SCOTUS Watch

[ImLawBoy]

Josh Barro Retweeted
Sam Stein
@samstein

NEW — Liberals, led by @brianefallon are quick out of the gate this morning calling on Justice Breyer to retire

https://politico.com/news/2021/01/06/li ... ire-455321

According to Al Franken, there is no minimum age for a Supreme Court Justice. He suggested the Democrats appoint a 12 year old to have 80 or so years of service.

Just saying, my daughter is turning 12 in July. She's pretty sharp, and strongly supported Biden.

While she seems like a good candidate on the surface, I've heard that there are . . . issues . . . with some members of her family that might make confirmation difficult.

[El Guapo]

Josh Barro Retweeted
Sam Stein
@samstein

NEW — Liberals, led by @brianefallon are quick out of the gate this morning calling on Justice Breyer to retire

https://politico.com/news/2021/01/06/li ... ire-455321

According to Al Franken, there is no minimum age for a Supreme Court Justice. He suggested the Democrats appoint a 12 year old to have 80 or so years of service.

Just saying, my daughter is turning 12 in July. She's pretty sharp, and strongly supported Biden.

While she seems like a good candidate on the surface, I've heard that there are . . . issues . . . with some members of her family that might make confirmation difficult.

FAKE NEWS!

Meanwhile, people are raising troubling questions about the ImLawChildren.

[malchior]

Nothing to see here. Just the Supreme Court rushing to rubber stamp and fast track another emergency order by the worst administration in American history.

After seventeen years without a single federal execution, the Government has executed twelve people since July. They are Daniel Lee, Wesley Purkey, Dustin Honken, Lezmond Mitchell, Keith Nelson, William LeCroy Jr., Christopher Vialva, Orlando Hall, Brandon Bernard, Alfred Bourgeois, Lisa Montgomery, and, just last night, Corey Johnson. Today, Dustin HIggs will become the thirteenth. To put that in historical context, the Federal Government will have executed more than three times as many people in the last six months than it had in the previous six decades.

[Jaymann]

Just think about how evil it is to put people to death just because you can.

[Kraken]

Just think about how evil it is to put people to death just because you can.

I dunno, what's the point of being king if you can't yell "Off with their heads!"

[Isgrimnur]

[malchior]

This run was truly unprecedented and I'm glad for Sotomayor's voice at least calling out the obvious inequity of the court this year. I'm not even necessarily 100% opposed to a death penalty but there was some sudden decision to empty out death row in the Federal system and the SCOTUS essentially enabled it. They were more than happy to just step on the gas and shortcut the appeals process for many of these people. And that fit the pandemic-wide pattern where the Government came to them with some emergency appeal and they simply granted it without comment.

So now in a few weeks time we will see if they are truly partisan or not. When Biden's Government brings emergency orders to them will they show this deference to the Government? Will they delay cases in the President's favor? When the Biden is looking to expedite something will they allow the Government to take short cuts on cases? Time will tell.

[Smoove_B]

BREAKING: A splintered Supreme Court grants *partial* relief to churches in California challenging COVID public-health orders limiting prayer attendance, but requests to lift percentage capacity restrictions and permit indoor singing are denied. This is a wild division:

- Thomas and Gorsuch would give the churches everything they want, including indoor singing.
- Alito would go nearly that far
- Kavanaugh, Barrett and Roberts would not allow singing, for now
- Kagan, Breyer and Sotomayor would not grant any relief

Kagan in the first line of her dissent decrying SCOTUS's micromanaging of states' response to the pandemic:

"Justices of this Court are not scientists."

[malchior]

Sotomayor is easily becoming my favorite justice because she just cuts through the thick layer of BS these guys are peddling.

[Daehawk]

I think Thomas and his wife Ginni have lost their minds to old age and stupidity.

[Little Raven]

The dance to replace Breyer begins.

