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Comment by exabrial | Hacker News Reader

Is there anything we can do as developers? Obviously I don't want to DDOS/DOX the supreme court, but can we write letters or do anything else to show _how massively important_ this is?

EDIT: For those unable to read between the lines, HN is a large forum read by thousands of people of different backgrounds. Often when someone suggests something, small actions can add up to create a large problem. DDOSing/Doxing is never acceptable for any situation. I want to "do something" but without accidentally creating a problem.

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Donate to the EFF - they write amicus briefs and generally empower the legal profession to have that understanding.

That said, courts generally don't focus on "how important" something is - that's supposed to be Congress' job. The exceptions are where the importance triggers some other area of law.

How does it impact us as developers either way? Both are titans that have contributed vital pieces of tech infrastructure as well as committed evil acts in their space. Oracle is arguably more evil here, but is it that big of a tragedy if Google loses? They have obscene amounts of cash; what difference does it make if a pile of cash goes from one evil pocket to another? Please if you downvote give an explanation. I honestly want to know what's at stake here for us.

> How does it impact us as developers either way?

“Treating APIs as copyrightable has a profound negative impact on interoperability and innovation. And it goes against decades of tradition and common practice in the software world.”

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/05/eff-asks-federal-circu...

This is only true if you exclude the middle ground of APIs being copyrightable with fair use exceptions. In other words, you can't kick start your program by copying the structure of another, but you can create a compatibility layer to your novel program.

I don't see how creating a compatibility layer makes it fair use. Unless you're only using 5% of the original API or have a strictly educational use you're going to be in violation. Even then you'll need to fight it out in court if the original party is litigious like Oracle and there's absolutely no guarantee that you'll get a jury that understands and is friendly to the concept for Fair Use. Media companies have been basically claiming that Fair Use is a myth for many years now, often successfully.

Because it's transformative:

>The Transformative Factor: The Purpose and Character of Your Use

>In a 1994 case, the Supreme Court emphasized this first factor as being an important indicator of fair use. At issue is whether the material has been used to help create something new or merely copied verbatim into another work.

https://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/four-factors/

IMHO simply re-implementing an API is not creating something new. It's just redoing something that has already been done. A translation layer from one API to another is a new thing separate from the original API.

Controlling how the issue is framed has a larger impact than who wins. Whether APIs are copyrightable is beside the point and no matter who wins, we all lose:

If Google/Oracle can copyright APIs, then they are free to use their market positions to block competition because the very ability to inter-operate with other programs would be infringement, and their monopoly forces everyone to acknowledge their presence.

If Google/Oracle cannot copyright APIS, then they're free to use their market positions to snuff out upstarts by copying / re-implementing their programs.

Whether some method signatures are the same is just evidence suggesting copyright infringement, not infringement itself. I can write a song with some of the same words as another song. That doesn't answer the question of whether that's copyright infringement.

> If Google/Oracle cannot copyright APIS, then they're free to use their market positions to snuff out upstarts by copying / re-implementing their programs.

Do you have examples of this? I’m having a hard time thinking of types of programs that are susceptible.

I’d argue that the small businesses have much more to lose by APIS being copyrightable as you then are locked out of ecosystems. You’d have to pay to play to build compatible or replacement products. If this was the rule of the land in the 70s+ would we have had GNU tools or BSDs?

If Oracle wins, next time you re-implement an existing API someone can sue you.

I shriek at the idea of 9 SCOTUS justices trying to understand how API's work and making that decision for all of us. I'm sure those men and women are highly intelligent, in their field of law, but I just don't have much faith in them understanding the difference between printf(...) and libc.a

printf and libc are not much of an issue as the c standard library and the posix specification were explicitly created to allow for multiple implementations of the API.

I mean, that didn't stop SCO from suing everyone under the sun the first go around.

You don't have to be a doctor to rule on an abortion case. Same principle applies here, as it should.

That may not be the best example...

