Computer scientists ask the US Supreme Court to ban API copyright
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) , the Electronic Frontier Foundation , a non-profit human rights organization, on behalf of 77 computer scientists, require the Supreme Court judges to reconsider the decision according to which the API (application programming interface) can be subject to copyright protection, as reported by the EFF official website . This decision, taken in May, has turned the practice that has developed over the decades.
The petition was signed by five Turing Award winners, four medalists of the National Technological Award, and many people from the Computer Engineering Association, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The list also includes developers of computer systems and programming languages ​​such as AppleScript, AWK, C ++, Haskell, IBM S / 360, Java, JavaScript, Lotus 1-2-3, MS-DOS, Python, Scala, SmallTalk, TCP / IP , Unix, and Wiki.
“The decision of the appellate court in the federal district is wrong and dangerous for technological innovations,” said EFF intellectual property director Corin McSherry. "The exclusion of the API from the objects of copyright was necessary for the development of modern computers and the Internet."
The statement clarifies that freedom to reproduce and expand existing APIs is key to competition and progress in the development of both software and hardware. Many different areas that we now take for granted could not have arisen and developed without this - mainframes, personal computers, workstations, servers. This freedom has enabled developers to compete with the giants of the market and promote computer science.
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The litigation began several years ago when Oracle sued Google for using the Java API in the Android OS. Google created its own version of the Java API, but in order for developers to write programs for Android, Google used the same names, structure, and functionality as the Java API.
In May 2012, Californian judge William Olsap ruled that the Java API could not be the subject of copyright. The court ruled that otherwise Oracle could control the “utilitarian and functional character set” that serve as the basis for a large number of innovations and collaboration on which we rely. The federal court did not agree, considering that the Java API packages can be considered an object of copyright, and sent the case for review.
“For decades, computer scientists and courts understood that copyright should not be used to protect the API. We hope that the Supreme Court will reconsider this case and cancel the decision of the Federal, which negates the long-term practice of the industry, and threatens the basic principles on which our technology sector is built, ”says EFF Special Adviser Michael Barclay.
In May 2012, the High Court of the European Union made an important decision on a similar issue , deciding that copyright cannot be extended to programming languages.
The petition was signed by five Turing Award winners, four medalists of the National Technological Award, and many people from the Computer Engineering Association, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The list also includes developers of computer systems and programming languages ​​such as AppleScript, AWK, C ++, Haskell, IBM S / 360, Java, JavaScript, Lotus 1-2-3, MS-DOS, Python, Scala, SmallTalk, TCP / IP , Unix, and Wiki.
“The decision of the appellate court in the federal district is wrong and dangerous for technological innovations,” said EFF intellectual property director Corin McSherry. "The exclusion of the API from the objects of copyright was necessary for the development of modern computers and the Internet."
The statement clarifies that freedom to reproduce and expand existing APIs is key to competition and progress in the development of both software and hardware. Many different areas that we now take for granted could not have arisen and developed without this - mainframes, personal computers, workstations, servers. This freedom has enabled developers to compete with the giants of the market and promote computer science.
')
The litigation began several years ago when Oracle sued Google for using the Java API in the Android OS. Google created its own version of the Java API, but in order for developers to write programs for Android, Google used the same names, structure, and functionality as the Java API.
In May 2012, Californian judge William Olsap ruled that the Java API could not be the subject of copyright. The court ruled that otherwise Oracle could control the “utilitarian and functional character set” that serve as the basis for a large number of innovations and collaboration on which we rely. The federal court did not agree, considering that the Java API packages can be considered an object of copyright, and sent the case for review.
“For decades, computer scientists and courts understood that copyright should not be used to protect the API. We hope that the Supreme Court will reconsider this case and cancel the decision of the Federal, which negates the long-term practice of the industry, and threatens the basic principles on which our technology sector is built, ”says EFF Special Adviser Michael Barclay.
In May 2012, the High Court of the European Union made an important decision on a similar issue , deciding that copyright cannot be extended to programming languages.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/284908/
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