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I agree. Personally, I espouse the "copyright should not exist at all" viewpoint. However, I think in the current legal framework, APIs are clearly copyrightabl

I agree. Personally, I espouse the "copyright should not exist at all" viewpoint. However, I think in the current legal framework, APIs are clearly copyrightable. However, re-implementing the APIs should obviously be allowed under fair use. Remember that copyright exists solely for the purposes of increasing the production of otherwise-easily-copyable works that take time to create but then are "worthless" (i.e. the marginal cost of each additional copy is ~0 or negligible). From the Constitution itself: "[the United States Congress shall have power] To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." I can see how one can argue that software itself - the actual code - will benefit in the same way (though the myriad successful open source projects and SaaS platforms seem to suggest it's not necessary......). However, I think it's pretty dang clear that limiting the copying of APIs will broadly lead to less software being created. It's well established that, for software, ideas are cheap, and that competitive advantages primarily come from excellent execution and excellent VC funding. If someone re-implements your API and your business folds, it's not because your API was your secret sauce and they stole it. It's because their re-implementation - which, by definition of an API, must be "the exact same thing" - was better than yours. They produced a better product, and the market rewarded them for that. So, for a legal framework whose purpose, as outlined in the constitution, is to promote the arts and sciences, I think it's pretty clear what the path forward is.

luckylion 6y ago
> They produced a better product, and the market rewarded them for that. You could make that same argument about patents in general, couldn't you? If you invent something, say, a new battery, and somebody else copies it, doesn't have your R&D-costs invested and prices it accordingly lower than you, the market will "reward them" by buying from them instead of you, they're getting the same thing after all. We do want some stability though, if you invest money to create something and somebody immediately copies it, you're not going to invest money again. We want you to invest money to advance humanity with new technology and knowledge though. Since there's no re-implementation without looking at the original, it feels sufficiently close to taking your buddy's homework and saying "no worries, I will change it a bit" and you'll have Math.add(a, b) and while they wrote return a + b;, you'll write return b + a;, you're not copying after all.
- cloverich 6y ago
  > say, a new battery It would be more about copying the batteries terminal structure, such that you could build products compatible with the battery or a battery compatible with the products. It snot about copying the battery, its about supporting interoperability. That's what is at risk here. Sixty seven different kinds of outlets, or arbitrarily expensive ones where the "design" itself is licesned, instead of the code.
  - pdonis 6y ago
    > its about supporting interoperability I think this is a very important point. I haven't read all of the briefs in this case, or looked at the arguments presented at the hearing, so I don't know if Google's lawyers stressed this point, but they sure ought to.
    - az226 6y ago
      Google would lose if they would continue hammering the interop point and the justices would dig deeper. Google only copied a selective set of Oracle's Java libraries. If they were about interop, they would have copied all of them. So no, Google didn't copy the libraries because of interoperability reasons. Google copied them so they would get access to the large developer community and ride the coattails of the successful investments into the Java platform that Oracle made. As one of the justices said, it's a one-way interoperability.
      - tylerchr 6y ago
        > Google copied them so they would get access to the large developer community and ride the coattails of the successful investments into the Java platform that Oracle made. I like this framing and think it’s entirely correct, but I don’t agree that it necessarily dooms the interoperability argument. Google wasn’t trying to achieve compatibility with existing code (for which, you’re right, they’d have needed to take the whole set) but rather compatibility with existing developers. Arguably, that is still interoperability.
az226 6y ago
The reason we have copyright protections to begin with is to reward and incentivize creation of new creative works with intellectual property protections. If you spent a large amount of resources in creating the library of Java code, why should only the implementation be protected? They've spent a lot of resources to come up with which methods to create, what to call them, how to describe them, how to organize them, how to connect them with one another, etc. That is a creative effort. They then invested in making the platform popular. If this wasn't protected, you would have zero incentive to build high quality libraries or to invest in making the platform popular if someone else can just come along and copy it. I don't see how this type of creative expression is any more or less worthy of protection than any other code. There are some other silly things mentioned in the proceedings. One is about monopolies, clearly that's wrong because there are multiple platforms and Apple and Microsoft clearly didn't need to copy these Java libraries. The QWERTY keyboard analogy is also not a good one since there's a clear difference between something that is written and consists of tens of thousands of pieces vs. a relatively simple organization of characters that's also not written (it's physical). So that would probably go under a design patent. Another is about transformative use. There were cell phones using these Java libraries before Google decided to use them as well -- the Jasper S20 using the SavaJe OS for instance. Also the doom and gloom that the industry will break is absurdly doomsday. Simple libraries or SSO wouldn't constitute the level complexity and creativity of Oracle's Java libraries. Google could have invested in creating its own libraries and only using the 57 or so classes that make up the Java language, made its own methods, classes, and packages. But that would have been a large effort to design them, get them battle tested, and to attract a developer community around it. It was easier to cheat to get ahead and ride the coattails of Oracle's community that were familiar with the Java libraries they had created. Google knew what they were doing was wrong at the time, but the cost to get to market meant it was worth it. Google didn't stop there, they continued to copy the changes that Oracle did to its libraries and copied new packages that Oracle created. Finally, Google had the option to take the community license, but they didn't want to contribute back. I say, hard cheese Google, pay up.
- Spooky23 6y ago
  It’s mind blowing to me that Google was too cheap to buy a license or buy Sun considering the strategic importance of the platform.
biztos 6y ago
> copyright should not exist at all Copyright is not just about software. Imagine a world in which you write a novel, let's call it Harry Potter, and publish it. And then I see people liking it, so I publish it too, but I can sell it cheaper because I don't have to recoup the costs of having written it. Or imagine you write and record a song, let's call it Revolution. A shoe company can use that exact recording in an advertisement without paying you. I respect the radicality of your position, but I hope you understand you are proposing to burn the creative arts to the ground.
- int_19h 6y ago
  Don't assume that those who are against all copyright hold this position in isolation from other politics. Some of us think that much of the economy needs to change in significant ways, and copyright would be just one aspect of that. And there are changes that aren't even all that radical, that are enough to make a counterpoint here. For example, with a sufficiently generous UBI, a lot more people would be able to pursue arts for the sake of arts. One could reasonably argue that removing the profit motive would not only not break such an arrangement, but improve the quality of the output.
- wstrange 6y ago
  The creative arts existed long before copyright was a thing
- triceratops 6y ago
  Some of the greatest works of creative art in human history were created with no copyright. I respect that copyright makes it possible for creators to get paid, but that's not the same as "creative endeavor would vanish without copyright".
- cwkoss 6y ago
  Destroying copyright would make some business models go extinct. However, society should use IP laws to maximize the societal goods of creation, not to keep the entrenched players' businesses profitable. There are hundreds of ways to monetize creative works. It's laughable to think that creativity will cease if we don't allow 70 year rent-seeking on the products of that effort. I think 90%+ percent of "societally useful" IP revenue would be preserved if copyright terms were only 1 year. If it was eliminated entirely, artists would move to crowdfunding and commission based methods of getting paid for creation. I think the first half of last century's music industry is an interesting example: back then the vast majority of artists rose to prominence by playing already-popular songs before transitioning into their own songwriting. How much is creativity squelched by the current system where licensing is at the arbitrary discretion of the IP owner, and how should society weigh this against the potential reduced economic incentive to create works if cultural products become freely distributable?
imtringued 6y ago
>Personally, I espouse the "copyright should not exist at all" viewpoint. Well, the original lawmakers agree. They set a 14 year maximum. In other words: They acknowledged the necessity of copyright but they think it should only be temporary and not exist. The problem is that it is too damn long nowadays.
- int_19h 6y ago
  It should also be noted that the original copyright terms were devised for a society in which there was, for the most part, no practical way to move information faster than people. A copyright holder today can start extracting profits from that copyright much faster, and on a much larger scale, than anybody could have in the 18th century. So the terms should be shorter, if anything.