After meeting in the Oval Office earlier this month with President Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and his fellow senior House Democrats, Representative James E. Clyburn of South Carolina made a beeline to Ms. Harris’s office in the West Wing to privately raise a topic that did not come up during their group discussion: the Supreme Court.

Mr. Clyburn, the highest-ranking African-American in Congress, wanted to offer Ms. Harris the name of a potential future justice, according to a Democrat briefed on their conversation. District Court Judge J. Michelle Childs would fulfill Mr. Biden’s pledge to appoint the first Black woman to the Supreme Court — and, Mr. Clyburn noted, she also happened to hail from South Carolina, a state with political meaning for the president.

There may not be a vacancy on the high court at the moment, but Mr. Clyburn and other lawmakers are already maneuvering to champion candidates and a new approach for a nomination that might come as soon as this summer, when some Democrats hope Justice Stephen Breyer, who is 82, will retire. With Democrats holding the narrowest of Senate majorities, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death still painfully fresh in their minds, these party leaders want to shape Mr. Biden’s appointment, including moving the party away from the usual Ivy League résumés.

The early jockeying illustrates how eager Democratic officials are to leave their mark on Mr. Biden’s effort to elevate historically underrepresented contenders for a landmark Supreme Court nomination. But it also casts a spotlight on discomfiting issues of class and credentialism in the Democratic Party that have been just below the surface since the days of the Obama administration.

Some Democrats like Mr. Clyburn, who have nervously watched Republicans try to repackage themselves as a working-class party, believe that Mr. Biden could send a message about his determination to keep Democrats true to their blue-collar roots by choosing a candidate like Ms. Childs, who attended public universities.

“One of the things we have to be very, very careful of as Democrats is being painted with that elitist brush,” said Mr. Clyburn, adding: “When people talk to diversity they are always looking at race and ethnicity — I look beyond that to diversity of experience.”

Great article - read the whole thing.

[malchior]

Thomas partially validates Trump's election fraud theory.

[LordMortis]

I read the comments, Ray.

[malchior]

Only Thomas went mental over it but they almost reviewed the fraud cases. The Courts are barely holding here.



More context

[Paingod]

SCOTUS should be one place immune to utterly baseless conspiracy theories. I would posit that anyone there who props them up should be considered for removal.

The whole of the "evidence" of wide-spread fraud amounted to one sticky note and someone else seeing a van. That alone is cause enough to not warrant the court's time being wasted. There's a reason that 60+ cases across the country were thrown out so hard they all bounced twice before stopping.

[El Guapo]

Yeah, there's a "glass half full / glass half empty" element to the courts' responses to the Trump election litigation. On the one hand, you can point to the fact that the courts essentially uniformly treated the lawsuits as thinly-disguised garbage (what was Trump's record in the end, something like 52-1?). On the other hand, some of the key decisions had pretty thin majorities, so we really on the edge of some really bonkers and consequential election decisions.

[Zaxxon]

(what was Trump's record in the end, something like 52-1?)

No, nothing like that.

[Isgrimnur]

CBS News

The Supreme Court ruled 7-2 in favor of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services and National Marine Fisheries Service in their dispute with the Sierra Club, which sought records related to the services' consultations with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Justices Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor dissented.

The legal battle stems from a rule the EPA proposed in 2011 regarding "environmental water intake structures," which are used to cool industrial equipment. The agency consulted with the Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service before proceeding with its measure, as marine wildlife can become trapped in the structures and die.

The two services issued draft "biological opinions" in late 2013 in response to the proposed rule, which found it was likely to jeopardize certain species, though the documents were never sent to the EPA. The following year, in March 2014, the EPA sent another proposed rule that differed from the earlier 2013 version.

In response to the 2014 proposed rule, the services issued a final "no jeopardy" biological opinion, finding the revised rule was unlikely to harm protected species. The EPA then issued its final rule.

