Google V Oracle: Everyone Wins — For Now

Oracle's lawyer Annette Hurst is getting absolutely battered on Linked In for her butthurt blog post about Oracle's loss in its case against Google. Basically, her arguments not only demonstrate a lack of understanding of how software actually works in operation, they depend on ignorance. Since maximalists tend to use such arguments, it's worth taking a look at them and discuss what it means for open source and freeware.

Oracle V Google: When Does Something That's Free To Use Have to Be Paid For?

Parker Higgins and Sarah Jeong have been live-tweeting from the courtroom and Ars Technica's own Joe Mullin has a seat in the press gallery. Hats off to these fine people for providing a running commentary of the case. Judge William Alsup and the jury will decide whether or not APIs are copyrightable and if they are, was Google's use of Java in Android fair use?

Oracle V Google: "API Is Property"

Oracle and Google are back in court fighting over the API used in Google's Android operating system. The implications are huge; allowing copyright on API effectively puts a tollbooth on innovation and any item with Java code in it is vulnerable to charges of infringement. Can you imagine the consequences? I can. Let's take a closer look.

N Y 2013: The State Of The Internet

Happy new year, everyone. I hope your Christmas was as great as mine. Here's a roundup of what happened last year and where we're likely to be going in this one.

2012 was the year I became an internet activist and got into mobile-ready web design. It was also the year of the internet backlash against censorship, the year of the Pirate Party, the year of domain seizures and website shutdowns, and the year of the cyberwars. Government efforts to make surveillance an acceptable norm fell apart as resistance grew and for the first time, ordinary people made a difference on international trade policy when we took down ACTA. Let's take it month by month, shall we?

IPR reform: Five Talking Points For Debates

Intellectual property rights law needs to be reformed as a matter of urgency. I got into a disagreement with someone I'm friendly with on Google Plus over copyright because he earns money from the CDs he sells to driving schools. We had a bit of back-and-forth, then he asked me for some talking points for a hangout he intends to hold about intellectual property rights.

IPR Creep And Why We Must Stop It

The ACTA boat is sinking. Conservatives from the British and pan-European contingents, along with the big business lobbyists, are frantically bailing it out but the Polish conservatives have already jumped overboard. EU Trade Commissioner Karel de Gucht took time out from taking flack for his tax fraud scandal to drum up a bit of support for the treaty in a last-ditch attempt to keep it afloat, but the good guys won the day at yesterday's INTA vote by 19:12. Why is this happening?

The IPR Bubble And How To Burst It

The state-sponsored monopoly privileges accorded to the IPR industries have put them in a bubble in which they are sheltered from the harsh realities of a free and open market. I wouldn't mind too much if they just stayed in they bubble and left me alone, but since they're planning to lock down the internet to protect their failing business models, I think it's time to burst it. Here's how.

Judge Alsup Hammers Final Nail Into Oracle V Google Suit

The Oracle V Google patent case ended with more of a bang than a whimper when Judge William Alsup ordered Oracle to pay Google's court costs for the third damages report on condition that Oracle agreed to pay Google's defense fees. As Oracle licks its wounds, the backlash against it in the tech blogs has begun.

IPR And Digital Rights: A Rollercoaster Week

It's been a bit of a rollercoaster for IPR and digital rights news this week, and I've been so caught up with those two issues, not to mention the Creative Hive Live event, that I completely failed to mention the Facebook IPO. Okay, I wasn't really interested in the Facebook IPO. But things in the digital world have been moving so quickly that it's hard to keep up with it all. Here are the highlights.

Common Sense: 1, Oracle: 0

The jury in the Oracle V Google case has decided that Google did not infringe Oracle parents in the Dalvik virtual machine for Android. However, the API question has still to be resolved, so it's not over yet.

The copyright

Jurors split on copyright issues 9-3—in Google's favor, according to Groklaw and Ars Technica. The decision that it did infringe copyright was made null by the failure to agree on fair use. In an interview after the trial, the foreman, Greg Thompson, said,

"We felt that the judge's instructions put us a lot of the way towards finding infringement."

The reason for the silly-sounding verdict, it seems, was Judge Alsup's direction that they must assume that the Java APIs were copyighted. Since the code was written as a tool, a decision of fair use is more likely.

