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Judge Blasts Oracle's Attempt To Overturn Pro-Google Jury Verdict (arstechnica.com)
Joe Mullin, reporting for Ars Technica: Google successfully made its case to a jury last month that its use of Java APIs in Android was "fair use," and the verdict rejected Oracle's claim that the mobile system infringed its copyrights. After Google argued its case, though, Oracle filed a motion arguing that the judge should decide as a matter of law that fair use didn't cover it. In the wake of the jury's pro-Google verdict, Oracle's motion was its last hope of a trial victory. It didn't happen; US District Judge William Alsup shot down the motion on Wednesday. The same order also denied Google's motion making similar arguments, filed at the close of trial but before the jury's verdict. Alsup's stinging order [PDF], which rejects Oracle's argument [PDF] on every front, hardly comes as a surprise. But the document provides the first insights as to what Oracle might bring up in an appeal proceeding, which the company has said it will pursue. In the order, Alsup defends how he ran the trial. The evidence and instructions presented to the jury were a mix of mandates from the appeals court, which overruled Alsup on the key issue of API copyrightability, and modifications urged by both sides' lawyers.
I forgot, is it Google or Oracle? Which multi-billion dollar corporation needs our sympathy, cheers, and support today?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I've never heard of a stupider idea. How about I think about all the functionality that could be implemented by someone somewhere, then write these extremely easy one line expectations. I'll make a huge number of them as well such that all the arguments you'd expect to pass in for that type of functionality are covered.
Now that I've claimed copyright, the ability of a random person to use program a computer to do something useful has been taken away from them. That, and I barely had to do any actual work. The functionality hasn't even been implemented. Isn't the US legal system great?
"On October 1, 2028, following the judge in the case ruling against the last remaining claims, Oracle's suit against Alphabet(formerly Google) was dismissed with prejudice; Oracle then filed an appeal later that month"
We're rooting for technological progress, so that means that everyone has to root for APIs to not be granted exclusive monopolies by the government. That means you should be on Google's side and it doesn't matter if either side happens to be rich.
What Oracle is doing seems dangerous to me. The last they they should want are judges (or anyone else) thinking about this. Asking judges to reconsider Fair Use is a very bad idea, because the more someone understands the issue, the more likely that they'll realize: "you're right, Fair Use doesn't make much sense."
It was an error to call it Fair Use, because it was a grevious error to even rule that an API could possibly be covered by copyright at all. The very nature of an API is that two entities speak it, so government misusing The People's power to grant a monopoly on a form of communication is absurd. Government does not need to grant monopolies in order to incentivize people to establish means of communicating with one another. That is a form of "the progress of the arts and useful sciences" which already incentivizes itself.
The more people think about this, the more likely this error will be spotted by someone able to do something about it. (All three branches of the government could get involved in this to varying degrees; Oracle is lucky that only one branch is finding them so contemptuous so far.) Oracle won this case by advancing the cause of evil, even if they didn't get their money.
Oracle: if you truly value injustice, unfairess, theft, technological retardation and stagnation, and want to help remove incentives for developers to create things, then you need to STFU immediately, because you're risking the loss of all your progress. Be happy with the damage that you have already done. It won't last, but you have have hurt everyone (Google almost doesn't matter in the larger context) for now, so you should be grateful.
At the core of the argument is the irreducibility problem. APIs combine high-level wrappers around functional pre-requisites dictated by the way computers operate on information. Most of these concepts are just semantic wrappers around set operations or popular methodologies. Examples for this are the terms 'threading' and 'multiprocessing' surrounding algorithms for scheduling, messaging and the distribution of resources at fixed offsets, 'database' around a separate organized data retrieval system (even IBM Sterling is called an XML database, although it's more of an XML REST API on top of DB2).
During community development, the names for API libraries are often built from micro-memes (ideas disseminated through a development group as semantic hooks to link together discussions).
An API doesn't solve a problem, it builds an INTERFACE that has been reduced as much as possible (for usability) to the absolute minimum exchange of information necessary to execute an algorithm. Attempting to declare intellectual property ownership over the format of an API is, simply put, a giant greased slippery slope.
Let's consider this as a symmetry experiment by swapping the IP owner out with another IP owner, such as the public domain. If we do this, then we should also be able to assume that public domain information that is used in proprietary IP requires that the IP become public domain. Solutions from mathematicians that are public domain (published in journals but accredited to them) would therefore mean that if the algorithm is used in a solution then by extension the algorithm is public domain and any API interface to the implementation is also public domain. That is to say, IP patents would all become null and void. Copyrights would apply, but only for distribution and marketing purposes.
In Python one has collections and in Java one has collections, but essentially the APIs are just common semantics around very similar ways of handling sets of information and performing combinatorics with that information.
This all comes down to the 14th amendment and the concept of equal protection. Build a solution, not a business plan of extortion that depends on sophistry and inherent lack of understanding among the lawyers and judges. Once one cuts through the semantics, we're really talking about the fact that IP patents are centered around a concept of 'first to market so we own the whole market' rather than true innovation.
And we wondered while the publish it now, make it work later trend is getting worse?
My $0.02 will always be worth more than your â0.02, so
Oracle and Microsoft are having a contest to see who can be most evil.
Same one who worked for Gore in Gore vs Bush in the 2000 election.
