Other than just wanting to be able to copy other people's work as they often do all the time anyway, I'm not sure I understand major tech giants' argument as to why APIs would not be copyrightable. They are, if anything, much harder to make well than their implementations.
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Suggesting that somehow figuring out the correct way to design something is less important than having filled in the functions with their (usually obvious) implementation is frankly rather absurd. If you want to argue _none_ of it is copyrightable, go ahead...
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But arguing that somehow APIs are less important or less worth IP protection than other types of code dramatically undervalues how important systems design is relative to implementation. If forced to pick, I'd actually claim the opposite (APIs copyrighted, implementations not).
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This is because in my experience, the vast majority of my time as a programmer on a novel problem is spent figuring out how it should be broken down. Once I know that, the implementation is usually relatively simple.
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Replying to @cmuratori
Not a lawyer, but I think you're confusing at least two different types of protectable intellectual property; what you're describing as "API" is more akin to algorithms, which may at most be patentable, not copyrightable.
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Replying to @khneori @cmuratori
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_v._Oracle_America … "Oracle initiated the suit claiming that the APIs were copyrightable"
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Replying to @AsafGartner @cmuratori
Yeah, so APIs per se being copyrightable (in the US) seems to be something that gone back and forth and will be ruled on by the current Supreme Court, so that'll be fun, but how to break down a problem, etc, sounds more like algorithm to me.
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Replying to @khneori @AsafGartner
An API by definition is a deconstruction of a problem into the steps that are exposed to a user of something that solves that problem. You could argue for patents on it, sure, but I think that's a bad tradeoff because patents are much more restrictive than copyrights.
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To be specific, a copyright violation only occurs if it can be argued that the work in general was copied. It is not a violation to merely do something similar (eg., it's not a copyright violation to write a book about a boy wizard, etc.)
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So copyright seems very clearly (at least to me) to be the preferable way to protect software from copying, both the API and the implementation, so that similar systems can coexist without the specter of patent infringement, which is far more stringent.
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That said, I also think copyrights should be back at their original terms of ~20 or so years, but, that's a different story :)
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