The Sierra Club submitted requests under the Freedom of Information Act for records related to the services' consultations with the EPA. But the services invoked a FOIA exemption that protects "inter-agency or intra-agency memorandums or letters that would not be available by law to a party other than an agency in litigation with the agency," and declined to turn over the draft biological opinions that analyzed the 2013 proposed rule from the EPA.

[Jaymann]

Roberts dissents from being an "advice columnist."

And it must have stung to be alone, a chief without his court, voicing concern that the majority had expanded the role of the judges, who the Constitution confines to cases and controversies where an injury can be shown and redress is available. The majority revived the free-speech claim of an evangelical Christian college student in Georgia even though he had graduated and was asking for only $1 in damages.

Roberts retorted with stinging rhetoric. Not only would federal judges hearing disputes over essentially symbolic damages be reduced to role of "advice columnist," their proceedings would become mere "moot" courts, "deciding cases in the rarified atmosphere of a debating society.

[Smoove_B]

This seems like a really great week for the SCOTUS to announce a possible new opinion is coming on the 2A that could end up expanding rights:

The law makes it almost impossible for an ordinary individual to obtain a [concealed carry in public] license, Clement said. "Good, even impeccable, moral character plus a simple desire to exercise a fundamental right is not sufficient," he wrote "Nor is living or being employed in a high crime area."
Nash, for instance, requested to carry a handgun for self-defense after a string of robberies in his neighborhood but he was denied because he did not demonstrate a special need for self-defense. Koch wanted a similar license and he was able to cite his experience of participating in safety training courses. He too was denied.

It's like after hearing about the shootings from the last two weeks, they suddenly remembered there was something to evaluate.

[malchior]

Worse several SCOTUS members have been agitating openly for a 2A amendment case to come before them. Which is totally how a judiciary should work, right? Hint, hint litigants, we haven't talked about a 2A case in awhile and you *really* should bring us a case since *nudge* times have changed.

[stessier]

Google defeats Oracle's API copyright claims in a 6-2 decision.

I was really scared they wouldn't be able to explain it well enough to the older judges.

[Paingod]

I was really scared they wouldn't be able to explain it well enough to the older judges.

Okay, now in front of you are three stacks with rainbow-colored donuts on them in descending order. If you needed to restack those, there's a limited number of ways to do this. Eliminating one of those ways may make it impossible for future children to learn basic logic processing without going back to the first child who figured it out.

[malchior]

Google defeats Oracle's API copyright claims in a 6-2 decision.

I was really scared they wouldn't be able to explain it well enough to the older judges.

I wasn't scared because the API ship has well past sailed. They've settled a 10-year old battle in a war that was decided about 10 years ago.
That's why it's more interesting to me as a view into the value of the court system settling technical disputes. To set the table there, no one beyond Oracle (over 10 years ago now) wants to lock down their API in a cloud DevSecOps world. It makes no sense. You expose your API so your product can be integrated with other vendors and adopted by the most customers. We live in an "app" world now.

Bigger picture, I know I have an oddball viewpoint sometimes but it strikes me that no one is talking about the fact that it took 10-years to settle a foundational question of law in an industry were innovation is sometimes measured in the ability to deliver hundreds or thousands of code releases a day. Again I'm glad they got it right but the pace the courts move in the modern world is incompatible with the modern world. There really should be some other mechanism to settle these kind of disputes.

[stessier]

Google defeats Oracle's API copyright claims in a 6-2 decision.

I was really scared they wouldn't be able to explain it well enough to the older judges.

I wasn't scared because the API ship has well past sailed. They've settled a 10-year old battle in a war that was decided about 10 years ago.
That's why it's more interesting to me as a view into the value of the court system settling technical disputes. To set the table there, no one beyond Oracle (over 10 years ago now) wants to lock down their API in a cloud DevSecOps world. It makes no sense. You expose your API so your product can be integrated with other vendors and adopted by the most customers. We live in an "app" world now.

That is a rather odd view. It doesn't matter what the world is, had SCOTUS said it was copyright infringement, a whole wave of licensing would have had to occur to cover the world we live in and would have fundamentally changed the world going forward.

