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A California Jury Finds Copyright Infringement In an Interface (deepchip.com)
whoever57 writes: A California jury in one of the cases between Synopsys and Atoptech found copyright infringement in Atoptech's use of the "Primetime commands". These companies compete in the field of EDA ("Electronic Design Automation") software: software that is used by semiconductor companies to design ICs. The Primetime commands are merely an interface. Atoptech has their own implementation of the functionality that these commands [provide]. This can be seen as similar to the Oracle vs. Google lawsuit, in which an appeals court has found that providing a similar interface (via header files) can constitute copyright infringement. Naturally, there will be appeals in this case.
The whole idea that a jury can decide one way or another on a technical matter is pretty idiotic, and a misapplication of jury process as it enshrines decision making on the basis of ignorance.
In fact the whole legal system is back to front on this issue, since having specialist domain knowledge in an area often precludes you from serving on a jury in a relevant case. That's severely illogical.
Not even judges should have the power to make such decisions, because they are experts in law. not in technical topics. Making a good decision based on pro/con arguments presented by technical experts does not mean that the decision will be a good one, because a judge's second-hand understanding will always be superficial at best.
There are two good sources for informed decision making on technical topics: the professional institutions in a technical domain (such as IEEE, IEE/IET, BCS, ACM), and vocational academic bodies created for this purpose and barred from commercial influence. No human-based decision making can be perfect, but this would at least eliminate the ill-informed harm being done by judges and the general public working outside of their competency.
A copyright infringement case is up before in East Texas alleging that parrots infringe on the human copyright of speech. The defense wanted to bring in specialists to discuss convergent evolution, but the judge said, "I don't see what a bunch of biologists has to do with copyright law."
No. Let copyright exist for those who want it. Instead start using and promoting Free Software.
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/...
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/...
http://askubuntu.com/questions...
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
If you beleive anything you might have learned in computer science surely it is that spending time to get the API right is the most important thing. populating the implementation of the sub sections defined by the API is the work you give to the C-students. You let the A-students come define the interface. The API is the most valuable part of the whole
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Copyright does have its uses. Without it, someone could publish a book and have a movie company make a movie based on the book right away without giving the author anything. The problem with copyrights is that the terms and penalties have gotten all out of whack.
Copyrights now last for 90+ years and judges have indicated that any length of time is fine so long as it is limited. By this logic, they could extend copyright to 1 million years and argue that this is a "limited" period of time. Copyright lengths should be reduced to 14 years with a one-time, paid 14 year renewal. If something isn't making you enough money after 14 years to warrant paying for renewal, you let it go. And after 28 years, you should be able to milk everything out of it that you could so you release it to the public domain and make something new.
On the penalties front, the penalties were set in the days when casual copyright infringement was hardly ever prosecuted. People made and shared mix tapes recorded off the radio, but weren't sued for it. People who made multiple copies of CDs and sold them on the street corners, though, would find themselves in court facing huge fines. I'd argue that we should keep "commercial copyright infringement" fines where they are and cap "non-commercial/home infringement" at 10x the cost of buying the item infringed on. So if you uploaded 1,000 songs, you would face a fine of $0.99*10*1,000, or $9,900. High enough to act as a deterrent but not so high as to bankrupt you immediately. (Right now, uploading 1,000 songs would mean a fine of $750,000 to $150,000,000.)
If we reigned in copyright's length and fines, the balance would be restored and the usefulness of copyright would shine through again.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Remember way back when at the dawn of the PC era? When Tandy clean-room reversed engineered IBM's BIOS? That led directly, directly, to the PC as an open-platform. If the PC wasn't open, and therefore became the de-facto standard, then very arguably we would be stuck with crappy machines right now because innovation would have been dead. IBM would have had a strangle-hold on their implementation and if you didn't like their MicroBUS then you could build your own complete architecture. Copyrighting API's sounds good to non-technical people but people in the know know that it is the death-knell for advancement. The specific implementation deserves copyright but API's, and various implementations of them, are what foster competition and therefore better stuff, faster.
Shh.