Google fighting to suppress evidence Android willfully infringed upon Oracle's Java - Page 3

Wow!

That is neat and faster and more responsive than Google Maps ever is.

What really happened was that Google was attempting to redefine it to their liking. After an agreement was made that turned out to represent the opinion of few actually affected by their actions, it was overturned. It's still in the courts. It hasn't been resolved.

Your definition based on your first paragraph has nothing at all to do with this. Google isn't a performer, interpreting a composition. Even if they were, your example is wrong. If the work is under copyright, permission must be obtained for a recording. Payment for a public performance. They are a copier, violating copyright. They've added nothing of their own to this. Yet, they've stated that their intent was to charge universities and researchers to use their scans. All this with no intention to seek out and pay anyone involved with the works themselves, as international law requires.

This is, as will all of Google's works, a matter of profits, and total disregard for others' rights.

LOL. You nailed it!

Some people just don't get the fact that it was Google who set the parameters for the word "evil".

From Google's Code of Conduct:

The Google Code of Conduct is one of the ways we put "Don't be evil" into practice. It's built around the recognition that everything we do in connection with our work at Google will be, and should be, measured against the highest possible standards of ethical business conduct.

http://investor.google.com/corporate...f-conduct.html

On edit:

In other words... I don't give a rat's ass what anyone else believes about the definition of evil... it was Google that set the terms... "measured against the highest possible standards of ethical business conduct". Therefore, on Google's terms, anything outside of that can be considered evil.

... and this is about Google... not Apple, not Microsoft, not IBM or anyone else.... it was Google who said, "Don't be evil".

Evil is indeed a discussion of morality, but patents are a matter of law, as is copyright. It's ludicrous to suggest that patent infringement is evil - I invite you to find a major religion with an injunction against it, or a moral philosopher with a cogent argument for it as 'evil' or immoral.

Evil is definitely used to mean extreme immorality. When George W Bush railed against the Axis of Evil, even americans didn't think he was including people who cheated on their spouses or double dipped their chips.

If Google is evil, then Apple is evil and no doubt even Ben and Jerries were evil. If everybody is evil then nobody is evil. A little sense of proportion would go a long way.

And with them, you're beholden to the Chinese government. From the frying pan into the fire.

Soon I,m switching to iCloud so to hell with Google.
One big massive email to all my contacts then that's it, Google is now my spam email
dam i cant wait for Fall

Actually, the motto maker at the printer moved some letters around...

It really was supposed to read:

"O NO Devil"


And their logo is really:

In your example, it isn't so cut and dry. If the email copies someone else in the company (Google) then the email would still be privileged because the client is Google and both parties are employed by Google therefore it is still attorney/client privilege. If the email copied someone outside the company, then you'd be correct.

Unfortunately for Google, none of that matters because the email was a draft and it's original content wasn't sent to the attorney. If I started a letter to my attorney saying I killed someone but didn't send it but sent another letter with similar information, privilege doesn't cover the original letter because I never sent it. This is why discovery is so crucial in these cases and why you see defendants "burying" the plaintiffs in discovery. In that strategy, you send any and all documents (relevant or not) in the hopes that the billable hours start to ratchet up for the plaintiff to the point where they get nervous about the litigation costs or their attorneys miss crucial info. This pressures the plaintiff into either settling the case quickly or dropping the suit altogether.

I think it actually was Go Ogle

Yet, most religions would suggest stealing is morally wrong. Further, Google set it's own definition of evil by suggesting it will conduct itself by the highest ethical standard.

Which means... that you certainly don't want to stand behind Google

Aw c'mon, people. You know the rules: When Google is does it, it's not evil because Google's Not Evil, therefore, they must be righteous. The Taliban use the same logic to justify mass slaughter.

Same here. After that I will not need Google at all. I get by with Bing, which is improving (and Microsoft pays me points to use). I have Navigon on my iPhone for maps.

I suspect Google's Gmail will take a significant hit with the introduction of iCloud provided Apple rolls it out properly.

It certainly isn't the exact same thing but it's analogous - converting a piece of copyrighted, or non-copyrighted material into another medium can produce another piece of copyrighted material. This is something that publishers have done for decades or more, slightly modifying a work and then claiming copyright on the derived version, this is why when a museum digitizes an artwork they can hold the copyright on the image, whether the art is an old master or by a living artist.

