a license. (You could use the gpl OpenJDK license if your code was GPLed, I think). You could try and argue fair use, and it would be distinct from the case at hand so you might win, but fair use is always a fact intensive analysis and it's certainly not obvious that you would win.
  - tmccrary55 6y ago
    yep although the openjdk stdlib is licensed with a linking exception, so you can relicense it entirely when linking against it.

jariel 6y ago

Does anyone have any indication as to how long the ruling will take for this? It's not articulated and this is a very big ruling.

capital_guy 6y ago
Could happen any time until June 2021
jcranmer 6y ago
For a case argued in October, a quick decision for a 9-0 case (or I guess 8-0 in the current court) that involves settling a circuit split or something else that's just simple textual analysis would come out in late November or December. This is probably going to be complicated. I wouldn't be surprised to see a 8-0 outcome, but there's likely to be a concurring opinion or two, which will make the decision take longer. My expectation is that the opinion will come out in the January-March timeframe. By way of comparison, Bilski v Kappos (the first big patent case in recent years) was a 9-0 case argued in November whose opinions only came out in the end-of-year opinion blitz.

tiffanyh 6y ago

Question: so if Oracle wins, does that mean no one can create compatible APIs in general? I know a lot of folks have created compatible APIs for Amazon S3, including Oracle themselves. Does this become against the law if Oracle wins? https://docs.cloud.oracle.com/en-us/iaas/Content/Object/Tasks/s3compatibleapi.htm https://docs.cloud.oracle.com/en-us/iaas/Content/Object/Task...

coldpie 6y ago
Sort of. Copyright is a civil matter, not criminal, so it requires two to tango. What I mean is, you can copy the API, but then the creator can choose to sue you. Or not. It turns our mostly-open computing landscape into a stand-off, exactly like the current software patent situation. The big guys have all the guns to hold each other off, but they can all take out the small guys who threaten them.
- gpm 6y ago
  Copyright is both civil and in the case of wilful infringement criminal...
frant-hartm 6y ago
AWS SDK is under Apache 2 license, so anyone is able to use it (suppose you comply with the license - attribution etc..). Google did a similar thing with OpenJDK (which is GPL) starting with Android N, why they didn't do it in the first place I don't know, Sun published OpenJDK under GPL in 2007, first 1.0 Android release was in 2008.
- gpm 6y ago
  Though for the purposes of this case it is interesting to note that oracle did copy the aww api and did not comply with the apache 2 license (nothing, including distributed derivative works like their api documents, contains attribution).
ford_o 6y ago
And what about FFI?

bitL 6y ago

If Google paid some reasonable sum to SUN for using Java in Android, they could have avoided all of this. I bet their lawsuit expenses are now higher.

Zigurd 6y ago
Having been across the table from Sun licensing people when using an open source Java in a project, "some reasonable sum" is optimistic. In fact any transparency about what sum they might demand is optimistic.
- bitL 6y ago
  AFAIK they were pretty open to some reasonable sum as they were internally fans of Google, but due to Google's arrogance the upper management relationship with them soured, then opportunistic Oracle bought them and here we are.
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    You mean the only company that actually made an offer to buy Sun and kept it? Google could have own Java, avoid the lawsuit and keep it Go style frozen at Java 6 instead. And given Google's history they would have killed the other products even sooner than Oracle did.
    - bitL 6y ago
      IIRC IBM was in the play as well, but yes. I guess Google didn't want to inherit all the internal late-SUN problems so they passed on a chance to own it. Now Google had to switch to an alternate strategy utilizing JetBrains for Android.
      - pjmlp 6y ago
        IBM withdraw their proposal shortly after coming into the buy.

