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Oracle V. Google Being Decided By Clueless Judge and Jury (vice.com)
theodp writes: The problem with Oracle v. Google," explains Motherboard's Sarah Jeong, "is that everyone actually affected by the case knows what an API is, but the whole affair is being decided by people who don't, from the normals in the jury box to the normals at the Supreme Court." Which has Google's witnesses "really, really worried that the jury does not understand nerd shit." Jeong writes, "Eric Schmidt sought to describe APIs and languages using power plugs as an analogy. Jonathan Schwartz tried his hand at explaining with 'breakfast menus,' only to have Judge William Alsup respond witheringly, 'I don't know what the witness just said. The thing about the breakfast menu makes no sense.'
"Schwartz's second attempt at the breakfast menu analogy went much better, as he explained that although two different restaurants could have hamburgers on the menu, the actual hamburgers themselves were different -- the terms on the menu were an API, and the hamburgers were implementations." And Schwarz's explanation that the acronym GNU stands for 'GNU is Not Unix' drew the following exchange: "The G part stands for GNU?" Alsup asked in disbelief. "Yes," said Schwartz on the stand. "That doesn't make any sense," said the 71-year-old Clinton appointee.
"Schwartz's second attempt at the breakfast menu analogy went much better, as he explained that although two different restaurants could have hamburgers on the menu, the actual hamburgers themselves were different -- the terms on the menu were an API, and the hamburgers were implementations." And Schwarz's explanation that the acronym GNU stands for 'GNU is Not Unix' drew the following exchange: "The G part stands for GNU?" Alsup asked in disbelief. "Yes," said Schwartz on the stand. "That doesn't make any sense," said the 71-year-old Clinton appointee.
It seems completely crazy that google thinks that apis are not copyrightable. There's no good basis for that belief that apis cannot be copyrighted. Even if it was significantly more convinient to copy-paste the api definitions, it's just completely crazy assumption that it is allowed. Piracy is also significantly more convinient to the users, and it's still not allowed. Whoever thinks that apis shouldn't be copyrightable, doesn't seem to understand well why copyright exists in the first place.
Otoh, google isn't the only entity that have made this mistake. Linux folks did the same problem when they used unix apis as a basis for their system. So there exists history of people not understanding api definitions to be copyrightable content.
The reasoning google gave for their copying of the api definitions is completely crazy too. Interoperability of software is the worst possible reason for this kind of activity. They couldn't enter the market that oracle/sun built for themselves, without copy-pasting the api definitions. The real problem is that google thinks they are allowed to take free lunch, enter oracle's java market without a license. The api definition copying is clearly trying to make android part of java platform, utilizing java's popularity in order to make android popular among programmers who know java already. This sounds like they're illegally trying to enter someone elses market area.
Common theme among people who illegally use someone elses copyrighted content is that they always choose the most popular content available. They never even think of taking something that isn't yet popular and making it popular. Instead they always freeride on someone elses popularity. Something that is already popular, they want to attach their feeble efforts to that popular thing. This is clear attempt to avoid doing the hard work. Hard work has a problem that success is not guaranteed. But attaching your stuff to already popular stuff is supposedly easier to pull off. But it's illegal for a reason.
Geek or not, the technical stuff actually is technical and norms usually don't even come close to having the necessary knowledge to understand even the basics.
Then there's the whole brain factor. Simply put, we think differently than they do. We tend to think using more reason and logic than they do, and unlike the common misconception, we have just as much emotion and humor which makes us unlike the Mr Spock they think of us as, at least when they aren't thinking of us as raging drunk/stoned hippies at a movie stereotype college frat party.