As to requiring permission, that's exactly where Google's fair use argument fell. Most of the books that it digitized were out of print with unclear rights, and thus the legal argument was that the requirement to get permission ceased to apply. In fact the requirement to get the author's permission is a relatively new one in law in most jurisdictions, and as far as I am aware it does not apply in the US, where music composers only get license fees. For example Shostakovich sought to prevent the use of one of his compositions in the US and was refused.
( Shostakovitch v. Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corp.).

The EU does have legal protection for so called 'moral rights' and so if you want to release your recording in Europe you do have to get the composer's permission, but this isn't universal.

I'm betting Google will weasel their way out of this

There are also some situations where the patent issues are not clearly defined -- often a competitor will use the uncertainty to let the courts resolve the issue.

I do not believe, however, that there was any uncertainty in Google's use of Java.

Normally, I would agree but I'm not too sure about that. Google has been pissing this judge off left and right. Google had the audacity to claim $0 in damages which the judge not only threw out but called "soviet-style.". Also, that draft email points out that Google not only had prior knowledge that they were infringing, but also intent to move forward anyway. That alone would triple Oracle's requested damages.

But infringement isn't stealing, which is why one can't be arrested and imprisoned for it.

The argument that Google has failed to meet 'the highest ethical standard' is a much better one, but that's a far cry from being evil. Even then it's not an open and shut case, because one has to ask if it is inethical to knowingly infringe a patent which you do not believe is or ought to be valid.

Why do people feel the need to bring ethics or morality into what is a purely legal issue? Google is potentially infringing a patent owned by a huge and determined software firm. It has gone to the courts and there will be a big legal bun fight at the end of which one of the two will come out a winner. It makes no more sense to paint Google as evil here than it does to paint Oracle as evil. It's hard to think of a time when an IT firm was uncontrovertibly inethical, MS destroying netscape perhaps?

You are correct, Google's postion was it owned the data base with all the images it scanned, not the content itself. Since Google paid to have people scan all the images I don't' see how Google was in the wrong. Microsoft (a big objector to Google's plan) could have paid to have somebody scan the same works.

Reading this article made me all tingly inside! The possibility of Google's Android gambit being brought down is deeply satisfying to me.

More than is generally acknowledged. For starters Google is certainly using the Java language but that's not the problem, as far as I'm aware Oracle isn't claiming that the use of the language is an issue.

There are two issues here, one of copyright and one of violating some software patents on Java that relate to such things as the internals of a runtime. Leaving the copyright issue aside, the patent infringement is far from clear cut, as is evidenced by the fact that a lot of the preliminary rulings on oracles patents have been negative.

http://fosspatents.blogspot.com/2011...e-patents.html
http://fosspatents.blogspot.com/2011...dates-entire

Now these preliminary results don't mean that Oracle has lost by any stretch, but they do surely indicate that Google can justifiably claim that there is doubt about the validity of these patents, and that the infringement of them, even the wilful infringement of them is thus hard to categorize as 'evil'.

I'm not sure how the Google Books thing became a topic, but I think the issue that publishers and authors had was that even if the books in question were out of print, they would have the opportunity to have a reprinting based on audience demand. If Google digitizes them and people could get information based on those, then there is little to no incentive to request a new edition. I'm not saying whether that is right or wrong, but I can understand that particular position.

The music/recording analogy is not necessarily a good one -- there are situations where an artist can record a "cover" of someone else's recording and copyrighted music. This has limitations -- the "cover artist" cannot sell the material without "permissions" and, likely, "royalty payments" -- but the material can be freely played without violating anyone's rights. YT is full of such "covers"

Here are some YT covers of a friend:

If I Were A Boy - Beyoncé - ( SheenaMelwani )


Sheena is free to post these covers -- but she cannot record them as a "for sale" CD or Music Video without "permissions".

But, Sheena is certainly benefiting from the exposure that the "covers" give to her and her music.

Even if Google loses I'm struggling to see what would actually change. Google can easily afford to pay a multibillion dollar settlement.

Also unlike Microsoft or Apple, Oracle does not have a product that competes with Android. The best solution for Orale is Android becomes even more successful whilst paying them a license fee. Android could become Oracle's golden goose. But if they kill off Android or make the terms bad enough that Google switches to another language they lose out on future license fees.

I think the issue would be how much is Google willing to pay to continue android. Google has been a bit vague on how much it actually profits on android. I've seen $1 billion dollars in 6 mos. and I've read that they HOPE to make $10 per handset, but I've never read any solid numbers each and every quarter. If it begins to cost Google more than they expect to earn AND it costs handset makers more on already razor thin margins, then what would be the incentive for them to continue. It's not like Google has never killed projects before.

