and here i thought it was Do No EVIL!!!
Posted on 03/18/2020 10:14:48 AM PDT by Kaslin
We find ourselves at a fascinating—and perhaps terrifying, moment in history in which so much of the past seems irrelevant to answering the questions about our future. How to define misinformation from information. How to allocate accountability for guarding against harmful materials. How to balance individual freedom with responsibility. How to safeguard and promote the creation of original materials in an environment celebrated for disruption and the idea it’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission.
It is no fluke that it is within this broader set of entanglements that the Supreme Court is set to take up arguments in the case of Google v. Oracle. While the case doesn’t address all of those questions, they do inform the cultural and legal landscape in which the case will be heard, and underscore the importance of the decision that will ultimately be announced. And hopefully, the Supreme Court will articulate a vision that helps us to address broader questions—that the past may in fact help us to understand how to shape our future, and that novelty can sometimes cloud our vision about the application of moral judgments that are unchanged by time.
The facts are not in dispute. Java (developed by Sun which was later acquired by Oracle) created a state of the art platform that is broadly licensed to all parties, including potential competitors. In a rush to get to market, Google copied over 11,000 lines of code to short circuit the process of creating its own platform.
Google acknowledges the copying. It makes two principal defenses: (1) the code was not protected by copyright including because the expression merged with the idea, and ideas are not copyrightable; or (2) even if it is protected, Google’s copying is excused as fair use. This is a case about the commercial appropriation of the work of another party. That is undisputed. The only question is whether it represents misappropriation, the answer to which is rooted in a determination of values as expressed by law. And the answer to that, while argued, is frankly indisputable—an observation that will be clear to anyone that reads the Oracle brief. The Oracle brief is astoundingly readable and accessible to non-lawyers, and reflects the fact that law, broadly speaking, should not be left uniquely to lawyers given its impact on society writ-large since it defines how we govern ourselves. Law is not fixed, and both reflects and shapes our values.
The sad reality is that this case is yet another manifestation of Google’s willingness to engage in unfair practices and its distaste for asking for permission to use someone else’s property. That’s as close to an original governing code as they get. They champion efficient infringement in a desire to enter and dominate markets, and make ex post facto arguments to try to justify their practices as essential for freedom and innovation, all the while ignoring the freedom to innovate that takes place within a licensing environment. Let’s hope that the Supreme Court sees through the deception. Not for Oracle’s sake, but for ours. There are moments to stand up against bullies. This is such a moment.
Not for the stated reasons, because computer code by its purpose and by its use properly belongs under patent law rather than copyright law.
The programming industry as a whole - even extending to people choosing to work in that field now deserve to lose anything that they might lose now.
To make it clear, what Sun/Oracle alleges is that they have a set of functions like this:
int doSomething(int param1, int param2)
This is a function called doSomething that takes two integer parameters and returns an integer result.
Under Sun/Oracle's own admission doSomething was re-implemented by Google sight unseen...the actual working code has nothing to do with Sun's code. They are instead alleging that the production of an identical interface (function names, parameters, return values) compatible with Sun's is a violation of copyright law.
This is prima facie absurd.
Google was founded on theft. The search algorithms were stolen. They settled the lawsuit but I always wondered if the government could go after them based on the unversity having used federal funds in research and development.
google was founded by using other people’s property
I despise google. (Using lower key letters on purpose)
Put that way, it’s ridiculous and would set a terrible precedent if awarded.
Well, that wouldn’t make them any different than any of the other big tech companies, like Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, etc.
Didn’t sun make Java Open Source?
It is. It reeks of the SCO lawsuit.
Personally, I wish they could both lose.
There isn’t a programmer alive that hasn’t stolen code.
Damn devils the lot of em...
“computer code by its purpose and by its use properly belongs under patent law rather than copyright law”
I’d say it kind of depends. If you are creating an entirely new process or way of doing things or architecture, then sure, that should be patentable. However, in writing the code you are simply using an existing language to issue a set of instructions. Whatever new thing you created might be contained or described by those instructions, but the instructions themselves seem more like a matter for copyright law.
That is true. Now ideally, you should steal the code and then try to improve it to make something more efficient that you can call your own invention, but in a rush to get the job done, everyone is just going to steal what they need and worry about it later only if they get caught.
No more true than a different type of wiring harness for a vehicle should be considered a language...which is true to the same degree as the wiring of components delivers power which acts to instruct one component to perform an action.
I have far too much experience in both analog and digital electronics to be bamboozled into assigning any credence to the notion that digital instructions are entitled to any intellectual property protections which analog instructions are not.
This fight was already fought in Compaq vs IBM for the PC BIOS.
APIs are fair game after that fight.
Google must have obtained their idea from congress democrats,wonder if they get sued?.
and here i thought it was Do No EVIL!!!
What Google has done is no different than what the PC clone manufacturers did in duplicating the IBM BIOS - a reimplementation to an existing interference.
We need Google to win this one.
Tech Ping
I do not believe any software should be patentable.
I also don’t think any action done in software, a virtual world, or even physically done in a different setting than previously performed, should be patentable.
In other words, starting a restaurant on the Moon should not create new patent opportunities.
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