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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.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday October 02 2019, @06:15PM
Your words:
>I think that if the concept of copyright is to have any value, then if it applies to source code at all, it must also apply to APIs (but of course the copyright owners would be permitted to licence them separately).
AKA, there's no value whatsoever in me NOT being allowed to distribute your software freely, unless you can also block me from developing a drop-in replacement.
You also go on to say
>The legal system has other IP protections, it's clear to me from the wording of the copyright one that it's not an appropriate match for things like software,
Which other IP protections are more appropriate? Trademarks are mostly irrelevant, and patents explicitly aren't supposed to cover most of what software is (aka algorithms).
Copyright protects you primarily from literal copying - it makes it so that the first person to buy a copy of your software can't legally give copies to everyone else, and thus assures you a decent chance of making a return on your investment - just as it does with books, music, etc. What is wrong with that? And if the law exempts certain portions from copyright, that would otherwise allow you to exercise customer lock-in, I'd say that's a good thing. There's no value in "ideologically pure" laws - law is always a compromise between competing interests to facilitate the functioning of society.
Now, copyright has warped into something obscene, and I'd be strongly in favor of returning it to it's 14-year duration, but it is the only thing that keeps me from copying all of your software and code and doing whatever I want with it. Even open source software couldn't exist without it, aside from BSD-style "anything goes". Which might create an interesting environment, but why should programmers get less protection for their work than hack artists?