Comment by LogicUpgrade | Hacker News Reader

Comment by LogicUpgrade | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

> "Google copied approximately 11,500 lines of declaring code from the API, which amounts to virtually all the declaring code needed to call up hundreds of different tasks. Those 11,500 lines, however, are only 0.4 percent of the entire API at issue, which consists of 2.86 million total lines. In considering “the amount and substantiality of the portion used” in this case, the 11,500 lines of code should be viewed as one small part of the considerably greater whole. As part of an interface, the copied lines of code are inextricably bound to other lines of code that are accessed by programmers. Google copied these lines not because of their creativity or beauty but because they would allow programmers to bring their skills to a new smartphone computing environment."

> Sanity prevailed! This judgment could have had devastating consequences and turned software development into a copyright nightmare.

This judgment is the equivalent of someone taking a movie script, shooting a new movie out of it without changing a word, and the court declaring this "fair use" of the script.

Software development wouldn't have turned into a nightmare unless you decide to steal a platform. Which most people don't need to do in order to do their work.

Not a great analogy. People aren't looking to make "interoperable movies". But let's play that out for a moment. Would a copy of star wars with different actors, different scenic design, different music be much of a salable product? I don't think so.

While I think it would be GREAT to see what Nick Nolte (Lucas was considering him) would have done with Han Solo over the wooden Harrison Ford, I'm not sure I care enough to sit through it all again to find out. Blech.

Actually it's been done randomly. Usually it's Hollywood remaking some not-made-in-the-us movie because they think they can do better, and failing.

Seems appropriate to create a burner account when you are this wrong and you know it. This is why many of us would like an easy ability to block greens.

Do you feel like Wine, Linux, or any web browser is also "stealing a platform" from Windows, Unix, or Netscape?

> This judgment is the equivalent of someone taking a movie script, shooting a new movie out of it without changing a word, and the court declaring this "fair use" of the script.

Ethics aside, as a viewer, it'd be kind of cool if this were a thing. Small-time movie makers might like it too.

Shot for shot remakes have been a thing for half a century. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shot-for-shot

In fact, they've become a fannish pastime the past few years: https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/20/16006112/revenge-of-the-s...

I don't think it's fair to compare a programming interface, which is more analogous to designing something like the plumbing architecture for a house, to a movie script, which is art. Yes, a well-written API can be considered art, but with the plumbing analogy, a "copy-cat" would just be making sure the same pipes are connected to the toilets in the same positions. What's going on under behind the dry-wall wouldn't matter.

Movie scripts and APIs aren't really comparable as you have presented them.

Bad analogy, architecture schematics are subject to copyright and you can't just take them and use them, either.

Not wholesale, anyway.

This decision suggests you could include say, the negative of the neighboring building’s facade so that the two “interoperate” in a sensible way.

People can and do steal architectural patterns all the time for reuse in their own structures. Are your getting it wrong on purpose?

Maybe it is the same as using a similar plot, but with 0.4% of code lines being the same I think the analogy doesn’t carry through to using a script word for word.

I think you're also ignoring the "transformative" clause written into the fair use doctrine in the US.

...the extent to which the use is transformative. In the 1994 decision Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music Inc,[13] the U.S. Supreme Court held that when the purpose of the use is transformative ... is more likely to favor fair use.

Your example is more like rewriting GCC in Rust and then claiming it no longer needs to be GPL. What Google did would be like writing a set of stock superhero character descriptions and then releasing them under a Creative Commons license so that other movie writers could use them in their movies.

I spy an Oracle employee.

I think you missed the rationale for fair use.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com