[Defiant]

I was really scared they wouldn't be able to explain it well enough to the older judges.

Okay, now in front of you are three stacks with rainbow-colored donuts on them in descending order. If you needed to restack those, there's a limited number of ways to do this. Eliminating one of those ways may make it impossible for future children to learn basic logic processing without going back to the first child who figured it out.

That analogy would be more consistent with if the claim were to protect the algorithm, not the code that implements the algorithm.

To set the table there, no one beyond Oracle (over 10 years ago now) wants to lock down their API in a cloud DevSecOps world. It makes no sense. You expose your API so your product can be integrated with other vendors and adopted by the most customers. We live in an "app" world now.

I can understand why you would want to release it into the wild, but I would think it should be the developer's choice to do so. I also don't understand the suggestion that code couldn't be copyrighted.

Does the fair use doctrine mean that you could take (looks up a modern FPS engine) Halo Infinite's proprietary (I'm assuming) Slipspace engine and code your own game with it and release it commercially?

[malchior]

I can understand why you would want to release it into the wild, but I would think it should be the developer's choice to do so. I also don't understand the suggestion that code couldn't be copyrighted.

They didn't say it was wholesale ok to copy the code. They essentially said reverse engineering the API and using the API entry point names for interoperability was a permissible fair use. What Oracle wanted was to tax every user who used their API by collecting a toll from anyone who uses Java in another product. And the Court recognized that'd starve innovation and surrender the space to big players only. Thomas's dissent essentially argued this should Oracle's decision.

Does the fair use doctrine mean that you could take (looks up a modern FPS engine) Halo Infinite's proprietary (I'm assuming) Slipspace engine and code your own game with it and release it commercially?

No. And that isn't what they held. However, as a corollary they essentially held that game modders figuring out the API calls can do so. That's probably the most tangible thing that most people here care about. Developers can't shut down 'unauthorized mods'. Not that many would do so.

[malchior]

Google defeats Oracle's API copyright claims in a 6-2 decision.

I was really scared they wouldn't be able to explain it well enough to the older judges.

I wasn't scared because the API ship has well past sailed. They've settled a 10-year old battle in a war that was decided about 10 years ago.
That's why it's more interesting to me as a view into the value of the court system settling technical disputes. To set the table there, no one beyond Oracle (over 10 years ago now) wants to lock down their API in a cloud DevSecOps world. It makes no sense. You expose your API so your product can be integrated with other vendors and adopted by the most customers. We live in an "app" world now.

That is a rather odd view. It doesn't matter what the world is, had SCOTUS said it was copyright infringement, a whole wave of licensing would have had to occur to cover the world we live in and would have fundamentally changed the world going forward.

I understand that thinking. It would have a current effect but I don't think it would change how anything actually is developed. It'd be like war reparations. It would be disruptive but fundamentally wouldn't change much strategically at many companies. They want people to use their APIs. Maybe a few companies would go down the licensing path, but I would expect many, many more to announce open source of the API layer. Market share is way more important in an App/SaaS world than charging tolls which is a late stage concern.

They'd obviously have to surrender more dollars to lawyers as well so that'd dampen innovation. It is important but when you look at it strategically they are essentially affirming how the world evolved on its own.

[Defiant]

They didn't say it was wholesale ok to copy the code. They essentially said reverse engineering the API and using the API entry point names for interoperability was a permissible fair use. What Oracle wanted was to tax every user who used their API by collecting a toll from anyone who uses Java in another product. And the Court recognized that'd starve innovation and surrender the space to big players only. Thomas's dissent essentially argued this should Oracle's decision.

OK, that makes sense.

Though the part where they say "assuming for the sake of argument that the lines of code can be copyrighted" suggests that it's possible that code can't be copyrighted. Or are they suggesting that each individual line can't be copyrighted?