So does this mean he is a good lawyer or a bad one?
And portability will die. This isn't 1950 anymore, and heck, even in 1950 they understood the need for higher level languages.
As it is, Google is moving away from Dalvik, but what hopefully will come of this is that company's can't expect to attack people who use their function names and symbol tables as infringers. I'd prefer it if APIs weren't copyrightable, but I suppose protecting them under fair use is nearly as good.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Look I know Oracle is a company that doesn't raise a lot of sympathy for totally understandable reasons (litigiousness, overpricing, monopolistic behavior, you name it). But the APIs were never released by Sun to be open sourced even if they were permissive, and you all know that even when implementing an API is hard work, designing it is also hard work; I would argue that is half the work. Java APIs are very robust and comprehensive so the design wasn't at all trivial and the names and interfaces are work that is protected by intellectual property laws, and Oracle is the lawful owner of that intellectual property. I don't like Oracle, and I understand that asking for compensation is a dick move, but a lawful dick move that they were entitled to. I don't understand why all people are supporting Google on this, specially the open source people as this undermines the very provisions of licensed software that protect open source licenses; and I know android is a great way to monetize your software writing skills, and that Oracle is a big bully and I know that open source is copyrighted only because is the only way to keep it free in our legal environment but I don't think this is good news. I only see two big (and fairly evil) companies playing with the legal system and the worst outcome becoming a reality.
Pure applesauce and Jiggery-pokery! This trial came back to the jury because the higher court demanded it. If the creators and everyone else in the industry thinking that something is fair use isn't fair use, then what is?
Just so Intel and AMD could sue them for everything they had for their software "violating" the copyrights on the x86 and AMD64 instruction sets. Unlike trademarks, you don't have to defend your copyrights to retain them. So Intel and AMD could sue Oracle, and only Oracle, for copyright infringement.
I see it as similar to the Chinese artificial islands thing. You can argue and fight with the idiot for decades about why he's wrong and shouldn't do what he's trying to do, or you can just let him have his way, allowing him to self-destruct from the consequences, then you can revert back to the common sense approach. In China's case, let them have their way and declare that artificial islands expand territorial limits. Then every other country on Earth can start building artificial islands just outside mainland China's 200 nm territorial limit. Since territorial limits from different countries are determined by the half-way point, that would reduce China's 200nm limit to about 100nm. Then you build another artificial island at 100nm, reducing their limit to 50nm. And so on until the only seas China can claim extend out just 12 nm from their mainland.
Judge William Alsup for Supreme Court!
I thought the this article brought up some salient points.....
www.theregister.co.uk/2016/06/02/google_oracle_comment/
Yes, this is just about right. I won't be the devils advocate, Oracle is a nasty litigious company, but this time they were LEGALLY entitle to their bullying. The outcome does in fact debilitate free software licenses cause now any big company can say "Hey, the code structure is the same but we changed the variable names, see? fair use!"
The appeals court reversed Alsop on the issue of the law, and so Alsop rigged the retrial by ignoring the initial charges and trying something else in order to attempt to reassert his decision. The appeals court will reverse him on the law again and smack him with something.
Whether you are for or against Oracle, everyone in this discussion seems to ignore the fact that Oracle _had to_ file this "Rule 50" motion in order just to _preserve_ their right to appeal since federal circuit appellate courts often refuse to hear arguments on appeal if they are not backed up by a "rule 50" motion at the original trial. Rule 50 motions (a.k.a. Judgment as a Matter of Law) basically just say that based on the case file the opposing party, Google in this case, has presented insufficient evidence to reasonably support its case.
I would not want to be Oracle trying to find a foot to stand on in this quagmire of a pit they have dug for themselves, but while they fish around for something to grab a hold on, I cannot fault their legal team for filing a motion that they would be _remiss_ for not filing. The oracle legal team were just doing their job ... no matter how easy it was for the judge to "blast" (i.e. shoot down). Oracle as we have previously seen, has a "never say die" policy in courtroom battles, and while the verdict regarding "copyrightability" in the previous trial in 2012 seemed like a "slam dunk", they did manage to find an appellate court ruling to overturn that verdict. I can imagine their legal machine is on lock-down this time again to maintain their track record in overturning judgments they do not like. It would be premature to count them out yet on the verdict of "fair use".
doesn't mean we must all be. Some of us actually look at the case itself rather than the "names" attached to it.
Try it some time. Try NOT being an asshole bigot.
And work out whether you think it's right APIs should be copyrighted and restricted by license, which will let you know which fucking side you're on.
Just a thought. Try one of those yourself some time.
For a lawyer, he did a good job of understanding the technical issues and applying this understanding in a consistent legal framework.
His 20 page summary is worth reading
http://arstechnica.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/order.denying.motions.pdf
Couldn't ask for better.
Portability? Tell me then, why isn't there just one open/libreOffice, usable across all platforms straight from the archive? The only portable language I have seen is http.
No, for the real stuff, statically linked Assembly solves all your problems. Hardware issues will just have to sort themselves out. In the meantime malware can't spread very easily. Speed and security, these are good things that need not be compromised for convenience.
"Hey, the code structure is the same but we changed the variable names, see? fair use!"
All you've done there is demonstrate, clearly, that you don't understand what is going on.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.