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.
Yes, it is an entire system and must be thought of that way. People focus on the "public good" part, and they're not wrong, but they neglect to ask _who is actually going to make good things that will eventually become public_. Right now, the answer is kind of "nobody".
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Giving people the ability to profit off good API design would be one possible way to encourage good API design that could eventually become a public good once it was clear that something was important and high-quality.
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As you say, unfortunately our current IP system isn't designed very well, so this causes a problem, but working with what exists, copyright seems much better than patent, because patent is far too broad for an API.
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