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The US Supreme Court just handed Google a huge win in its massive Android lawsuit
A legal battle in progress for over a decade is over
It's been over a decade since Oracle first began its lawsuit against Google over the use of parts of the Java platform in Android. Today, the United States Supreme Court finally ended it, with Google being the long-protracted winner. While the relevant bits of Java haven't been used by Android in years, the end of this court battle sets a precedent in US copyright law that will be important for almost anyone making software platforms in the future.
The European Parliament voted in favor of reforming the (admittedly due to be adjusted) copyright law in Europe. By itself, the new law isn't that controversial and will actually help creators and journalists get their fair share of income from big online players like YouTube and Google News. But don't put your torchlights and pitchforks down just yet. The directive might lead big platforms to implement upload filters to catch copyright infringement before content is published — which could possibly kill GIFs and memes.
Europe's new digital copyright legislation has raised no shortage of concerns from business and consumer rights advocates alike. The severe new regulations include what critics have dubbed a "link tax" that would require most medium to large online platforms to pay copyright holders for reproducing even small snippets of text (though a few "individual words" is fine). This, of course, is at the core of Google News, and Google is adamant that it may shut down its news aggregation app in Europe if the EU does not alter the phrasing of its legislation.
Unless you've lived under a rock, you're probably aware of the existence of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds and Epic's Fortnite. The former has been immensely popular on Android and the latter coming soon to offer some competition. According to a recent report by The Korea Times, PUBG has filed suit against Epic Games in Korea alleging that the latter violates its copyrights with the game Fortnite.
The Copyright Royalty Board of the U.S. Library of Congress—which determines the licensing fees paid by streaming services to artists (and their publishers)—has reportedly increased the royalty rate from 10.5% to 15.1% of total revenues for the five-year period from 2018 to 2022. Streaming services rely on the compulsory license established under U.S. law rather than negotiate directly with publishers. For comparison, Netflix and Amazon must negotiate with studios for the use of programs, which is why their catalogs are not "all-inclusive" in the way that music streaming services are.
Netflix added download support for a large chunk of its library late last year, which is great. It was long overdue, but still a much appreciated addition. However, Netflix's downloading functionality comes with a nasty catch that many people have just recently started running into: some content can only be downloaded a certain number of times. The worst part is Netflix doesn't tell you about that until you're almost out of downloads.
While it was once a pretty popular service both for their web interface and Android app, Grooveshark is calling it quits. This isn't a big surprise since their claim to fame was basically just disregarding the legal need to get the rights to music that users streamed and uploaded. Most recently in the news for having their app's Chromecast support revoked, Grooveshark hasn't been in the Play Store since 2012. Those were about that whole failure to license problem too, which was Grooveshark's ultimate undoing.
Popular app SeriesGuide was pulled from the Play Store without warning yesterday, but it's already back today. As expected, the problem was the use of (technically) copyrighted content in the screenshots. The developers have rectified this by making the screenshots incredibly boring.
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act has a lot of issues, and one of them is the almost instantaneous way in which content can be removed from the web if a copyright holder thinks it's in violation - it's a pretty classic example of "guilty until proven innocent." That double-edged sword is swinging back at Qualcomm today: the company issued an apology to developers after forcing popular code repository GitHub to remove over 100 repos for violation of copyright.
You might have noticed something missing from the Play Store in the last few days. One-click theming app Themer Beta by MyColorScreen was pulled from Google Play late on February 2nd due to a copyright complaint from Apple. When it will return is not clear, but it's probably not going to be immediate.
Quick, what's the most hated company in mobile gaming today? If you answered EA, Zynga, or Gamevil, well, you might be right. But the answer I was looking for was "King," creator of Candy Crush Saga and two of the most ridiculous copyright stories in recent memory. After the company trademarked the word "Candy" in all applications for video games and apparel, a few cheeky developers decided to risk the wrath of King's lawyers and release candy-themed apps on iOS and Android. Intern Saga: Trademark Lawyer takes a (slightly) more subtle approach to its parody.
In October of 2012, the Library of Congress elected not to renew DMCA exemptions that explicitly allow end users to unlock their cell phones at will, thus ending a six year tradition. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move. The quest to do something about it began almost immediately. And by "almost immediately" I mean "nearly three months later and at almost the very last minute."
On Monday of this week, Apollo - the default music player in Cyanogenmod - was released to the Play Store in both free and paid variants. As of yesterday, just four days after its release, both versions of the app have been pulled due to alleged copyright infringement.
[Whoa!] Google Will Start Down-Ranking Search Results That Receive Too Many Takedown Requests
This may not be strictly Android-related news, but it's safe to say that what Google does to search results is relevant to our readers' interests, no?
This may not be strictly Android-related news, but it's safe to say that what Google does to search results is relevant to our readers' interests, no? Today, Google announced via its Inside Search blog that the company will start including the volume of valid copyright removal notices as a factor in determining how high or low a site ranks in its search results. Translation: pirate sites won't be removed entirely, but they'll start ranking lower than legitimate sites.
We're hearing via The Verge that Judge William Alsup has just handed down his decision on the copyrightability of Oracle's 37 Java API's, asserted by Oracle as having been infringed by Google in the Android operating system. This is probably the most important issue of the entire case. While a jury decided that Google did infringe Oracle's APIs as asserted by Oracle, that decision hinged on the assumption that the APIs were in fact copyrightable in the way Oracle had insisted they were.
Google and Oracle have been going at it for weeks now over both patent and copyright infringement claims made by the latter company. At least one issue is settled, though, as the jury on the case has decided that Google did not infringe any of Oracle's patents with Android. This is only a small part of Oracle's assault on Google. The larger issue is on the matter of copyright infringement, but at least on the patent issue, Google seems to be in the clear.
You've probably already read headlines in the last hour or two proclaiming that Google has "lost" its copyright case against Oracle, and in the strictest sense of the word, it has. Google lost on a number of counts, including the most important one, question one in the jury instructions. It also lost on a count involving nine lines of code that have long-since been removed from Android.
This a cause I think we can all get behind. Back in 2010, the Copyright Office in the Library of Congress issued a rulemaking statement exempting smartphones and DVDs from reverse engineering laws under the DMCA. Previously, companies like Apple had used these provisions to threaten criminal prosecution (as well as civil action) against those who "jailbroke" (rooted) devices such as the iPhone (or iPad). The exemption to these penalties put in place by the Copyright Office extended to the "jailbreaking" (or, as we know it in the Android community, rooting) of all smartphones (it also extends to things like bootloader unlocking). Now, that exemption is about to expire, if the rulemaking committee does not renew it. The EFF wants your help, in the form of submitting writings to the Copyright Office explaining why the exemption should not be allowed to expire.
In a court filing last night demanding an early trial date for the ongoing Google v. Oracle patent litigation, Oracle claims that Android is now irreparably harming Java's market share in the mobile, TV, and tablet space. Oracle says that these are areas where Java "has traditionally been strong." News to us.