Turns Out Oracle Copied Amazon's S3 APIs; When Confronted, Pretends That's Different (Spoiler Alert: It's Not)

from the wanna-try-that-again dept

Oracle has waged a many years long war (now heading to the Supreme Court) arguing that copying APIs is copyright infringement. Many people who actually understand what an API is, have explained why that is absolutely ridiculous, but tons of non-technical (always non-technical) people keep insisting that an API is just as copyrightable as software. Indeed, they often insist that an API is no different than software itself. This includes Oracle's main lawyer on the case, Annette Hurst, who just a few months ago insisted that APIs were executable code (they are not).

However, Charles Duan, over at the R Street Institute (disclosure: we've partnered with R Street on a variety of projects over the years) has written up quite an incredible article highlighting that Oracle, of all companies, appears to have copied Amazon's S3 API. Lots of companies have. But that's because copying APIs is done all the freaking time in software, because it's how you make compatible systems:

Consider Amazon’s popular data storage platform, S3. To allow programmers to store and retrieve files on S3, Amazon built a comprehensive, detailed API for interacting with the service. To get a list of stored files, for example, one sends the command name GET with the folder name as a grammatical object, along with cryptically tagged information such as encoding-type, continuation-token, and ­x-amz-date. Software must use these exact, cryptic terms and a bevy of others to work with Amazon S3.

Unsurprisingly, competitors have sprung up to Amazon’s market-leading cloud services. To convince programmers to switch away from Amazon’s offerings, those competitors reimplement S3’s API. In doing so, the competitors must mimic the command names, parameter tags, “x-amz” phrasing, grammatical structure, and overall organization of the S3 API—in other words, exactly the kind of thing Oracle argues is protected by copyright.

To be sure, a competitor may use a different programming language than Amazon did so the internal software code might not look like verbatim copying. But implementing an API in another computer language is simply an act of translation, and translating a copyrighted work into another language is specifically known to be a copyright infringement.

Among the companies offering a copy of Amazon's S3 API is Oracle itself. In order to be compatible with S3, Oracle’s “Amazon S3 Compatibility API” copies numerous elements of Amazon’s API, down to the x-amz tags.

I can't wait to see Annette Hurst's analysis of how Oracle is infringing on Amazon's copyright...

Of course, Oracle, in its typical Oracle fashion, insists that this case is different. It claims that it's okay, because of the Apache 2.0 license that Amazon uses. Except that's not right. Amazon's SDK (Software Development Kit) is licensed under Apache, but the API is not. And, as such, it appears to undercut the key point that Hurst is arguing regarding Oracle's Java API in the Google case:

However, the Amazon SDK is code that uses the S3 API, not code that implements it—the difference between a customer who orders hash browns and the Waffle House cook who interprets the orders. Code that uses an API will be organized completely differently from code that implements one; it may not even contain the whole API. And Oracle has for years argued that using an API is unrelated to reimplementation and not an infringement of copyright (or else every app developer using Java would infringe). Oracle can't simultaneously argue that API-using code does not embody copyrighted material from an API, and yet API-using code embodies all copyrights in the API necessary to give Oracle the right to reimplement S3.

Even if the Apache license does apply, Oracle doesn't appear to comply with the terms of the license. Section 4 of the Apache license requires notices and attribution statements attached to derivative works. Yet I find no attribution to Amazon or relevant mention of an Apache license on Oracle's documentation or anywhere on the site.

In short, Oracle is doing what lots of companies do regarding APIs all the time, and what every company (including itself) has always believed to be non-infringing, because an API is not code itself, but a set of instructions on how to interact with the code. It's only in this case where Oracle, jealous of Google's success with mobile (while its own attempts flopped miserably), wants to claim this is infringing.

It shouldn't surprise anyone that Oracle is being hypocritical here. But it should concern everyone that if Oracle's interpretation of the law is upheld by the Supreme Court that it will fundamentally damage the very way in much a ton of software -- including Oracle's own products -- are developed.

Filed Under: api, copying, copyright, hypocrites, s3
Companies: amazon, google, oracle

House Intelligence Committee Orders Investigation Into Surveillance Of Congress That It Authorized

from the oh,-look-at-that dept

So, yes, it was just revealed that, of course, the NSA spied on Congress as it was intercepting phone calls of foreign leaders, leading to hypocritical bloviating from folks in Congress who regularly support the NSA. And, of course, now the House Intelligence Committee, which approved the surveillance authorities in the first place, says it's opening a probe into this:

“The House Intelligence Committee is looking into allegations in the Wall Street Journal regarding possible Intelligence Community (IC) collection of communications between Israeli government officials and Members of Congress,” Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) said in a statement. “The Committee has requested additional information from the IC to determine which, if any, of these allegations are true, and whether the IC followed all applicable laws, rules, and procedures.”

As the ACLU's Jameel Jaffer sarcastically tweeted (inspiring the title of this post), the "confused" Intelligence Committee is opening an investigation into surveillance programs that it directly authorized.

