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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Replying to @cmuratori
Think patent trolls. How hard would it be to generate and patent APIs, without implementation?
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Replying to @iceX33
_Patenting_ APIs would be terrible. But being able to copyright a complete piece of software, rather than only being able to copyright that piece of software _minus_ the API, doesn't make much sense to me at all.
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Replying to @cmuratori @iceX33
Aren't the consequences of patenting API's basically the same as copyrighting them? No alternative implementations without licensing. Except patents expire in 20 years, while copyright is life of author + 100 years.
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Replying to @scottjmaddox @iceX33
The difference is that you can make a similar API with copyright. You cannot with patents. Copyright prevents making literally Java. Patents prevent making anything like Java.
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Replying to @scottjmaddox @iceX33
Do you have some evidence of that? So far, courts have construed even direct digital copies as non-infringing for a variety of reasons (thumbnails, for example). I don't think we have any evidence that courts do what you are suggesting they do?
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Actually, US law very much distinguishes between music and software. Music copyright has entire extra _sections_ of the law specifically for it, so you definitely cannot generalize from music to software. (This is why, for example, there is a compulsory license for music.)
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