If google’s lawyers cannot explain the issues on a way that high intelligent lay people under stand it, then they aren’t doing their job.

Most issue at the Supreme Court are highly detailed in some other area of expertise: medicine, economics, foreign policy, agriculture, the environment.

And the court with the most experience in tech, the Fed. Cir. decided in a way that most here don’t like.

Well at stake is ”Can you own the copyright of an API”. I think this is a pretty big question.

Not sure how this affects some other domains, like company A developing their own new database engine that shares API with some existing db (to facilitate easy migration).

thanks. This does have a huge effect on all sw devs.

Also, "who owns POSIX?" Is it the extremely litigious SCO?

On one hand I hate google. On the other oracle winning could mean the end of wine. My heart is divided.

> but is it that big of a tragedy if Google loses?

considering the fallout would extend far past Google, yes.

There is already a long list of amici curiae filings at SCOTUS asking them to look into this case and helping inform them: https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/google-llc-v-ora...

This is still in certiorari phase (i.e., SCOTUS hasn't decided whether or not to hear it), but there's already 15 separate briefs filed all urging SCOTUS to hear the case, and only Oracle is opposing it. There's nothing you can do at this point to urge SCOTUS as to whether or not to hear it.

Assuming that SCOTUS will hear the case (which is probably pretty likely--this is a Big, Important IP question which means the only reason not to hear it is if there's a better case coming along soon to hear it), the best chance at influence is an amicus curiae at that point. Talking to your company's legal representation is probably the best bet to get on one of the amicus curiae, but if you don't have any legal experience, you're probably not going to be capable of writing an effective amicus.

There is also the not-unlikely possibility that the court takes the case but then rules in an extremely narrow way that leaves open the larger question about the copyrightability of APIs.

The petition for certiorari has to explicitly lay out the questions that are to be answered by SCOTUS. In this case, the questions are: (1) Whether copyright protection extends to a software interface; and (2) whether, as the jury found, the petitioner’s use of a software interface in the context of creating a new computer program constitutes fair use.

Considering that SCOTUS is being very directly asked to rule on the copyrightability of APIs (and fair use, if they are copyrightable), not reaching the question is pretty much only possible if they dismiss the case as improvidently granted.

It appears they denied the previous petition from Google in 2015. Why is this one different?

One possible answer: the Federal Circuit remanded the case back to district court for further proceedings, and there would be another chance for appeal after those proceedings completed. SCOTUS may have decided to kick the can down the road. From what I understand, this is not uncommon; complex cases sometimes offer multiple opportunities for appeal, and higher courts will sometimes decide to say "no" to the earlier opportunities even if they eventually say "yes" to one of the later ones. Sometimes, higher courts like to let things play out more fully at the lower levels, since it allows the record and arguments to further develop, and so they feel they have a better foundation to base their own decision on. (Plus, with a huge workload, there is something to be said for delaying taking on something big as long as you can.)

(IANAL, this is just the best guess of a layperson.)

A lot of people/companies contacted the judges last time but some were actually companies backing Oracle (eg microsoft?)

What you can do as a developer is to ensure your company is not using any of oracles cash cows.

EFF has collected all of the briefs submitted throughout the dispute at https://www.eff.org/cases/oracle-v-google

I don't recall any computer/software companies actually backing Oracle, other than Oracle itself.

The article says the BSA (Business Software Alliance) has filed a brief in Oracle's favor. This is their membership: https://www.bsa.org/membership

(Obviously this is not a unanimous support list, as I believe Microsoft has filed in Google's favor.)

You say this as though you'd normally DOS or dox someone you disagree with, or that it's a normal course of action for a developer, or something that a reasonable person would consider.

Why would the thought of DDOSing the supreme court even cross your mind?

If every developer wrote a letter to the SC, that might (depending on how they handle such letters) function as an inadvertent DDoS - similar to the HN hug of death.

I'm not sure what can be done. The entire software industry is threatened by Orcale's greed at this point.

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