The whole thing, once again, highlights what a bunch of hypocrites surveillance state defenders are in Congress. When revelations revealed mass surveillance on everyday Americans, the focus was on attacking the leakers and attacking the credibility of the reports. But, suddenly when Congress itself is having some of its calls intercepted in a manner that shouldn't be at all surprising, it's a big deal that requires an investigation.

It's almost as if Congress thinks it represents its own interests, rather than those of the American public...

Filed Under: congress, devin nunes, house intelligence committee, hypocrites, nsa, surveillance

One Of Congress's Biggest Defenders Of NSA Surveillance Suddenly Aghast That NSA May Have Spied On Him

from the funny-how-that-works dept

Remember how Dianne Feinstein -- a huge supporter of the intelligence community -- absolutely freaked out about surveillance when it happened to her staffers (when the CIA snooped on their network)? It would almost be funny how the defenders of surveillance react when they're being surveilled... if it weren't so tragic.

As we noted earlier today, the WSJ just revealed that the NSA had no problem intercepting calls made by Congress as part of spying on foreign leaders, such as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. And, as you might expect, some folks are quite upset about this... including former US Representative Pete Hoekstra, who headed the House Intelligence Committee a decade ago. He sent out a pair of angry tweets about the news:
If you can't read those, he says:

WSJ report that NSA spied on Congress and Israel communications very disturbing. Actually outrageous. Maybe unprecedented abuse of power.

NSA and Obama officials need to be investigated and prosecuted if any truth to WSJ reports. NSA loses all credibility. Scary.

Of course, this very same Pete Hoekstra, who long defended NSA surveillance, didn't seem to have much of an issue when the NSA was spying on anyone other than himself. Just last year, in a debate with Glenn Greenwald, Hoekstra mocked the idea that anyone was upset at the NSA spying on foreign governments and said if there was anything to complain about, it was that the NSA allowed such info to leak:

If the country's intelligence techniques leak, what is to say our enemies won't also review the information, Hoekstra asked. He laughs at foreign governments who are shocked they've been spied on because they, too, gather information.

"Spying is a matter of fact," Hoekstra said. "The mistake that we made is that we had a NSA that did not put in the protections that it need to protect (it) ... they enabled someone like Edward Snowden to steal our documents and steal our national securities to the world."

Uh huh. But suddenly when it's his communications, the NSA "loses all credibility" and there needs to be an "investigation"?

And here's the very same Pete Hoekstra talking about how he was personally briefed on the "safeguards" of the NSA program and how he trusts the NSA to never violate civil liberties:

“I was briefed by the vice president and then-head of the NSA, Michael Hayden, and it was from my perspective a very thorough briefing,” recalled Hoekstra in an exclusive interview on Wednesday. “They talked about what the capabilities of the program were, how the programs functioned, and the protections that were put in place to make sure that American civil liberties were protected.”

Go on...

The Michigan Republican said he met with some of the people who administered the programs and came away convinced “they clearly understood the responsibilities that they had to No. 1, do their job, but also to protect Americans' civil liberties.”

I see...

Also, this is the very same Hoekstra, who back when he was running the House Intelligence Committee blatantly misled the public about the surveillance powers of the NSA. In that case, somewhat ironically, Hoekstra attacked a bill called the RESTORE Act, that would have granted a tiny bit more oversight over situations where (you guessed it) the NSA was collecting information on Americans. Hoekstra falsely argued that this would make it harder to track terrorists overseas (despite the fact that their communications weren't subject to the law). But now that his own communications got sucked up in surveillance efforts targeted at foreigners, it's a giant scandal?

Beginning to think that being a total hypocrite on these issues should be called "being a total Hoekstra."

Filed Under: congress, dianne feinstein, hypocrites, nsa, pete hoekstra, spying, surveillance

AT&T: Deregulation Only Applies To Us

from the hypocrites dept

AT&T has spent a lot of money in the last few years lobbying against government regulation. They pushed hard to dismantle the Clinton-era DSL unbundling rules. They've lobbied against having to negotiate thousands of franchise agreements with municipalities around the country before they could offer TV service. And, of course, they've lobbied hard against network neutrality regulations. In all cases, their argument was the same: market forces can protect consumers better than FCC meddling. And I've often been sympathetic to those arguments in cases where they've faced real competition. However, James Gattuso points out that for all their bluster about free markets, AT&T only favors deregulation for themselves. In a recent letter to the FCC, AT&T threw its weight behind FCC chairman Kevin Martin's proposal to impose new regulations on the cable industry under an obscure provision of the 1984 Cable Communications Policy Act. It's awfully hard to take AT&T's position here seriously. If, as they've been arguing for the last three years, the cable market is competitive enough that the franchise system should be liberalized, then it's certainly competitive enough not to need new regulations. Conversely, if new regulations of the cable industry are needed, why should AT&T be excused from complying with the rules the same rules as the cable industry? As James points out, these kinds of flip-flops completely undermine AT&T's credibility, and are likely to hurt them in the long run. If they leap at every opportunity to impose new regulations on their competitors, who's going to take them seriously when they advocate deregulation for themselves?

Filed Under: deregulation, hypocrites
Companies: at&t