luckylion 6y ago

> They produced a better product, and the market rewarded them for that. You could make that same argument about patents in general, couldn't you? If you invent something, say, a new battery, and somebody else copies it, doesn't have your R&D-costs invested and prices it accordingly lower than you, the market will "reward them" by buying from them instead of you, they're getting the same thing after all. We do want some stability though, if you invest money to create something and somebody immediately copies it, you're not going to invest money again. We want you to invest money to advance humanity with new technology and knowledge though. Since there's no re-implementation without looking at the original, it feels sufficiently close to taking your buddy's homework and saying "no worries, I will change it a bit" and you'll have Math.add(a, b) and while they wrote return a + b;, you'll write return b + a;, you're not copying after all.

cloverich 6y ago
> say, a new battery It would be more about copying the batteries terminal structure, such that you could build products compatible with the battery or a battery compatible with the products. It snot about copying the battery, its about supporting interoperability. That's what is at risk here. Sixty seven different kinds of outlets, or arbitrarily expensive ones where the "design" itself is licesned, instead of the code.
- pdonis 6y ago
  > its about supporting interoperability I think this is a very important point. I haven't read all of the briefs in this case, or looked at the arguments presented at the hearing, so I don't know if Google's lawyers stressed this point, but they sure ought to.
  - az226 6y ago
    Google would lose if they would continue hammering the interop point and the justices would dig deeper. Google only copied a selective set of Oracle's Java libraries. If they were about interop, they would have copied all of them. So no, Google didn't copy the libraries because of interoperability reasons. Google copied them so they would get access to the large developer community and ride the coattails of the successful investments into the Java platform that Oracle made. As one of the justices said, it's a one-way interoperability.
    - tylerchr 6y ago
      > Google copied them so they would get access to the large developer community and ride the coattails of the successful investments into the Java platform that Oracle made. I like this framing and think it’s entirely correct, but I don’t agree that it necessarily dooms the interoperability argument. Google wasn’t trying to achieve compatibility with existing code (for which, you’re right, they’d have needed to take the whole set) but rather compatibility with existing developers. Arguably, that is still interoperability.