[malchior]

They didn't say it was wholesale ok to copy the code. They essentially said reverse engineering the API and using the API entry point names for interoperability was a permissible fair use. What Oracle wanted was to tax every user who used their API by collecting a toll from anyone who uses Java in another product. And the Court recognized that'd starve innovation and surrender the space to big players only. Thomas's dissent essentially argued this should Oracle's decision.

OK, that makes sense.

Though the part where they say "assuming for the sake of argument that the lines of code can be copyrighted" suggests that it's possible that code can't be copyrighted. Or are they suggesting that each individual line can't be copyrighted?

My read is the intent is to say they essentially assume the entirety of the 'work' including the lines of code are covered by copyright. They then set onward in the decision describing the 'fair use' carve out they believed honored the intent of copyright law which is to spur innovation.

Edit: This just raised an editorial moment in my mind for what it's worth. This decision should have been 8-0. I'm sure Barrett would have joined the majority if she was on the court. This is a straightforward read of the copyright clause. Thomas's dissent is a illogical mess from his own ideological viewpoint. Since the copyright clause and the intent to spur innovation is in the original Constitution he had to stray into pre-constitutional English common law dead ends. I want to say it is bizarre but he definitely has shown again that he is inhabits a legal cul-de-sac.

[malchior]

Here is a great deep dive if you want to get some real insight into the case. I align with the author on this entirely. They explain the process in depth, including how the decision got it right including some interesting facts I didn't know such as the District Judge taught himself Java to understand the issues. He eventually got this right in line with the SCOTUS decision *years* ago. They also ridicule Thomas's blatant illogicality pretty ruthlessly.

[stessier]

I can understand why you would want to release it into the wild, but I would think it should be the developer's choice to do so. I also don't understand the suggestion that code couldn't be copyrighted.

They didn't say it was wholesale ok to copy the code. They essentially said reverse engineering the API and using the API entry point names for interoperability was a permissible fair use. What Oracle wanted was to tax every user who used their API by collecting a toll from anyone who uses Java in another product. And the Court recognized that'd starve innovation and surrender the space to big players only. Thomas's dissent essentially argued this should Oracle's decision.

Does the fair use doctrine mean that you could take (looks up a modern FPS engine) Halo Infinite's proprietary (I'm assuming) Slipspace engine and code your own game with it and release it commercially?

No. And that isn't what they held. However, as a corollary they essentially held that game modders figuring out the API calls can do so. That's probably the most tangible thing that most people here care about. Developers can't shut down 'unauthorized mods'. Not that many would do so.

That's not what the case was about nor what they said. Google wrote it's own implementation code - it just kept the same syntax, if you will, for calling it that Java uses. Everyone agrees that the implementation code is copyright protected (the game engine in Defiant's example). Even if you figure out the API, you can't use the game engine without licensing it. Developers can indeed shut down unauthorized mods.

What they can't stop you from doing is using the same syntax as the game engine to execute your own code. So someone familiar with adding vectors, for example, in the game engine knows that the call is "3d.math.vector.add(argument1,argument2,argument3)". I could use that same call argument as long as I wrote the code that it executed.

[stessier]

They didn't say it was wholesale ok to copy the code. They essentially said reverse engineering the API and using the API entry point names for interoperability was a permissible fair use. What Oracle wanted was to tax every user who used their API by collecting a toll from anyone who uses Java in another product. And the Court recognized that'd starve innovation and surrender the space to big players only. Thomas's dissent essentially argued this should Oracle's decision.

OK, that makes sense.

Though the part where they say "assuming for the sake of argument that the lines of code can be copyrighted" suggests that it's possible that code can't be copyrighted. Or are they suggesting that each individual line can't be copyrighted?

They basically dodged the question because they didn't have to decide it. By assuming the worst case and still finding the fair use exception applied, they didn't have to make a ruling on whether APIs definitely fall under copyright. SCOTUS being SCOTUS.

