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If You Can Copyright an API, What Else Can You Copyright?
- nerdfiles 14y ago1. Music, etc (anything that can be formally described by a markup language) 2. DNA sequences 3. Anything subject to algebraic expression 4. Proofs and Arguments (_Paley's_ Divinewatcher, _Descarte's_ Mind-Body Problem, _Nozick's_ Experience Machine, _Gödel's_ Incompleteness Proof) 5. Programmatic Techniques for manipulating one's own brain 6. Expression of physical laws 7. E=MC^2, Gravity, etc. (assuming God is a "Programmer of Nature") 8. Personality types (fitting analytic descriptions; Analytic/Description Psychology, Jungian psychology, "narrative psychology"), because eventually: 9. Neural Networks, and the like 10. The Universe itself (11. Historically rooted chess strategies (the notation as a historical marker of creativity in time)) (12. Just about anything that might exist within the domain of W3C Provenance) ((13. Anything conceptually dependent on _techne_))
- nerdfiles 14y agoIt's not clear to me why you're downvoting, each of these components bypasses the "do not contain innovative technology that should be protected from competitors" feature. You're being unfair with these downvotes, and perhaps a bit uncouth since no general idea, or specific idea, as to why it's being downvoted is presented. Each of these is innovative in some way, and we can see a predictable trend where we will first assume that the problem is unique (whatever the API, etc tries to solve) and then "give due diligence" to creativity/labor where necessary. If you're taking this post as a "troll" attempt or a "joke," the joke's on you. This is what I truly believe, and I'm fairly, genuinely answering the question. You're downvoting because of the content of my thought. Cheers.
- sunir 14y agoLook up U.S. Copyright law and the case history on each of the suggestions you made. It looks like you may be surprised. I am tempted to go through them all myself, but it is less fun and may make you feel better about the state of copyright if you do the research yourself. Two for free: music is already copyrightable; DNA is not copyrightable.
- nerdfiles 14y agoDNA is still an open debate. Are you telling me a fact of law? Are we interpreting this question in the same way? I'm talking about music as a expressed through a markup language. So I'm thinking the "concept" of a concept album can be copyrighted IF APIs are copyrightable. What kind of metadata would it possess? Does the author of the music have the ability to extend that metadata?
- roguecoder 14y ago1. Phone numbers that spell words 2. Order Forms 3. Login Screens 4. Diner order slang 5. Hand signals used on the stock exchange floor
- sunir 14y agoTo assuage your fears or maybe exacerbate them: 2, 3 are already copyrightable. (Rightly so.) 4, 5 are not copyrightable because they aren't fixed expressions in a tangible medium. 1 isn't copyrightable because a phone number is a fact.
- FrancescoRizzi 14y agoMy vote goes to browser vendor prefixes (eg: -webkit-make-awesome-coffee)
- jjacobson 14y agoI assumed we were talking about Java library APIs (like Hash, List, etc). Is this over REST style HTTP calls instead?
- freehunter 14y agoThe legal debate is over Java APIs. The broader debate is over all APIs, since the ruling would be very unlikely to specify one single language. If Java APIs are copyrightable, all APIs are copyrightable.
- billybob 14y agoIf I had to explain the issue at stake here, I'd do it this way. Imagine you go into a fast-food restaurant. "I'd like a burger," you say to the cashier. You get a burger. The next day, you go to a different restaurant. "I'd like a taco," you say. They bring you a taco. Just then, a lawyer bursts in. "I'm sorry, but my client, the burger restaurant, has a copyright on that. No other restaurant is allowed to accept orders in the form of 'I'd like a(n) X'". Would that be crazy? APIs are the computer equivalent. If you go to a blog and request a page like 'someblog.com/posts', then you go to a movie theater's site and request a page like 'moviesite.com/movies', you wouldn't think of those two actions as having anything in common. Sure, both sites use a url like '/items' to serve up that kind of item. Why wouldn't they? But if the courts rule that APIs can be copyrighted, the movie site might either have to license the right to have URLs like '/movies', or do something else. What else? Whatever they can think of - and think of it first. Because the race will be on to copyright every imaginable scheme. '/show/me/movies' and '/movies=all' and '/3932939' will soon be taken. Even if they can come up with a new convention, they'll likely be in court for the right to use it. Does that sound good for consumers - ostensibly the ones whom intellectual property laws should benefit? Does it sound good for new businesses who don't have legal departments? Or would it be crazy?
- sunir 14y agoExcept that isn't a good analogy. It's much more like copyrighting the Burger King menu, which is the interface to ordering services from Burger King. By the way, you can copyright restaurant menus.
- pmjordan 14y agoWhat about hardware registers such as the layout for memory-mapped I/O? You know, "write value X to byte offset Y to switch the device into state Z." If that's copyrightable, the Linux kernel is basically one big copyright violation, because I'm sure a lot of the device driver writers weren't given a license...
- sunir 14y agoNo, because that is an idea and not a specific, fundamental expression of an idea. Only a specific software is copyrightable. Is the portion of software that "write[s] value X to byte offset Y to switch the device into state Z," copyrightable? Well, it would depend on how unique the source code was, such as pushing a VGA card into Mode-X or making an Arduino do something spectacular. But only that specific source code would be copyrightable. Given the fundamental nature of the idea, the copyright likely won't stop you from writing another piece of software along similar lines, though someone may patent the idea of controlling an Arduino to steer a hovercraft and prevent you from going to market. [edit: spelling of Mode-X]
- ajross 14y agoA register interface (the VGA registers, let's say) is not a "specific, fundamental expression on an idea"? Say what? The register interface is (quite literally!) a physical machine that implements the idea. It's much more concrete than any piece of software ever could be. I re-read that post several times to be sure. I honestly think you're managed to get your head into a space where you're confusing up with down. This is just plain wrong, and shockingly so.
- sunir 14y agoThe register interface of a VGA card was copyright IBM 1989, but that wasn't the question. The question was whether the fundamental operation of a von Neumann machine was copyrightable. No, it isn't. That's just an idea, not a specific expression. An example I grew up with was convincing a VGA adapter to go into 320x240 mode. That was a rather clever hack. The original source code to do it was copyrightable. He published it in Dr. Dobb's journal in 1991 and then later in his own book. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mode_X http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mode_X
- excuse-me 14y agoIIRC The last version of Sun's 'ls' command used every upper and lower case character as an option flag. Oracle now owns Sun and so has copyright on every upper and lower case letter ( at least when used as an option flag)