"A lot of the jurors were focused on functionality versus creativity," said Thompson, with a majority "putting greater weight on functionality."

While Sun's Java scripts had been intended to be open source, and the jury were aware of that, the fact that Google had been relying mostly on a blog post by  former Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz to congratulate Google on Android's launch actually counted against them, according to Thompson. One particular quote in his interview with Ars Technica's Joe Mullin offers an insight into why the jury finally found in favour of Google:

"The more tech savvy a person is, the more difficult it might be to convince them of something that would limit [technology]... and future expansion of the common good," he said.

It's good that he realised that. Of course, the continuing litigation over patents to either stop other companies from innovating or make them pay a license fee for the privilege is continuing to harm our economy by driving up prices. The companies involved will surely pass the costs on to the consumer rather than absorb them.

The patents

All claims of infringement of the patents have been thrown out. The jury was unanimous on this. Google is delighted, needless to say, since Oracle had been threatening an injunction and since there's no patent infringement, they can't go ahead with it. There's now the third phase to go. The API SSO claim will probably go before a second jury to determine the damages for the nine lines of code involved. There's a stipulated agreement between the parties signed by the judge on copyright damages and the various ways it might be computed, so it's not over yet. However, as the judge pointed out earlier, it's not worth much. Oracle seems likely to appeal, but would it be worth the hassle?

Patent Wars: Google V Oracle Judge Is A Programmer

I've been keeping an eye on the ongoing Google V Oracle case because of the disturbing implications for OpenSource programs if the jury finds that APIs are copyrightable. Now it has emerged that the judge is a programmer, but instead of tossing the case, he's letting it continue and in the latest set of instructions to the jury, he's telling them to decide whether or not Google infringed on Oracle's patents before moving on to the damages phase.

Will it make a difference?

Well he knows a lot about programming and what's involved, and so far Judge William Alsup has demonstrated an admirable refusal to suffer fools gladly.

I have done, and still do, a significant amount of programming in other languages. I've written blocks of code like rangeCheck a hundred times before. I could do it, you could do it. The idea that someone would copy that when they could do it themselves just as fast, it was an accident. There's no way you could say that was speeding them along to the marketplace. You're one of the best lawyers in America, how could you even make that kind of argument? - From IProgrammer

Just for that, I love the guy, but there's more:

Judge: rangeCheck! All it does is make sure the numbers you're inputting are within a range, and gives them some sort of exceptional treatment.

This is gold, but it doesn't mean he's made up his mind yet, so there's still some cause for concern. It really depends on whether or not he's on the side of maximalism over OpenSource (there's no possible way he doesn't realise what's at stake). Here's an example of what we're up against:

The Federal Circuit has been strongly pro-patent since its inception in 1982. It was the court that opened the floodgates for software patents with a series of permissive decisions during the 1990s. And it was the court that gave the green light to patents on medical diagnostic techniques, only to be overruled by the Supreme Court in March. - Ars Technica

And William Haskell Alsup (born 1945) is a United States federal judge. He's part of a culture of upward ratcheting BUT he's a programmer. Is he willing to break with the pack and put an end to this nonsense or set a bad legal precedent that'll open the floodgates to more trolling and threaten OpenSource?

Patent Wars: Google V Oracle Enters Next Stage

The destructive patent wars between Google and Oracle have entered the next phase as the jury decide whether or not Google infringed on Oracles's patents. It did decide that Google infringed on Oracle's copyright in the Java APIs it used for Android but couldn't decide on whether or not it was fair use. Do they not realise that if it is fair use, there's no infringement? It gets worse...

Is A Free Internet Compatible With Security And Profitability?

I've been writing a lot about how unfair and ridiculous it is to either cave in to the ridiculous demands of the legacy content industries and their law enforcement lackeys and how their insidious influence is giving our elected officials excuses to clamp down on us in their name, the better to control us for their own benefit. What a cozy arrangement they have! All the control they could ever want, our rights and freedoms trampled underfoot and pesky ol' human rights ignored in the name of protecting starving artists or something. What I haven't really done, though, is look at it from the other side. Tonight, I'll rectify that oversight.