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The beauty of the law is that it does not take such philosophical things into consideration. The only thing that matters is the text of the law and it's documen

The beauty of the law is that it does not take such philosophical things into consideration. The only thing that matters is the text of the law and it's documented interpretation in various court cases. That's why copyright is excluded from this court case because there are a lot of documented interpretations of fair use. Which also apply here. The simple layman's version of copyright is that copyright applies to a specific form of a thing and not about the ideas behind that thing. So, no, George Lucas was not infringing anything. Nor is hip hop music making use of samples infringing anything. Or Andy Warhol integrating photos into his works. Nor is it illegal to paraphrase or refer other authors. And as Oracle found out by challenging it in court, trying to claim ownership over APIs to prevent third party implementations is also not going to work. All of that falls under fair use. Fair use is what makes copyright useful. Without it you'd have to live in fear that legal copyright holders might come after you if you apply the ideas that you might have been exposed to via their copyrighted work. Fair use exists such that you can make use of information provided to you via a copyrighted work.

BeefWellington 4y ago
All those examples you give are transformative in some way or other. It's an interesting test of open source licensing because I'm not aware of any other area of copyright where works come with an explicit "if you use this somewhere else you must credit me as the initial author" in the implied/provided license. Comparing music, literature, etc. to code is difficult because of both this difference and the existence of software patents. The manner in which infringement happens (and the scale) is often different as well.
- jillesvangurp 4y ago
  Actually, it might be challenging to programmers to grasp but it's a lot easier for a non technical judge. Same difference and easy comparison: Specific form and fair use. Nothing else matters. Two very simple concepts with a long history of being challenged in courts. There's nothing new here for a judge to consider. The specific form here is small blurbs of code that are suggested to end users by Github. Does that constitute a copyright violation? Answer no, because it's a small sample that falls under fair use. It doesn't matter whether it's music, literature, or code. Fair use is fair use. And it's been challenged so often that no judge is going to make any exceptions just because we are now dealing with software. End of story. No basis for any copyright infringement here. Not even worth trying out in a court because you'd be laughed away. The plaintiffs in this case clearly realized that and did not bother with even trying to prove otherwise. Software patents are not part of this court case either for the obvious reason that the vast majority of copyright holders in this case don't actually hold any patents whatsoever. And if they would, it would not be Github's problem but the problem of those creating possibly infringing products without a license. Github just gives people access to (public) knowledge here. That's what a patent is: public knowledge. It's up to the user to decide if they are OK shipping products that include that. And it's their problem to do any due diligence.

BeefWellington 4y ago

All those examples you give are transformative in some way or other. It's an interesting test of open source licensing because I'm not aware of any other area of copyright where works come with an explicit "if you use this somewhere else you must credit me as the initial author" in the implied/provided license. Comparing music, literature, etc. to code is difficult because of both this difference and the existence of software patents. The manner in which infringement happens (and the scale) is often different as well.

jillesvangurp 4y ago
Actually, it might be challenging to programmers to grasp but it's a lot easier for a non technical judge. Same difference and easy comparison: Specific form and fair use. Nothing else matters. Two very simple concepts with a long history of being challenged in courts. There's nothing new here for a judge to consider. The specific form here is small blurbs of code that are suggested to end users by Github. Does that constitute a copyright violation? Answer no, because it's a small sample that falls under fair use. It doesn't matter whether it's music, literature, or code. Fair use is fair use. And it's been challenged so often that no judge is going to make any exceptions just because we are now dealing with software. End of story. No basis for any copyright infringement here. Not even worth trying out in a court because you'd be laughed away. The plaintiffs in this case clearly realized that and did not bother with even trying to prove otherwise. Software patents are not part of this court case either for the obvious reason that the vast majority of copyright holders in this case don't actually hold any patents whatsoever. And if they would, it would not be Github's problem but the problem of those creating possibly infringing products without a license. Github just gives people access to (public) knowledge here. That's what a patent is: public knowledge. It's up to the user to decide if they are OK shipping products that include that. And it's their problem to do any due diligence.