* Posts by jedisnon

32 publicly visible posts • joined 5 Feb 2017

After ten years, the Google vs Oracle API copyright mega-battle finally hit the Supreme Court – and we listened in

jedisnon

Re: Good analysis

4-4 deadlock?

Everyone attaches a patent claim to their API copyright lawsuit so that they can later drop it, whilst ensuring that the appeal for their case goes to the CAFC. The CAFC hears the appeals for *all* cases filed with a patent claim, whether or not that claim is still part of the case on appeal. That's why the CAFC *patent court* heard this copyright case despite (clearly) not having any idea about how copyright law works!

It won't matter that no precedent is set for other courts. Easily rigged forum shopping will put every single API copyright case in front of the CAFC on appeal, for whom this case *will* be the controlling precedent. The API trolls will be slowed only by how fast the CAFC can find everyone guilty of stealing print(x).

jedisnon

Re: errno.h

The Java API declarations are just a list of function names and parameters like this:

Java.lang.Math.max static int (int a, int b)

Java.lang.Math.min static int min(int a, int b)

What makes a list of facts about the Java API protectable, copyrightability of lists "being limited and all"?

jedisnon

Re: The devel is in the details

"SQL is an ISO standard"

It wasn't at the time Ellison stole it from IBM. He copied the structure, sequence and organisation of IBM's SQL along with it's syntax, commands and parameters "right down to the error code values" (Donald Chamberlin, one of the creators of SQL, 1995)

It was flagrant theft of IBM's new database interface - IBM's creative, hard work - and it cost IBM millions, if not billions. Ellison got rich while IBM lost a huge new market.

If copyright protected software interfaces then Oracle wouldn't even exist. They would have been sued into oblivion for blatant infringement.

See: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/03/before-it-sued-google-for-copying-from-java-oracle-got-rich-copying-ibms-sql/

jedisnon

Re: almost certainly prevents me writing down the list of names myself and going from there

Say what? Oracle agrees that it's an API. An interface. The declarations aren't even code - they don't do anything other than tell a developer how to invoke functionality. They are labels on the levers that make a machine perform tasks.

You can't copyright the names or functionality of levers and buttons, even if they are expressed as text and even if there are thousands of them. 11,000 * 0 == 0. Get a patent or GTFO.

Oracle didn't have a licence to implement IBM's SQL. Instead they stole it. Oracle didn't have a license to implement Amazon's S3 API. They stole that, too. They now want to make their own behaviour - the foundations of their existence - illegal. It's beyond stupid.

Your point (I use the term loosely) about license is nonsensical. This isn't about removing copyright from all computer code - just the interfaces that open-source projects such as Samba and Wine have *always* thought they were free to copy and re-implement.

It's not the end of anything except a hugely damaging money-grab by One Raging Ar$eh0le Called Larry Ellison.

jedisnon

Re: The case is about the APIs themselves

Which judges "blew away" the contention that APIs “never fell under copyright”?

Not the district judge, as he found in favour of Google. Was it the CAFC judges who had to reverse their own rulings when the jury failed to give them the verdict they were after? The CAFC judges whose ruling is now in front of SCOTUS for review?

If the CAFC judges got it right and this was never anything but a "rhetorical stunt" then why did SCOTUS grant cert? Why is it one of the just *2.8% of cases* to succeed in getting SCOTUS to grant certiorari?

Could it be that you don't understand what you are talking about? That you don't understand the limitations to copyright described in 102(b)? That you don't understand the implications of Baker v. Selden, which dates all the way back to 1879?

Or... Larry? Is that you?

jedisnon

Re: Status quo?

If you can copyright an interface then you can copyright a network protocol or a file format. You can't implement either without embodying exactly the same kind of SSO that Oracle claims should be copyrightable. After all, what is a network protocol other than a serialised API?

It's a recipe for fragmentation, vendor lock-in, legal chaos and copyright trolls replicating the very worst elements of US patent law.

We just have to hope that SCOTUS understands it - and I'm not sure more than a couple of them do.

jedisnon

Re: no such rule previously existed

Who the publisher is doesn't matter. Was the API published? Was the API published with the intent that it be **used** by others?

