CCIA Files Amicus Brief in Support of Google in Oracle v. Google ~pj

The Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA) has now filed an amicus brief [PDF; also on CCIA's website here] in support of Google in the appeal of Oracle v. Google, and I have it for you as text. Once again, the court has not yet officially accepted it, and there could be corrections, which I'll let you know about if that happens, which it frequently does.

It's a more sophisticated level of argument than some of the others. Oracle, the brief says, is asking to overturn longstanding principles concerning the scope of copyright protection for computer programs, posing serious anticompetitive concerns for the tech industry. Oracle could, if successful, control who can interoperate with its products, leading to a broad monopoly. "The United States and over 40 other countries have recognized that permitting copyright law to impede interoperability would harm legitimate competition in the computer industry and impair the growth of the Internet economy." Amen to that.

"Free trade agreements mandate protections for interoperability," CCIA uniquely points out. "In addition to the reverse engineering exceptions adopted pursuant to the FTAs, legislation favoring interoperability has been adopted in over 40 countries, including many major U.S. trading partners," including the EU, the Pacific Rim, Canada, India, Israel, Kenya, and many others. Trading partners rely on a type of interoperability too, only in the law, not in computer code. If the US makes a sudden 180 turn in its view of copyright protections on interoperability, what happens to that trading partnership? To those free trade agreements? "CCIA, its members, and several litigants and amici here played a major role in creating this global legal environment that fosters interoperability and innovation. This case should not provide a basis for relitigating or legislating against more than two decades of established international law and jurisprudence," the brief concludes.

And the CCIA brief responds to some of the amici supporting Oracle, including Eugene Spafford [PDF] and the the BSA [PDF]. I'd like to do the same, and I'll show you a connection I see between Oracle and SCO Group's theories of copyright, and why I think they are pretty much the same and equally toxic.