[malchior]

I can understand why you would want to release it into the wild, but I would think it should be the developer's choice to do so. I also don't understand the suggestion that code couldn't be copyrighted.

They didn't say it was wholesale ok to copy the code. They essentially said reverse engineering the API and using the API entry point names for interoperability was a permissible fair use. What Oracle wanted was to tax every user who used their API by collecting a toll from anyone who uses Java in another product. And the Court recognized that'd starve innovation and surrender the space to big players only. Thomas's dissent essentially argued this should Oracle's decision.

Does the fair use doctrine mean that you could take (looks up a modern FPS engine) Halo Infinite's proprietary (I'm assuming) Slipspace engine and code your own game with it and release it commercially?

No. And that isn't what they held. However, as a corollary they essentially held that game modders figuring out the API calls can do so. That's probably the most tangible thing that most people here care about. Developers can't shut down 'unauthorized mods'. Not that many would do so.

That's not what the case was about nor what they said. Google wrote it's own implementation code - it just kept the same syntax, if you will, for calling it that Java uses. Everyone agrees that the implementation code is copyright protected (the game engine in Defiant's example). Even if you figure out the API, you can't use the game engine without licensing it. Developers can indeed shut down unauthorized mods.

I'm not disagreeing. That is why I said they reverse engineered it. I was just boiling it down more but the idea is that they re-used the API. I think it is more accurate to say they wrote their own 'clean room' code which allowed their products to work with Java libraries. One more important issue IMO is they didn't reverse disassemble it for instance which would have been way dicier.

What they can't stop you from doing is using the same syntax as the game engine to execute your own code. So someone familiar with adding vectors, for example, in the game engine knows that the call is "3d.math.vector.add(argument1,argument2,argument3)". I could use that same call argument as long as I wrote the code that it executed.

That's a good explanation and that is why modders are free to do so as well. They can't steal 'code' verbatim but as long as they write something that interoperates they are in the clear.

They basically dodged the question because they didn't have to decide it. By assuming the worst case and still finding the fair use exception applied, they didn't have to make a ruling on whether APIs definitely fall under copyright. SCOTUS being SCOTUS.

I mean you could take it as a dodge or them essentially saying - of course, the text of the code is copyrighted which almost everyone agrees is the case. I don't think the court is ever going to take up a case about whether is code is copyrightable. There isn't much controversy there for them to settle.

[stessier]

I can understand why you would want to release it into the wild, but I would think it should be the developer's choice to do so. I also don't understand the suggestion that code couldn't be copyrighted.

They didn't say it was wholesale ok to copy the code. They essentially said reverse engineering the API and using the API entry point names for interoperability was a permissible fair use. What Oracle wanted was to tax every user who used their API by collecting a toll from anyone who uses Java in another product. And the Court recognized that'd starve innovation and surrender the space to big players only. Thomas's dissent essentially argued this should Oracle's decision.

Does the fair use doctrine mean that you could take (looks up a modern FPS engine) Halo Infinite's proprietary (I'm assuming) Slipspace engine and code your own game with it and release it commercially?

No. And that isn't what they held. However, as a corollary they essentially held that game modders figuring out the API calls can do so. That's probably the most tangible thing that most people here care about. Developers can't shut down 'unauthorized mods'. Not that many would do so.

That's not what the case was about nor what they said. Google wrote it's own implementation code - it just kept the same syntax, if you will, for calling it that Java uses. Everyone agrees that the implementation code is copyright protected (the game engine in Defiant's example). Even if you figure out the API, you can't use the game engine without licensing it. Developers can indeed shut down unauthorized mods.

I'm not disagreeing. That is why I said they reverse engineered it. I was just boiling it down more but the idea is that they re-used the API. I think it is more accurate to say they wrote their own 'clean room' code which allowed their products to work with Java libraries.

This is where I think you are wrong (difference between API and a Library). A library is the executable code. The API is how different programs interact with the libraries. Google does not run Java libraries. They made an interface that is identical to the Java interface to interact with Google Libraries. The libraries are protected. The interface is not.