az226 6y ago

The reason we have copyright protections to begin with is to reward and incentivize creation of new creative works with intellectual property protections. If you spent a large amount of resources in creating the library of Java code, why should only the implementation be protected? They've spent a lot of resources to come up with which methods to create, what to call them, how to describe them, how to organize them, how to connect them with one another, etc. That is a creative effort. They then invested in making the platform popular. If this wasn't protected, you would have zero incentive to build high quality libraries or to invest in making the platform popular if someone else can just come along and copy it. I don't see how this type of creative expression is any more or less worthy of protection than any other code. There are some other silly things mentioned in the proceedings. One is about monopolies, clearly that's wrong because there are multiple platforms and Apple and Microsoft clearly didn't need to copy these Java libraries. The QWERTY keyboard analogy is also not a good one since there's a clear difference between something that is written and consists of tens of thousands of pieces vs. a relatively simple organization of characters that's also not written (it's physical). So that would probably go under a design patent. Another is about transformative use. There were cell phones using these Java libraries before Google decided to use them as well -- the Jasper S20 using the SavaJe OS for instance. Also the doom and gloom that the industry will break is absurdly doomsday. Simple libraries or SSO wouldn't constitute the level complexity and creativity of Oracle's Java libraries. Google could have invested in creating its own libraries and only using the 57 or so classes that make up the Java language, made its own methods, classes, and packages. But that would have been a large effort to design them, get them battle tested, and to attract a developer community around it. It was easier to cheat to get ahead and ride the coattails of Oracle's community that were familiar with the Java libraries they had created. Google knew what they were doing was wrong at the time, but the cost to get to market meant it was worth it. Google didn't stop there, they continued to copy the changes that Oracle did to its libraries and copied new packages that Oracle created. Finally, Google had the option to take the community license, but they didn't want to contribute back. I say, hard cheese Google, pay up.

Spooky23 6y ago
It’s mind blowing to me that Google was too cheap to buy a license or buy Sun considering the strategic importance of the platform.

biztos 6y ago

> copyright should not exist at all Copyright is not just about software. Imagine a world in which you write a novel, let's call it Harry Potter, and publish it. And then I see people liking it, so I publish it too, but I can sell it cheaper because I don't have to recoup the costs of having written it. Or imagine you write and record a song, let's call it Revolution. A shoe company can use that exact recording in an advertisement without paying you. I respect the radicality of your position, but I hope you understand you are proposing to burn the creative arts to the ground.

int_19h 6y ago
Don't assume that those who are against all copyright hold this position in isolation from other politics. Some of us think that much of the economy needs to change in significant ways, and copyright would be just one aspect of that. And there are changes that aren't even all that radical, that are enough to make a counterpoint here. For example, with a sufficiently generous UBI, a lot more people would be able to pursue arts for the sake of arts. One could reasonably argue that removing the profit motive would not only not break such an arrangement, but improve the quality of the output.
wstrange 6y ago
The creative arts existed long before copyright was a thing
triceratops 6y ago
Some of the greatest works of creative art in human history were created with no copyright. I respect that copyright makes it possible for creators to get paid, but that's not the same as "creative endeavor would vanish without copyright".
cwkoss 6y ago
Destroying copyright would make some business models go extinct. However, society should use IP laws to maximize the societal goods of creation, not to keep the entrenched players' businesses profitable. There are hundreds of ways to monetize creative works. It's laughable to think that creativity will cease if we don't allow 70 year rent-seeking on the products of that effort. I think 90%+ percent of "societally useful" IP revenue would be preserved if copyright terms were only 1 year. If it was eliminated entirely, artists would move to crowdfunding and commission based methods of getting paid for creation. I think the first half of last century's music industry is an interesting example: back then the vast majority of artists rose to prominence by playing already-popular songs before transitioning into their own songwriting. How much is creativity squelched by the current system where licensing is at the arbitrary discretion of the IP owner, and how should society weigh this against the potential reduced economic incentive to create works if cultural products become freely distributable?

imtringued 6y ago

>Personally, I espouse the "copyright should not exist at all" viewpoint. Well, the original lawmakers agree. They set a 14 year maximum. In other words: They acknowledged the necessity of copyright but they think it should only be temporary and not exist. The problem is that it is too damn long nowadays.

int_19h 6y ago
It should also be noted that the original copyright terms were devised for a society in which there was, for the most part, no practical way to move information faster than people. A copyright holder today can start extracting profits from that copyright much faster, and on a much larger scale, than anybody could have in the 18th century. So the terms should be shorter, if anything.