byte1918 6y ago

I was making an analogy in my mind between API function names and song titles. IANAL but I thought at first that it doesn't make sense to copyright song titles, they are generic and uninteresting most of the time but after giving it further consideration I realized that some can be quite meaningful, for instance everyone recognizes 'Stairway to heaven' and 'Bohemian rhapsody' therefore, even though it seems a bit silly I wouldn't be surprised if those song titles are in fact copyrighted which could mean copyrighting function names is not that different. I then decided to actually google this and found out that: >Generally, copyright law protection does not extend to song titles because they usually are short and lack sufficient originality. Therefore, you can (and often do) have multiple songs with the same name, and the first to name their song, for example "Crazy," does not have the right to stop other people from releasing their own songs named "Crazy." An exception to this is that some long titles may be found to have sufficient originality to be afforded copyright protection. I suspect that my friend's song entitled "The Concept of the Quantum-Mechanical Bodymind Has Sparked a Great Idea" is one of them. [1] The whole article from [1] is worth reading. I wouldn't be surprised if the final verdict will be similar to song title laws from the music industry. [1]: http://www.askamusiclawyer.com/archive/is-my-song-title-protected-by-copyright.html http://www.askamusiclawyer.com/archive/is-my-song-title-prot...

bitwize 6y ago

If the Supreme Court does not find in favor of Oracle, it could undermine the basis for copyright law entirely. Google copied Oracle's code. The CAFC found, correctly, that API declarations are as expressive and protectable by copyright, as any other code. Therefore, finding that the Java APIs are not covered by copyright, or that copying them was fair use, undermines copyright entirely: if the unique expression of those Java APIs are not protectable by copyright, what is?

AnimalMuppet 6y ago
Literally everything else? That's like saying that if the table of contents and index are't copyrighted, what is? Um, the entire rest of the book?
- bitwize 6y ago
  If you cannot build a case for protecting the significant creativity and unique expression in the design of an API, then there is little you can build a case for copyrighting. If techies want APIs to be uncopyrightable, the solution is to go to Congress and seek a carve-out exception in statute. Asking the courts to affirm what they assume to be the case undermines all of copyright. I know some Hackernews are okay with that, but I have friends and family who are artists and musicians, and they want to be able to put food on the table doing what they love.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > If techies want APIs to be uncopyrightable, the solution is to go to Congress and see a carve-out exception in statute. By the same token, if we are rejecting judge made law that isn't expressly in the statute, if technies want APIs (or, for that matter, computer programs!) to be copyrightable, the solution is to go to Congress and get an explicit carve-in put in the statute. As it is, the only things explicitly included in copyright protection are: --quote-- (1)literary works; (2)musical works, including any accompanying words; (3)dramatic works, including any accompanying music; (4)pantomimes and choreographic works; (5)pictorial, graphic, and sculptural works; (6)motion pictures and other audiovisual works; (7)sound recordings; and (8)architectural works. --end quote-- Now, certainly some computer programs include things that fall on that list as components, and some might arguably be described as being interactive forms of one or the other category. But APIs, themselves, don't fall into any of those categories, so why would they need an explicit carve-out when they aren't carved-in in the first place?

dlandis 6y ago

I wouldn't be surprised if the decision is very narrow in this case or if it is even postponed again until there is a ninth justice. But I have a bad feeling it will be decided in favor of Oracle, since considering specific APIs part of the "idea" rather than the expression seems to be more of a convention among software engineers rather than actually part of the law. APIs can be "expressions", after all, it just depends on how literal or pedantic you want to be in your reading of the law. The real solution seems like it would be to update the outdated law.

gpm 6y ago
If they decide it narrowly I bet they overturn the federal circuits decision to override the jury (constitutional right to a jury trial, oracle waived the argument about a court ruling on legal aspects of free use when they agreed to the jury instructions) and leave all the interesting legal questions open.

josaka 6y ago

Highly recommend listening to oral arguments once posted on Oyez: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/u-s-supreme-court-oral-arguments/id1048210550 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/u-s-supreme-court-oral...

gjsman-1000 6y ago

What may throw Oracle for a loop is that Ruth Bader Ginsburg was considered in legal circles to have a strong view of property rights and many people I've read online considered her to be a near-certain vote for Oracle. Her death makes this a much less certain Oracle victory. To quote The Verge: "The absolute least important part of Ginsburg’s legacy is that she was the most reliable vote in copyright law cases, tending to vote in favor of rights-holders. Her loss also means that Google v. Oracle is being heard by eight justices and is therefore prone to a split court. (In the 1996 software copyright case Lotus v. Borland, an eight-justice court split evenly and was unable to set national precedent)."