As the Supreme Court made clear over one hundred and forty years ago in Baker v. Selden:

"The description of the art in a book, though entitled to the benefit of copyright, lays no foundation for an exclusive claim to the art itself. The object of the one is explanation; the object of the other is use. The former may be secured by copyright. The latter can only be secured, if it can be secured at all, by letters-patent."

A book explaining the API may be protected by copyright. The actual API it describes - the useful art - can only be protected by patents. Oracle tried **and failed** to get a patent on the Java API.

Your argument that an API isn't the same as a word in a dictionary is just...huh? What? It's word salad.

Context is irrelevant. Definitions are irrelevant. Leaving aside that you cannot copyright a language - and Java is a language - the function names in an API are a method of operation: the means of controlling the behaviour and outputs of a (virtual) machine. They cannot be protected by copyright, per 102(b):

"(b)In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work."

The API is part of the software in the same way that the brake pedal is part of a car - you don't get to insist that everyone else's brake pedal has to look different from yours and go in the boot just because you were the first to put a lever by the driver's feet. Get a patent or go home.

You need to spend more time understanding the law, programming and well - everything.

Sorry.

jedisnon

Re: Anyone remember USL vs. BSDi, or Sun Microsystems vs. Microsoft?

Sun sued Microsoft for trademark violation when MS "extended" Java in incompatible ways on Windows but continued calling it Java. No copyright claims were involved.

The USL vs. BSDi case was (a hot mess) about allegedly copied code (and licenses and trademarks) not software interfaces so doesn't have much relevance. USL got slapped down hard and had to print public apologies for making false ownership claims - so much for that clever idea!

You are correct that MS never tried to suppress competitor products with copyright claims despite very much wanting to kill the competition in any way they could. MS-DOS was allegedly a copy of CP/M so any copyright claim would have been a legal and PR disaster. More importantly. Microsoft filed an Amici brief to SCOTUS for this case - in support of Google.

Microsoft agrees that software interfaces/APIs should be free to copy and re-implement.

jedisnon

Re: ISAs?

This may help: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/06/intel-fires-warning-shots-at-microsoft-claims-x86-emulation-is-a-patent-minefield/

Notice that copyright isn't mentioned. It's patents all the way down.

Note also the complete absence of any successful court cases claiming copyright protection for the x86 instruction set. Intel tried that for their microcode - not the interfaces/instructions themselves - and they lost. The *implementing code* was too different. Other chipmakers could present the same interfaces to calling code so long as they did their own implementation.

See: https://jolt.law.harvard.edu/digest/intel-and-the-x86-architecture-a-legal-perspective

Nobody - not IBM for its PC BIOS, not Intel for x86, not Microsoft for MS-DOS - has ever tried to claim in court that their **interfaces** were protected by copyright. The closest we got was Lotus v. Borland in 1982 with Lotus losing, Borland free to re-implement a competitor's software interface, and SCOTUS affirming the ruling that a software interface is exempt from copyright protection - but with a 4:4 tie and therefore no binding precedent. For more than forty years the entire software industry considered the case to be closed. Until now.

Let's hope SCOTUS get it right again - this time with a binding majority.

jedisnon

Re: will have to think about getting a license each time he/she overrides a library method

He's that single sulky thumb-down for the factual arguments that prove him wrong.

jedisnon

Re: ISAs?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zet_(hardware)

"Zet is a clone x86 architecture microprocessor that is machine code compatible with x86 processors developed as an effort to make open-hardware processor."

Copyright hasn't expired so how can this exist?

jedisnon

Re: @sbt The case is about the APIs themselves

Google already won on that count. Multiple times.

Can the CAFC ignore the jury decision? The decision they ruled they were NOT competent to make? The decision they ruled MUST be made by a jury? The jury decision that Oracle explicitly agreed to be bound by?

That's a total car-crash and SCOTUS knows it stinks.

jedisnon

Re: Earlier ruling

There was no earlier ruling.

His entire narrative that SCOTUS has already ruled that the Java API declarations are protected by copyright is false. It's a bit of a theme.

jedisnon

Re: The purpose of the Supreme Coart is not to decide who is guilty.

