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I’d be in favour of excluding certain types of work from copyright protection entirely. Copyright isn’t there to create a barrier to interoperability or a way

I’d be in favour of excluding certain types of work from copyright protection entirely. Copyright isn’t there to create a barrier to interoperability or a way to artificially prevent competition in markets, so IMHO things like data formats and APIs should not be copyrightable. This isn’t to say that no real creative work is involved in producing those things, only that the damage to society from allowing them to be protected in this way is too great. Curiously, the US does recognise this concept to an extent in its legal treatment of fonts, but unfortunately that remains the exception rather than the rule, and even that exception is not recognised in the global copyright treaties. There is still a long list of software and hardware that is protected from otherwise normal competition by repurposing copyright to prevent things like easily exporting a user’s own data to use with different software or swapping out a failed hardware product for an after-market alternative that wasn’t made by the original manufacturer. In this respect, copyright now acts like bad patents, subverting the original intent and corrupting any reasonable moral/economic arguments behind it, and instead merely providing a legal weapon for powerful incumbents to inhibit creative work it was supposed to encourage.

contravariant 3y ago
I don't think API copyright is recognized, even in the U.S. Logically speaking it shouldn't constitute a copyrightable work, but you never know sometimes. The documentation could be considered copyrightable, though you could just reverse engineer it. It's kind of the same category as fonts and recipes, which you can figure out by inspection mostly. If you want to protect something like that then a patent might be in order, though let's not get into that mess...
- marcosdumay 3y ago
  > I don't think API copyright is recognized, even in the U.S. That was what every single person thought right until Oracle won a suit against Google for use of the Java's API.
  - jfengel 3y ago
    As I recall that was a claim of a byte for byte copy. Google claimed there was no other meaningful way to use the API but the court said that copying the file itself was a step too far.
  - contravariant 3y ago
    I'm confused, all that I can find is that the final decision by the supreme court was that it fell under fair use.
    - marcosdumay 3y ago
      > it fell under fair use What means it's protected by copyrights. Fair use on the US is a murky thing that only large corporations have the legal power to bet on. But the sibling saying it's about the organization of the files may be on point. I remember it being about the organization into packages, but I can easily be wrong here.
- lebuffon 3y ago
  API might go down the road travelled by music in the last 25 years or so. Music used to be a copyright on a melody. Arrangers/producers had nothing. Recorded music now has expanded to have "production rights". This a copyright on the way the released recording "sounds". The recent Ed Sheeran court case is a good example how weird that can get. So APIs could be get there with the right crop of lawyers and court cases. ?

contravariant 3y ago

I don't think API copyright is recognized, even in the U.S. Logically speaking it shouldn't constitute a copyrightable work, but you never know sometimes. The documentation could be considered copyrightable, though you could just reverse engineer it. It's kind of the same category as fonts and recipes, which you can figure out by inspection mostly. If you want to protect something like that then a patent might be in order, though let's not get into that mess...

marcosdumay 3y ago
> I don't think API copyright is recognized, even in the U.S. That was what every single person thought right until Oracle won a suit against Google for use of the Java's API.
- jfengel 3y ago
  As I recall that was a claim of a byte for byte copy. Google claimed there was no other meaningful way to use the API but the court said that copying the file itself was a step too far.
- contravariant 3y ago
  I'm confused, all that I can find is that the final decision by the supreme court was that it fell under fair use.
  - marcosdumay 3y ago
    > it fell under fair use What means it's protected by copyrights. Fair use on the US is a murky thing that only large corporations have the legal power to bet on. But the sibling saying it's about the organization of the files may be on point. I remember it being about the organization into packages, but I can easily be wrong here.
lebuffon 3y ago
API might go down the road travelled by music in the last 25 years or so. Music used to be a copyright on a melody. Arrangers/producers had nothing. Recorded music now has expanded to have "production rights". This a copyright on the way the released recording "sounds". The recent Ed Sheeran court case is a good example how weird that can get. So APIs could be get there with the right crop of lawyers and court cases. ?