Zigurd 6y ago

Oracle is pursuing a dubious interpretation of copyright that puts the entire software industry at risk of chaos. This is deeply irresponsible, and would be irresponsible even if Oracle's theory had a leg to stand on. And nevermind software, allowing Oracle's position to prevail would call into question the legality of every set of facts that are freely used across many knowledge domains.

pjmlp 6y ago

Time to squash Google's own J++ variant, they can keep playing with Kotlin if they are so keen, and buy JetBrains while at it. And before the IBM example comes up, SQL is an ISO standard, that Oracle like every RDMS vendor pays for.

loourr 6y ago

This author clearly does not understand software

us0r 6y ago

If anyone is interested in hearing: https://www.c-span.org/video/?469263-1/google-v-oracle-america-oral-argument https://www.c-span.org/video/?469263-1/google-v-oracle-ameri...

partingshots 6y ago

Why does Oracle care so much about Android in the first place? Does it even make any money for Google?

AnimalMuppet 6y ago
It can make a lot of money for Oracle (by suing Google). That, and only that, is why Oracle cares.
- monocasa 6y ago
  It's deeper than that. Ellison and Jobs were best friends (to the point that they could be seen in public occasionally wearing matching best friends tshirts). Jobs died thinking that Android (and particularly Eric Schmidt's part in sitting on the Apple board while Android was being cooked up at Google) was a personal affront to his magnum opus of iPhone, and the rumor is that Ellison agreed to hurt Android any way he could more or less without regard for the costs.

raphlinus 6y ago

My wish is that this case be decided clearly. Either APIs can be copyrighted, or they cannot. Either outcome has potentially good consequences, for open source in particular. Obviously if APIs cannot be copyrighted, then a ton of open source work geared towards making things compatible remains viable. Wine is one of the most obvious, but I can think of many others. Efforts to port CUDA code to non-Nvidia hardware. A potential effort to reimplement SwiftUI. And there are many more. On the other hand, if APIs can be copyrighted, then buyers now know that there's a single-source risk for any API that's not released under a permissive open source license. So, to continue this example, Apple has the legal right to shut down any port of code written in SwiftUI to non-Apple hardware, and similarly for CUDA. This would immediately increase interest in actually open source alternatives; Flutter already exists, a Vulkan based runtime could be developed for TensorFlow, etc. Sadly, I think this outcome is unlikely. What's more likely is that the ruling will be specific to the facts of the case. That basically means that there won't be clear guidance that you need to run away from proprietary APIs, but also not clear guidance that you can continue to rely on open source interop projects. Rather, any time any of this gets sticky, the only way through the mess will be to pay lawyers millions of dollars. That will have the effect of making it easier for the big players to dominate the market further, and harder for independent people to play. That's very much to the advantage of those in power, so I'm pretty sure that's what we'll see.

CobrastanJorji 6y ago
> If APIs can be copyrighted, then buyers now know that there's a single-source risk for any API that's not released under a permissive open source license. Buyers won't be very motivated to care because they are consuming the original product, not competing with it. The first mover to release an API frequently has no interest in allowing compatible, competing offerings to exist. It's the second mover, the competition, that desperately wants to be compatible with the first offering, so that they can effectively compete for the business of the customer who bought the original product.

causality0 6y ago

Does oracle actually have any function besides vampirically draining tech companies of money?

CobrastanJorji 6y ago

I have what's maybe a stupid question, but this is a stupid issue, so let's give it a whirl. If writing Java programs is okay, but the issue is copying the API, would it be okay to take 10,000 popular Java programs, read through their byte code, and use that to construct a set of classes and functions that those programs would need to run? It would, of course, be a nearly complete subset of the Java API, but it would be produced without any reference to the Java API itself. Instead, it'd be produced simply by examining programs you wanted to support.

dylan-m 6y ago
That's the argument that always springs to mind for me, as well, and I'm curious why Google's lawyers haven't used it since it seems obvious. (That's the whole point of this, after all: we're implementing an agreed-upon interface that application developers are using. Implementing an interface happens all the time outside of computers and is not a difficult concept to turn into shitty car metaphors if you really must). So, the interface is published in every consuming application. If you look at an application which is missing a shared object and figure out how to implement the missing pieces in your own version of that shared object, you've re-implemented (part of) an API. So the question is, in doing so, have you infringed their copyright?