I don't necessary disagree with you, but those Humphrey Bogart clips at the beginning of rented movies provided curtesy of the MPAA would like you to believe something else. The RIAA and MPAA certainly liken copying of their content as theft, which in most cases the copyright code would actually disagree with that sentiment. I also think the founders of Pirate Bay will disagree with you regarding not going to jail for infringement.

Evil is a very strong word, so in my mind Google has not been evil. However, Google is the one who set the standard for what qualifies as evil by essentially defining how it intends to act. It is hard to see how willing taking somebody's IP meets the highest ethical standard. So, if Evil means something akin to Dr. Hannibal Lecter, then I think Google is OK. However, if it means failing to meet the highest ethical standard, then I think Google has fallen into the abyss.

Your wrong here.

First, you are making an irrelevant distinction between criminal illegality and contract breaking or infringement, when in the colloquial sense of the term (the way most people use in every day), both are "illegal." So while your distinction is technically accurate it is also irrelevant to what's being discussed. You are just doing your usual thing of running people over the coals for inaccurate speech.

Secondly, morals, ethics, and law are all inextricably intertwined. In many cases, things are made "illegal" expressly because of the fact that many people find the behaviour immoral. While I personally would agree that just because something is immoral (a necessarily subjective assessment), it doesn't have to be also illegal, the fact is that most of the time it is.

As to the substance of the argument, what we are talking about here is clear evidence of wilful infringement. Google did what they did intentionally, and for clearly stated reasons that fail your standard. The evidence indicates rather clearly that Google knew they should develop their own language, but "didn't have the time" in their view to do so. That's not a legal defence and basically amounts to saying that they just couldn't be bothered to follow what they knew was the law. They've also shown evidence of guilt in terms of the machinations they performed to cover things up.

Finally, your argument that supposes (without any evidence I might add), that the Googler's were coming from some moral high ground where they eschewed patents altogether, and were thus okay doing what they did because they did it in light of their belief that patents shouldn't exist, is just silly. In the first case there is ample evidence that they did not in fact believe this in the way they handle their own patents, and in the litigations they have been in in the past. Secondly, "wishing the laws were different" is not a defence, just as ignorance of the law can never be a defence either.

The only legal or historical precedent for that kind of thing is civil disobedience, wherein it is the duty of a citizen to oppose a "bad" law. But to equate stealing Java and re-branding it as your own, with the lofty goals of the civil rights movement is distasteful at best. The idea that there is some kind of equivalency between "patent law is screwed up" and people being killed and tortured for their beliefs is just abhorrent. At least it is to me.

Google is also deeply involved in shady practices around the world, and has it's own army of lobbyists fighting *for* the very patent system that we are (mostly you) are assuming they have some kind of moral distaste for.

Google merely was digitalizing the books to allow people to search through the books. It didn't give people access to the whole books (unless the books were in the public domain).

As I explained in an earlier post, there is definitely a requirement to pay the songwriter/composer a license, but there is generally no requirement to get permission to record - even for sale, though it does depend on jurisidiction. Back in the 60s and 70s Burt Bacharach would write songs for Dionne Warwick, and before she could get them released in the UK, Cilla Black would have released a cover.
Warwick famously said 'I honestly believe that if I'd sneezed on my next record, then Cilla would have sneezed on hers too.',

Now as it happens I think Cilla Black is evil, but that's more to do with her voice than copyright issues

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykd71...eature=related

See? Now that's evil!

Oh I know that. My point was that if a person can get whatever information s/he needs via Google's digitized version, then there is no need to for them to request a new edition be printed. This is why I didn't say whether Google's position in that matter is right or wrong because IMO it equates to the olden times where you had to buy a whole CD for a couple of songs that you like.

"A finding that Google willfully infringed upon Java would also enable Oracle to demand triple its actual damages. Such a ruling could also help establish that Google has a history of willful infringement of rival companies' intellectual property, a finding that would make it easier for others, including Apple and Microsoft, to seek damages from Google and potentially its Android licensees."

It's the last part of this quote from the article that addresses your point. Google can afford it, but it's licensees--who actually make and sell the vast majority of the phones themselves--who will be killed off. Maybe Google will become the single manufacturer of the Googlephone, just like Apple and the iPhone?

