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posted by martyb on Tuesday October 01 2019, @01:36PM   Printer-friendly
from the no-more-apis-for-you dept.

From TechDirt: Top Oracle Lawyer Attempting to Gaslight Entire Software Community: Insists APIs are Executable:

Last week, the Solicitor General of the White House weighed in on Google's request for the Supreme Court to overturn the Federal Circuit's ridiculously confused ruling in the Oracle/Google case concerning the copyrightability of APIs (and whether or not repurposing them is fair use). Not surprisingly, as the Solicitor General has been siding with Oracle all along, it suggests that the Supreme Court not hear the case. Of course, it does so by completely misrepresenting what's at stake in the case -- pretending that this is about whether or not software source code is copyright-eligible

[...] Except... that's not what this case is about. Even remotely. Literally no one denies that software source code is subject to copyright. The question is whether or not an Application Programming Interface -- an API -- is subject to copyright. As we've been saying from the beginning, the most frustrating thing about this entire case is that you have non-technically savvy lawyers and judges simply refusing to comprehend that an API is not software. It's not executable code. It's not "source code" for software. An API is a set of specifications for allowing the access of data, an application, or service. It's a "method of operation," which is simply not subject to copyright law. Indeed, back in 1996, the Supreme Court ruled in Lotus v. Borland that a user interface to a computer program is not subject to copyright under Section 102(b) as the interface is a "method of operation."

Whew! At least the .h files in C/C++ would never be considered an API and are thus safe.


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  • (Score: 2) by exaeta on Tuesday October 01 2019, @02:56PM (8 children)

    by exaeta (6957) on Tuesday October 01 2019, @02:56PM (#901312) Homepage Journal

    .h files contain more than just the API. They contain a representation of it in source code.

    It would be possible to extract the API from the .h files by compiling them and extracting exposed symbols, but the .h files themselves can be copyrighted.

    Machine extraction of APIs should be the preferred manner of extracting them, e.g.

    struct{ int; int; int; } is an api parameter. field names are not part of the uncopyrightable machine interface... except in languages where this matters (e.g. javascript).

    Nuance here is important, the law does not distinguish between .h and .cpp, only the uncopyrightable machine interface and copyrightable artistic manifestation.

    The law contradicts itself though, as binary files should not be copyrightable according to "method of operation" since they are instructions and not an artistic work. Welcome to corrupt judiciary 101.

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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Tuesday October 01 2019, @03:31PM (7 children)

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday October 01 2019, @03:31PM (#901330) Journal

    Nuance here is important, the law does not distinguish between .h and .cpp,...

    True.

    ... only the uncopyrightable machine interface and copyrightable artistic manifestation.

    False, there's no such distinction without explicit exemptions. The machine interface is copyrightable itself.
    * EU needed to carve exceptions specifically to make reverse engineering possible (in both interoperability and clean-room cloning senses).
    * US is sorta backwaters in this regard, with the DMCA.
    * In other jurisdictions, YMMV.
    Details [austlii.edu.au]

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    • (Score: 1, Troll) by exaeta on Tuesday October 01 2019, @03:38PM (6 children)

      by exaeta (6957) on Tuesday October 01 2019, @03:38PM (#901334) Homepage Journal

      In the United States the machine interface is not copyrightable. I don't know about the EU, but the subject is about a US copyright case.

      Did Google go too far by using headers without rewriting them? Probably.

      Would it be nice if fair use covered incidental use of headers where the objective is to get to the API? Yes. But if not, it's not the end of the world and nothing major changes really.

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      The Government is a Bird
      • (Score: 3, Informative) by c0lo on Tuesday October 01 2019, @03:48PM (3 children)

        by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday October 01 2019, @03:48PM (#901345) Journal

        Did Google go too far by using headers without rewriting them? Probably.

        If you are in the Oracle-Google dispute context, be aware that the whole squabble is in java (no .h/.cpp files involved)

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        • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday October 01 2019, @04:22PM (2 children)

          by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday October 01 2019, @04:22PM (#901363) Journal

          As I point out above, Google didn't even use Oracle's Java. Google used Apache Harmony which was an open source clean room workalike.

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          • (Score: 1, Troll) by exaeta on Wednesday October 02 2019, @11:19PM (1 child)

            by exaeta (6957) on Wednesday October 02 2019, @11:19PM (#902093) Homepage Journal
            They also waived the license issue by failing to raise it when they were supposed to (incompetent lawyers). The rest of us can use android and point out the GPL license.
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            The Government is a Bird
            • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday October 03 2019, @01:54PM

              by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Thursday October 03 2019, @01:54PM (#902264) Journal

              Oracle, or indeed anyone, can sue no matter what. They don't need to have an actual case to cause you to have to defend it, even if you win.

              They just have to be evil.

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              People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
      • (Score: 2, Disagree) by c0lo on Tuesday October 01 2019, @09:29PM (1 child)

        by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday October 01 2019, @09:29PM (#901490) Journal

        In the United States the machine interface is not copyrightable.

        [Citation needed]
        If there was so, Oracle's case would have been cut short from the very beginning,; there's a strong signal you're assertion is at least disputable.

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        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
        • (Score: 2) by exaeta on Friday October 04 2019, @03:34PM

          by exaeta (6957) on Friday October 04 2019, @03:34PM (#902655) Homepage Journal
          It's a true rule but the issue is even a tiny bit of anything not the machine interface renders it copyrightable.
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          The Government is a Bird