jcranmer 6y ago

Oral arguments have already happened: https://www.c-span.org/video/?469263-1/google-v-oracle-america-oral-argument https://www.c-span.org/video/?469263-1/google-v-oracle-ameri... I wasn't able to listen to all of the arguments, but some general takeaways I had: * The justices seemed to be asking mostly technical legal questions of Google (e.g., discuss merger doctrine) and mostly doom-and-gloom questions of Oracle (e.g., how does your argument impact QWERTY keyboards?). This suggests to me that they're more in favor of Google's position, and are querying how to arrive at that decision from a legal basis. * Some of the questions suggest to me that the justices agree with Google's view that declaring code is categorically distinct from implementation code, and perhaps that copyright for the former doesn't exist. * Thomas had an interesting question that went unanswered: "the four factors to determine fair use are not exhaustive, can you think of any other factors?" (paraphrased).

foota 6y ago
Huh, that last note is pretty interesting. You seem pretty tuned in, do you know when we might be able to expect a written decision?
- jcranmer 6y ago
  The decision can theoretically come anytime between now and the end of next June, largely dependent on how complex the decision is. My personal guess is somewhere between January and March of next year.
  - foota 6y ago
    Interesting. If there is a new judge appointed before that time would they join the decision or would it only be those judges that heard the case?
    - gpm 6y ago
      They would typically not join the decision.
- deleted 6y ago

gregorygoc 6y ago

I’ve read through the entire comments section and I’m very surprised there’s no post saying Oracle is pure evil. So here is one: f those guys.

kubanczyk 6y ago
Tsk, tsk, that's an argumentum ad hominem.
- salawat 6y ago
  And thus the comment thread is complete. Pack it up, folks. We're done here.
catsdanxe 6y ago
I hate Google a lot more than I hate Oracle

anigbrowl 6y ago

Sigh...I've been commenting on this case almost as long as I've been on HN. At this point I enjoy fantasizing about a coronal mass ejection causing an electrical storm that would obviate everything to do with it. Well, there's always n-gate.

nimish 6y ago

The solution here is to pass a law that exempts APIs from copyright, not to rely on a geriatric body of lawyers to interpret laws not designed around technology

gpm 6y ago
The current law does exempt APIs from copyright via sensible general principles (you can't copyright functional things, which as applied in this case is known as the merger doctrine). If the court gets it wrong congress should fix it, but ideally we don't want a law that is a patchwork of tiny little exceptions because that fails to generalize to new things, so we would rather that the court just properly understands how to apply general principles. Even if the court gets it wrong, my favored way of fixing it would be to modify the general principle to be less ambiguous to this case, not to explicitly make an api exception.
- nimish 6y ago
  SCOTUS interpretation of an act is case law. With a single legislative act, we need not worry about this or anything else, modulo constitutional issues which can also be fixed via amendments. No, it is not obvious that API is a "functional thing" covered by existing law by the mere fact that SCOTUS has taken it on and it was a case to begin with. I'm not sure why a trivial act of congress isn't the first thing we jump to rather than risk ruin. All the act needs to do is clarify what copyright means. A copyright act for the digital millenium, if you will -- you can call it DMCA 2.0 :)
dragonwriter 6y ago
> The solution here is to pass a law that exempts APIs from copyright But APIs were never included, explicitly, in copyright in the first place. Why do they need to be explicitly excluded?
- nimish 6y ago
  So we do not have to have a decade of a case that could be rendered moot with a single act.

tony 6y ago

Transcript: https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts/2020/18-956_kifl.pdf https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcr... Oral argument: https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/audio/2020/18-956 https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/audio/2020/18-95... Oyez hasn't posted it yet, but it'd be up here later: https://www.oyez.org/cases/2020/18-956 https://www.oyez.org/cases/2020/18-956

vaccinator 6y ago

Lol Google the copyright infringment master... Stealing important bits and posting them in the search results.

iamgopal 6y ago

Can't google just buy Oracle, and done with this bullshit ? And at the same time land opportunity to move all their enterprise customers to cloud ?

amaajemyfren 6y ago

This gives me memories of SCO Linux.

teruakohatu 6y ago

I wonder what the impact will be on free/GPL compatible ZFS implementations. If Oracle wins this they won't hesitate to weaponize the ruling.