While I agree that APIs should not be copyrightable, the Supreme Court has been criticized for "legislating from the bench".
Avoiding the temptation to set bigger and more far-reaching precedents than is strictly necessary for the case at hand avoids giving the impression that the judicial branch is doing the job of the legislative branch.
I have fundamental problems with an unelected council that serves for life creating law.
However, we have an extremely inefficient form of Government that doesn't allow for quick adaptation, and legal questions will arise tomorrow that did not occur to legislators today. The courts are supposed to help resolve any ambiguity.
The question over whether or not APIs are copyrightable is, however, not a question of ambiguity. APIs are software (or documentation, or source code, etc), and any category you place them into is copyrightable under the current law. If we don't want APIs to be copyrightable, then they must have explicit exemptions carved out in the law. The courts are bound to consider an API as copyrighted right now, and the only question is whether violating that copyright is fair-use.
I think the Court did the right thing in skirting the question. That's up to legislators, the Court cannot help. We need fundamental reform of IP protections for software anyway.
> We need fundamental reform of IP protections for software anyway.
That really is the root issue here. So many problems we're seeing (Pai's clownshow in the FCC, SCOTUS legislating from the bench, federal agencies trampling citizens' rights, etc.) stem from the legislative branch abdicating their authority to third parties -- the librarian of Congress, the FCC, SCOTUS, and even (by legal reference) professional organizations and laws in other countries. It's ridiculous.
A first principle of a democratic government is that citizens can soon fire someone whose legislation and/or executive decision they do not like. We would all have voted Pai out if we could have... but he shouldn't have had the power to do what he did in the first place (remove network neutrality rules). Congress gave him that power - which I would argue was an abdication of authority vested in them.
> Congress gave him that power - which I would argue was an abdication of authority vested in them.
Legislators assigning regulatory power to bureaucratic agencies is one of the cornerstones of modern democracies - it wouldn't work otherwise. Many of our legislators are barely qualified to send their own emails, let alone decide what is a telecom utility or how much ppb in drinking water is safe for a toxic chemical. Assigning that power to regulatory agencies allows experts to decide those issues in a neutral setting.
Pai's FCC aside, that structure prevented significant disruptions in the last four years and our country continues to function despite decades of increased partisanship and deadlock at the highest level.
Agreed that regulatory agencies are indispensable. But their job is to carry out the law, not make the law. Of course, the law has to delegate some decision-making responsibility to them -- the law can't make every decision ahead of time. But (a) the law can codify principles that regulatory agencies must uphold, and (b) lawsuits can be filed when someone disagrees that a principle has been accurately upheld -- the courts can decide.
We as a country ought to be arguing and disagreeing about principles, and the results (decided by legislators who are under the gun of potential non-reelection) ought to be codified as laws. A lack of principle in congress and in law is what really causes this abdication and delegation of authority.
An ideal legal corpus represents (as much as possible) a simply and directly expressed set of principles under which the country operates.
> regulatory agencies allows experts to decide those issues in a neutral setting
It is difficult to talk about "regulations" in the abstract but I would suggest that many regulations aren't about a perfect solution devised by an expert. They are more often about finding a tradeoff, a balance between competing goals. Those sorts of decisions can be informed by "expert" knowledge, but I think it is a mistake to think that domain experts are necessarily best positioned to resolve tradeoffs in public policy.
I'm not arguing against expert knowledge being incorporated into construction of regulations -- just pointing out that expert knowledge may be necessary but not sufficient to finding a workable public policy.
I fear that you will remain disappointed, because no prescriptive specification of law written by legislators can be detailed enough to catch every edge case.
If your democratically elected legislators don't like a bench ruling, they are free to make a new law that specifically overrides that ruling. The legislature is the ultimate source of authority in the land. The courts only have a bit of wiggle room in interpreting unclear statutes.
The system is designed well. Unfortunately, democratically elected legislators at the moment would rather obstruct, wreck, and go on wild-ass conspiracy rants, than legislate.
If that legislature spent half the time it complains about activist judges actually drafting law, it would have nothing to complain about. If you, as a constituent are unhappy about the current state of affairs, vote in legislators who are willing to do their job.
Slow legislation is a feature rather than a bug. Less opportunity for reactionary laws based on emotion or a collective misunderstanding of events that we later regret. It's not a perfect deterrent, obviously, e.g. the Patriot Act
However, the main reform that people are asking for is a shortening of copyright terms which really isn't a factor that plays into this case or, for the most part, with computer software generally. One can imagine copyright reform that broadly and explicitly exempts interfaces from at least copyright protection but that has generally not been one of the top issues historically.
Copyright law has received many reforms over the last 40 years. It may not have received the particular reforms you want, but that’s a very different issue.
AFAIK, the Court's overt mission is to interpret and regulate the intent of Congress. They literally must legislate from the bench where Congress has left them an obligation to do so. And Congress can legislate when they feel the Court has taken too much liberty with interpretation or regulation.
But I really do think this case falls squarely inside the parameters of "interpretation" as most members would see it.
That is part of the dynamic. More importantly, though, a narrow decision makes a broad decision easier. If some justices think the code isn't copyrightable, they can increase their voting power by agreeing to set a less sweeping precedent that more justices agree with.
With what I know of Amy Coney Barrett, I’m very surprised she had no part in this decision. You did an absolutely wonderful job of explaining her whole feeling on the bench in two paragraphs. Seriously friend, that’s some excellent writing - excellent excellent job!!
> Avoiding the temptation to set bigger and more far-reaching precedents than is strictly necessary for the case at hand avoids giving the impression that the judicial branch is doing the job of the legislative branch.
Well, that's the theory.
In fact, they are doing the job of the legislative branch, they can't stop people from noticing this, and sticking to this approach just means they're doing their job badly.
Avoiding the temptation to set bigger and more far-reaching precedents than is strictly necessary for the case at hand avoids giving the impression that the judicial branch is doing the job of the legislative branch.