I hate to harp on it, but that's what the whole case turned on.

What they can't stop you from doing is using the same syntax as the game engine to execute your own code. So someone familiar with adding vectors, for example, in the game engine knows that the call is "3d.math.vector.add(argument1,argument2,argument3)". I could use that same call argument as long as I wrote the code that it executed.

That's a good explanation and that is why modders are free to do so as well. They can't steal 'code' verbatim but as long as they write something that interoperates they are in the clear.

No, not interoperates with it. They can't use any part of the code that does work. What they can do legally is use the same structure in their program so someone proficient in Engine A can program using theirs as well - as long as they write everything that does the work from scratch. At that point, though, you're not modding since you aren't using anything useful from the original program.

Modding in the computer game sense really doesn't apply here. Someone modding Starcraft, for example, can absolutely be shutdown because even if they change all of the art assets, they are using the underlying engine - not just the structure, but the code that does the calculations - to make it work.

[malchior]

This is where I think you are wrong (difference between API and a Library). A library is the executable code. The API is how different programs interact with the libraries. Google does not run Java libraries. They made an interface that is identical to the Java interface to interact with Google Libraries. The libraries are protected. The interface is not.

Yeah again I don't think we are disagreeing. I think what is throwing you off is the mention of Java libraries. I meant Google there.

I hate to harp on it, but that's what the whole case turned on.

I think you are injecting a little bit of disagreement into something we fundamentally agree on though maybe not based on the below.

What they can't stop you from doing is using the same syntax as the game engine to execute your own code. So someone familiar with adding vectors, for example, in the game engine knows that the call is "3d.math.vector.add(argument1,argument2,argument3)". I could use that same call argument as long as I wrote the code that it executed.

That's a good explanation and that is why modders are free to do so as well. They can't steal 'code' verbatim but as long as they write something that interoperates they are in the clear.

No, not interoperates with it. They can't use any part of the code that does work. What they can do legally is use the same structure in their program so someone proficient in Engine A can program using theirs as well - as long as they write everything that does the work from scratch.

Again I am not disagreeing about code re-use. I didn't say re-using any of their code. I even talk about a 'clean room' approach above.

Modding in the computer game sense really doesn't apply here. Someone modding Starcraft, for example, can absolutely be shutdown because even if they change all of the art assets, they are using the underlying engine - not just the structure, but the code that does the calculations - to make it work.

I agree with you in part here. And I get what you are saying about using the engine. Though this ignores a bit of straightforward logic IMO and I think it might help if I explain my thinking on the usage of the word 'interoperate'. If I write a new engine that exposes the same API then logically they can talk to each other. They can interoperate. They can send data to each other in a functional way that has nothing to do with copyright. They essentially said Google did no wrong re-implementing the API therefore the logical outcome is the ability to interoperate between platforms.

Expanding that to a game mod, if I write some code that plugs into the API of the game and runs data through the engine then how am I impacting the game's copyright? That isn't logical. I however agree with the part about re-using assets which *might be* a problem that they didn't address here. Though my instinct is that is fair use depending on the circumstances.

[Defiant]

President Biden will sign an executive order Friday that creates a bipartisan commission to study a number of Supreme Court reforms, including expanding the number of seats on the court, the White House said.

https://www.axios.com/biden-commission- ... efe1d.html

[Little Raven]

Commission incoming.

edit - *shakes tiny fist at Defiant*

[El Guapo]

Seems like this has two purposes: (1) build public attention on this, in case the Biden administration later decides to push hard for SCOTUS reform (don't want that issue coming out of the blue for the public; and (2) implicitly threaten the SCOTUS conservative majority - if you go too nuts on conservative judicial activism then we'll push hard on this and take away the conservative majority.

[malchior]

This is an interesting idea though I wonder how big of an audience is out there who'll pay attention to this committee but not know what is going on already.