It is interesting to compare on what Google's thoughts were regarding Microsoft's innovative way of improving its search results using Google's own search results and Google's taking Java for its own use. Google lambasted Microsoft saying it should do its own work. Apparently what is good for the goose isn't good for the gander.

I absolutely agree with you... as I stated earlier... Google's own Code of Conduct states:

"measured against the highest possible standards of ethical business conduct"

Not the highest ethical standard... but the highest possible standards of ethical business conduct. Google itself has said that anything that falls outside of that, for itself, is evil.

Is willfully infringing upon ip of the "highest possible" standard of ethical business conduct? Of course it isn't. Therefore Google, by its own standard, is evil.

Can Apple, IBM, MS or any other company be included as "evil" doers in this same context... in my mind, no, but by Google's standards... sure.... but the other companies never wrote "Don't be Evil" in their code of conduct... maybe they're not quite that stupid (or naive).

If living authors were screwed over in regards their own works, that is indeed a bad thing but the law is crystal clear and they should be able to seek restitution from Google.

I haven't (yet) seen any evidence that this actually happened though. I've heard "copyright holders" complain, but to me the only thing that really matters is the actual creators/authors.

The entire problem with copyright today is that the interests of the buyers and sellers of the IP are treated as if they are the same as the creators of the IP when in fact they are all leeches of one kind or another. The only thing that really matters is the people who actually create the stuff IMO.

The problem is that the inaccuracies build up. Once you accept infringement as theft, then it is indeed immoral and indeed criminal rather than merely illegal. I'm not running anybody over any coals, I'm just trying to keep some pretty significant distinctions clear.


Things that are immoral are often illegal, things that are illegal are often immoral, some things are universally considered immoral, some things are universally considered illegal. I would agree that things that are universally considered immoral are also universally considered illegal - murder is the obvious example - but trying to take it further you get into very very sticky territory. There are too many exceptions for it to be a good argument.


Ok, there are some key points here. First off the problem isn't that Google didn't develop their own language. As far as I am aware there is no legal issue with the fact that the language front end to Dalvik is identical to Java, any more than there is an issue that Objective-C is a superset of C. The problems are more subtle than that.

The evidence definitely indicates that Google knew that they were infringing Sun/Oracle's patents, and if the patents end up holding up then that will indeed constitute wilful infringement, but we're not at that stage yet. The patents may well be invalidated in whole or in part, the rulings on them so far have not been in Oracle's favour. Can we really call wilful infringement of a patent which the USPTO has issued a preliminary ruling against inethical let alone evil?


They have a legal right to counsel, and they have a right to attorney client privilege. Whether or not the letter is admissible, Google's attempt to claw it back will almost certainly not be admissible as evidence of guilt. Their 'machinations' are entirely legal. By the way Oracle deleted a SUN executive's blog posting that had a potential negative impact on their case, but I didn't see any cries of cover-up from you then. Does that deletion indicate that they really did grant Google permission? Of course not, any good lawyer would have sought to remove it from view to avoid muddying the waters. Good legal tactics should never be mistaken for nefarious machinations.


No, my argument only supposes that they felt that these particular patents were plausibly invalid. Given the USPTO's recent first office actions, that's not an entirely unreasonable argument now is it?

I don't think that there's any way that Google can claim that they've a historic opposition to software patents, though I would certainly like it if in future they lobbied hard against them. However I also don't think that one can ever call infringement, even wilful infringement of a patent immoral - because infringing - even wilfully - is often a reasonable legal tactic in the modern patent minefield.

Yes, and it's also akin to going into the library to read that bit of the book, which is a classic fair use exception. The fact is that there are far too few books are available as print-on-demand, and the vast array of out of print books represent a kind of cultural vandalism.

The problem with using libraries in your example is that not only have libraries paid for the book, but they are a source for new edition requests. If the out of print book has been damaged or not returned, they are the majority of customers who request reprintings. Google would never need to do that. Don't get me wrong. I'm not lamenting the publishers' loss of revenue on issuing new editions of books with zero new information at all. I just see both sides.

That's not correct. Not every statement to your lawyer in a corporate setting is privileged. In this case, google screwed up, because this e-mail was apparently a response to a question from the CEO, so even if it were to the lawyer as well, it wouldn't be privileged.

Theft is evil in every religion, as far as I know. It doesn't matter whether it's criminal or civil. The people doing it are still stealing property that isn't theirs, and they are doing it willfully.
And has been brought up a couple of posts ago, Google has their own definition of evil, and their actions should be measured against the standards they set up for themselves.