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Books are not equivalent to software because software has a functional purpose. While programming has creative elements, the primary goal of a program is to ach
by zucker42 6y ago
Books are not equivalent to software because software has a functional purpose. While programming has creative elements, the primary goal of a program is to achieve certain functions (whereas the primary goal of a book is to enable creative expression or to record factual information).
If I want to support a Windows program on Linux I have no choice but to implement the Windows API. Likewise, if I want to interface with a program that stores data in S3, I have to replicate the S3 API.
That's why I think that there's no good analogy for software APIs among traditional media.
As far as the law goes, Google's argument is that because software APIs are arbitrary choices and necessary to be copied for interoperability that software APIs are noncopyrightable under section (b) of this statute. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/102 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/102
- CameronNemo 6y agoBooks can have a functional purpose. E.g. if it is a reference manual for a car. If you used the same table of contents for the reference manual, but the contents were substantially different, would that still be unlicensed copying?
- zucker42 6y agoBooks don't have a functional purpose in the same way as software. With a book, there are many ways to state the exact same fact (and the fact itself is not protected by copyright law). With a program, there's only one way to call a particular function, or to write a function declaration that an existing program can call. The exact text used in a program is relevant to its functional purpose. A more apt analogy in the case of a reference manual is perhaps a competing manual that presented all the same maintenance information with different words, since they would achieve the same functional purpose with different expressive content.