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Oracle Vs. Google and the Right To Use APIs

Posted by samzenpus on from the my-precious-code dept.

jfruh writes "Even as an EU court rules that APIs can't be copyrighted, tech observers are waiting for the Oracle v. Google trial jury to rule on the same question under U.S. law. Blogger Brian Proffitt spoke with Groklaw's Pamela Jones on the issue, and her take is that a victory for Oracle would be bad news for developers. Essentially, Oracle is claiming that, while an individual API might not be copyrightable, the collection of APIs needed to use a language is. Such a decision would, among other things, make Java's open source nature essentially meaningless, and would have lots of implications for any programming language you can name."

2 of 155 comments (clear)

  1. Can search results be copyrighted? by CriticalAnalysis · · Score: 0, Troll

    What really reeks me is Google's double standards on these issues. Yes, APIs should not be copyrightable. But here we have a company that is trying to copyright search results listings. Listings that are built from other people's content!

    I understand Google's need to protect their business, but the view they're trying to make of themselves is cowardly. Google wants everyone to look upon them as some kind of white knights and better-than-you company. Yet they do exactly the same thing when it's their business on the table.

    It's not only some vague Terms of Service or other mainly uncontrolled and unforceable terms either. Google will ban you from accessing their service the instant their algorithm detects it's not an actual human being making searches and viewing their ads. Even if you behave nicely with your scripts and rate-limit them not to hit Google's servers badly. On the other hand, Google has no problem hitting your servers and causing more than $1000 fees for the owner for nothing.

    Before Google starts attacking everyone else about these issues, maybe they should rethink their position. Otherwise it's just bullshit. And bad bullshit too, because they are trying to hide the fact.

    1. Re:Can search results be copyrighted? by CriticalAnalysis · · Score: 0, Troll

      There's times when robots.txt just doesn't work, like this story of how Google Docs attacked the poor guys Amazon servers and caused fees of almost $200 per hour.

      I have also never explicitly accepted any TOS of Google. Just because I access their service via my browsers provided search tool does it make me accept their TOS? I don't think so. For that matter many Terms of Services clauses that work in the US don't work in the EU, where I reside. But that's beside the point - I'm just saying that Google should do the same thing with their services and not try to hinder people's access to them or try to copyright search listings. Maybe then I would take them seriously when they complain about other companies stuff.