Google didn't copy any code - they copied the declarations. Declarations don't do anything.

Google *did* create their own VM.

Since when was a way to organise complex things protected by copyright? Copyright is supposed to protect creative expression, not complex systems. *Patents* protect complex and/or novel systems/machines/methods, not copyright.

Oracle tried to get a patent on Java and failed. It was neither sufficiently novel nor non-obvious to be worthy of such protection. Making such protection *automatic* via copyright (for decades longer than a patent!) with none of the scrutiny is exactly why an Oracle win would be such a disaster for the software industry.

jedisnon

Re: Status quo?

Are you sure no other definition might be considered relevant by the court?

JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR: (to Oracle) Counsel, at the in your beginning statement, you had the sky falling if we ruled in favor of Google.

The problem with that argument for me is that it seems that since 1992, and Justice Kagan mentioned the case, the Second Circuit case, a Ninth Circuit case, an Eleventh Circuit case, a First Circuit case, that a basic principle has developed in the case law, up until the Federal Circuit's decision.

I know there was a Third Circuit decision earlier on in the 1980s. But the other circuits moved away from that. They and the entire computer world have not tried to analogize computer codes to other methods of expression because it's sui generis. They've looked at its functions, and they've said the API, the Application Programming Interface, of which the declaring code is a part, is not copyrightable. Implementing codes are.

And on that understanding, industries have built up around applications that know they can -- they can copy only what's necessary to run on the application, but they have to change everything else. That's what Google did here. That's why it took less than 1 percent of the Java code.

So I guess that's the way the world has run in every other system, whether it's Apple's desktop or Amazon's web services,

everybody knows that APIs are not -- declaring codes are not copyrightable. Implementing codes are.

So please explain to me why we should now upend what the industry has viewed as the copyrightable elements and has declared that some are methods of operation and some are expressions. Why should we change that understanding?

jedisnon

Re: ISAs?

That architecture is protected by patents, not copyright.

jedisnon

Re: Fundamental principle of Java

"Portability" has nothing to do with whether or not something is protected by copyright.

It could be a factor in the fair use determination but portability is directly counter to the argument that Google's use of the API on a new platform is "transformative" - a key fair use factor. Compatibility would be an argument *against* transformation.

Oracle are trying to argue that *if only Google had copied more* they wouldn't have breached copyright - which is every bit as absurd as it seems.

jedisnon

Re: How do you implement a porting tool ... ?

Thinking about this more:

Your argument is that it is perfectly legal for Google to write an interpreter for the Java language (including the entirety of the declarations at issue), write that to an intermediary format (which we will call "bytecode") and then execute that bytecode on their own implementing VM.

***Which is exactly what they did.***

Do you understand the absurdity of your own argument? That you are arguing that an implementation of the API (which is what your parser/intermediary-code/execution-machine *is*) is both totally legal and totally illegal at the same time?

jedisnon

Re: How do you implement a porting tool ... ?

So you can include the entire API and all it's parameters if you disguise it well enough?

If you ROT13 a Harry Potter novel and provide a decoder with your **copy** are you free and clear of copyright claims? Of course not.

You have no idea what you are talking about, despite being all over this thread like a rash.

jedisnon

Re: the language specification

Oracle distributes these things called specifications for both the Java SE language and VM.

https://docs.oracle.com/javase/specs/

Your argument is that it is okay For Larry Ellison to copy other people's specifications but not for Google to copy his.

How very odd.

jedisnon

Re: When did SCOTUS rule on the copyrightability of the Java API?

No, that was NOT a ruling that the declarations were protected by copyright. Denying cert is not the same thing as a ruling.

You have repeatedly made this claim and it is WRONG.

The first time that SCOTUS is considering the question of whether or not copyright applies to the Java API is in the current case.

Stop repeating a lie.

jedisnon

Re: When did SCOTUS rule on the copyrightability of the Java API?

Reminder - the two questions before the Supreme court:

1. Whether copyright protection extends to a software interface.

2. Whether, as the jury found, petitioner’s use of a software interface in the context of creating a new computer program constitutes fair use.

