Wait, are you talking about China or US or France?

As an American I find both of those options to be quite appealing. I'm going to write my congressman and ask that he do both. We can get right wing war hawks to support invasion, and left wing corporatist to support increasing protection of local business. Even if those businesses happen to be trillion dollar corporations.

my phone has maybe 100kB of worthwhile stuff on it, the other 31.99GB is bullshit that I don't need long term. I can prove this by when I upgrade my phone I'm not going to copy a lot over other than the address book (which the cloud will do automatically for me)

Also, those tape sizes assume 50% compression. The raw sizes are: DAT 72 = 36 GB, DAT 160 = 80 GB

Maybe he's just got an art hobby, nothing wrong with wanting to preserve the work you did. Maybe 20 years down the road he'll want to process those photos into a completely different composition.

Yea, fuck open source. Stop using Slashdot, Reddit, Java, Firefox, Chrome, Linux, Apache, ...

ps - what's WITH the random uppercase?

I played a funny card game once where the engineers would work on projects indefinitely until you got a release manager card to make sure stuff really ships.

Google blocks guys from you to get you to switch to Google Apps. They make money parsing your emails and showing advertising content. Then they make money again if you're one of those poor suckers who pays full price for Google Apps.

It should not be assumed that what Linux does with GPL has much legal basis. Those kernel guys are pretty notorious for hand waving around copyright to satisfy the demands of both commercial partners and open source advocates.

You're confusing interfaces of physical devices that isn't copied by copyright (but perhaps patents) with an expressible form of information that is copyright protected. (like a written work, computer software, song, and others)

If any API can be placed under copyright, it's not because it's an interface, it's because it's software. You can already copyright software, not a big deal there.

That said, I am strongly opposed to expanding the scope of copyright on computer software because I believe protecting APIs would be harmful to the industry that I work in. Potentially costing silicon valley billions in litigation, lost revenue and possibly having a chilling effect on software start-ups in the US. Effectively hobbling American technology industry to the point that innovation must occur outside of the US and be imported. An trade imbalance of innovations and IP could be very harmful to the long term growth of the US, not unlike the current imbalance in manufacturing.

To address your somewhat inaccurate analogy first.
A bayonet mount can by patented, which has a limited duration (a couple of decades). After that expires then anyone can make the same mount.

Copyrights are not patents. Copyrights have a duration that no reasonable person could consider to be limited. Anything longer than the life span of an average person is not short. Effectively indefinite as copyrights can exist through multiple ages.

I suppose you could patent an API. I don't know of anyone who has, but if there is something novel about your API then perhaps.

I don't think an API can be applied to existing copyright law, the courts haven't sent a clear message on this either. If API really is structure, sequence and organization then perhaps copyright is appropriate. But the way APIs are used in the language I'm familiar with, they have no sequence. Or rather sequence does not mean anything beyond what is required by the language to parse properly. The structure and organization are properties of an API that easier to concede that exist. But I've always read the requirements as requiring all of the properties to fit into copyright law, not just some properties.

And this ignores some specific exceptions to copyright about procedure, process, system and method of operations. All of which seem very suitably applied to APIs.

"in no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work." -- 17 U.S. Code 102

Baker v. Selden was one of the big rulings on this clause. But it was not consistently applied to newer technology like APIs.

It helps when a judge knows what an API is, the purpose of an API is clear to engineers. To provide an interface for operation of software components. But the courts haven't fulled grasped if that is a method of operation, as above, or is an API a "structure, sequence and organization" which would fall under copyright?

As a software engineer, I've always considered APIs to be a system to allow interoperability of software components. Given the same requirements and same software language and industry practice it's not hard to end up with very similar APIs between independent software teams. It's not an invention, even though there is work involved in designing and writing and testing it. And in cases where software compatibility is the requirement, there is no choice but to use the same interface (computer science might generically call it a contract). If a procedure requires three integers and a returns a float, that's not an invention that's an agreement between software components to permit inter operation.

And why they are falling apart.

Yes. By basic understanding that it means the nozzle end goes in the car-hole or you will get fuel all over your trousers.

That will teach you for not negotiating up front. That's the problem with feeling entitled, nobody else really gives a shit.

365 days without a security patch. Does uptime make you more money than protecting your customer data?