Google’s Free Piracy Pass

[Chewy_fox]

The Supreme Court on Monday handed Google a victory in its decade-long copyright feud with Oracle. Don’t be dazed by the case’s technical argot. By declaring Google’s code-cribbing fair use, the 6-2 majority has weakened intellectual property protections.

The Constitution grants Congress the power to write patent and copyright laws that give authors and inventors exclusive right to their work “to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts.” Congress, however, has recognized that sweeping IP protections can stifle innovation and creativity and thus allows “fair use” of copyrighted work.

Publishers such as the Wall Street Journal rely on copyright to protect their intellectual property as well as fair use to create it—for instance, book reviews borrow quotes from manuscripts. What qualifies as fair use is often disputed, but Congress has laid out guidelines for courts to use for analysis. They include the purpose of the use; the nature of the copyrighted work; the amount and substantiality of the used portion; and the use’s effect on the value of the copyrighted work.

Applying this analysis to computer code is more complicated than to a manuscript. But Justice Stephen Breyer’s majority opinion makes an arbitrary distinction between “declaring” code—core programming definitions and shortcuts—and more detailed “implementing” code that tells computers how to execute particular tasks.

Edited May 21, 2021 by Chewy_fox

[Silent Watcher]

Avoid unnecessary posts such as 'Thank you', 'Welcome', etc. Such posts will be deleted and user will be warned if it happens again. If caught spamming, the following actions are applicable -

• First time - Warning
• Second time - 5000 Points will be deducted
• Third time - Ban for 7 days
• Fourth time - Permanent Ban

If the post helped you, reward the user by reacting to the post like this -