If SCOTUS had previously ruled on the first issue they wouldn't be considering it now.

Your repeated assertion that the copyrightability of the declarations is a settled matter - settled and upheld by SCOTUS - is utterly, unequivocably WRONG.

jedisnon

Re: How do you implement a porting tool ... ?

So I can write a parser that converts every Java API call and parameter in question to a "new" language/API and then feed that into an implementing VM? I can copy the entire Syntax, Sequence, and Organisation of the API but not the names?

You are saying that it's ONLY the names which are protected by copyright? You are saying that Oracle lied when they claimed it's the SSO that is protected and *not* the names? Really?

Why can't I just cut out the intermediary step and feed the Java API calls directly into the VM? What magic is happening that copyright disappears when I **reversibly** translate the declaration names?

jedisnon

Re: the language specification

If you can't see the difference between the specification and Google's implementation, I don't know what to tell you.

jedisnon

Re: this is exactly what Google did with Java

Larry COPIED the language specification and wrote his own implementing code.

You are not arguing honestly.

jedisnon

Re: There _is_ no source file to claim copyright on in this case

When did SCOTUS rule on the copyrightability of the Java API? That's one of the key questions in front of them now!

Please provide a reference where this actually happened.

jedisnon

Re: If Oracle wins, you lose?

Oracle copied and re-implemented Amazon's S3 API. They did so without a license.

Justice Sotomayer even brought it up in oral arguments:

"So I guess that's the way the world has run in every other system, whether it's Apple's desktop or Amazon's web services, everybody knows that APIs are not -- declaring codes are not copyrightable. Implementing codes are."

Ouch.

jedisnon

Re: Of course, we all know why.

How do you implement a porting tool without implementing the copyrighted API which you are porting from? Your code has to recognise every Java API call and it's parameters - at which point you have already "copied" all the declarations!

Oof, are you sure? Facing $9bn damages, Google asks Supreme Court to hear Java spat

jedisnon

Oracle have their own cloud, and they front it with Amazon's S3 API so that customers can move to them without changing anything. Oracle are even suing people for *not* choosing their cloud solution!

Oracle are money-grabbing hypocrites. You clearly have no idea how common a practice re-implementing an API is in IT, nor why vendor lock-in is bad for everyone.

You are welcome to your opinion, but when it is based on ignorance it's value is nil.

jedisnon

So no PC-compatible industry? No Samba? No WINE?

Will Oracle have to stop using Amazon's S3 cloud APIs while they - you know - **try to replace Amazon's cloud service with their own**

'No deal better than bad deal' approach to Brexit 'unsubstantiated'

jedisnon

Re: WTO rules which seem to work well enough

Any more trade with NZ and Australia will destroy large sectors of the UK farming industry. Although, WTO tariffs on food - up to 74% - will finish them off anyway.

https://www.fginsight.com/news/uk-sheep-farmers-fear-over-free-trade-with-new-zealand-18408

The UK can only be better off by selling more stuff to other countries than we import. Are we going to sell Welsh lamb to NZ? Seriously?

Whenever a brexiter is asked to name an example of a market that we are blocked from exploiting by the EU they *cannot answer*. The magical market that will solve all our problems is a fantasy. Pure wishful thinking.

If our best hope of a trade deal is grovelling at the feet of religious extremists , and declaring our "shared values" with brutal murderers and despots, then it doesn't take a genius to realise that we are in serious shit. The government is desperate for a deal - any deal. Desperate people don't make good bargains.

Lying to yourself wrapped up in a flag won't change what is going to happen.

Trump's immigration clampdown has Silicon Valley techies fearing for their house prices

jedisnon

Re: Stalin killed ~20 million of his own people :(

Hmmmm...according to Snopes they can't find evidence for this exact quote, but they did find evidence of plenty of other anti-establishment statements.

Then there is the small matter of him being a white-supremacist who thinks that satan and Darth Vader are good role-models, so while you may disagree with the Lenin quote, your defence of him suggests a certain lack of objectivity.

Perhaps the so-called "president" should stop listening to such a hateful figure.