What they're trying to do is cover their own asses

No, this is big brother technology. They can now map the serial numbers of the currency from the ATM to a person. One step closer to cashless, surveillance society.

Although it could also be used to prevent a thief with stolen debit card and password trying to cash out someone else's money. But then how would a thief get somebody's PIN.

Why do people who create music, books and films feel entitled to earn more then their fans would over multiple lifetimes?

Why do hotels and apartments charge rent for rooms over multiple lifetimes? Why do farmers make profit off the same land for multiple generations? The answer to all these questions is: the assets provide value to customers over multiple generations. That's why.

Originally copyright protection was for X years then it became public domain. THen it was X+10, X+50, etc.... Sometimes 'retroactive' protecting work whcih should have been public domain.

Originally copyright was owned by the authors of books. And since authors were ordinary working class folks, the lawmakers probably wrote copyright laws to limit the amount of wealth to match that of a working class man. But as time passed, publishers began to own the copyright of books, so the lawmakers rewrote laws to be more suitable for ruling class (capitalists).

There's absolutely no reason copyright should not be infinite years, other than the limit the amount of wealth to copyright holders. The limited length of copyright law is a scam to deprive the creative class of people of their richly deserved wealth, and you are an even bigger scammer to want to further reduce the copyright years.

Nothing is worth more than manufacturing cost +20%.

So how is 20% distributed amongst manufacturers, distributors and retailers? LOL

Albini is wrong because people who create teh stuff own teh stuff. Not you, not me, not the govt. The creator owns it until he sells it someone. Under what logical basis can a person who had nothing to creating something own the same thing? The common consumer did nothing to own any creative work. He just pays for his use of teh stuff.

Why can't creators/owners own their music perpetually, and rent it out to listeners the way hotels rooms or apartments are rented out?

Does this mean pirated movies are transformative if you add a border containing weird art? Can you re-sell Beatles music if you "transform" it by adding a track containing cowbell?

The photo seems embedded within a new "format". How is this transformation? It should be called embedding (otherwise known as stealing) an unmodified/untransformed photo.

In patent law, adding improvements to an existing patent X, with another patent Y, does not give you the right to infringe patent X. So transforming an image should not strip of the original copyright holder's right of the transformed image. The transformed image should be jointly copyrighted by original and new copyright owner.

BTW, adding a few lines of text below a photo is not transformative (looks like a webpage) ... looks more like an excuse for theft.

Implementation is not defining an API!!!

For the Nth time, I know what an API is:
/* API method description goes here ... */
method_attributes method_return_type methodName(Type1 arg1, Type2 arg2, Type3 arg3, ...)

In no way I'm talking about implementation. There are numerous combinations to break up classes, methods, method arguments that differ from vendor to vendor, developer to developer. That is, different vendors can and should produce different APIs. Get it Now?? Or how I have to spell everything out like you're 5 years old?

The same amount you get paid every time you play a video game.

Then minimum 11 of that dozen programmers are incompetent.

Are you implying there is exactly ONE MIDDLEWARE API (like Java) to access services of the OS? That's bullshit. Are you also implying that there is no creativity and design involved in designing an API?

Seems you are mixing up API with implementation anyway in your post.

Just because there are multiple ways to implement an API does not mean there is only one API for a given area of computing. Why are there posts after posts like yours repeating the same falsehood over and over again?

My point is, If a tire tax is passed, there will more cars on the road with bald tires, than if they stick to a per gallon/kWh tax.

And why should developers and other companies "benefit from Java API's good design with $0 license payment"?

But these developers are not re-selling a modified version of the Java plaform -- they are just using/calling the APIs to write their apps. Google is reimplementing Java APIs and that's completely different.

That main() and swap() API are not copyrightable because they are too short. It would be like copyrighting individual words of the English language, which is not permitted.

C++ header implementation is controlled by the C++ committee.

I can write a Java program that works on Android and on Linux only if the APIs are the same.

Wait, why do you want Java programs to execute on both Linux and Android? Both platforms seem incompatible, especially the GUI stuff (and there's no cmd line on Android unless you are rooted, I'm not sure). So, there's no hard reason for Google's Java API to exactly match Oracle's standard Java API.

Java is middleware and you don't need to copy Java API headers to access the functionality of the Android OS. So why doesn't Google design their own Java API for Android or license it from Oracle?

Re: the OpenGL/Direct3D example, both APIs provide the same functionality and run on the same hardware. But the syntactic format and scope of functions is quite different. If Microsoft can invest resources to create an API, why can't Google?

It may be a lot of work to create a phone directory (at least it used to be), but the listings aren't copyrightable.

Sorry, but APIs are not fixed format like directories: "name: ph. number." As I stated above, there are plenty of subjective and creative design decisions that go into creating an API. This is very similar to the subjective and creative decisions that go into writing a novel. Hence both APIs and books should receive copyright protection.

For example, both OpenGL and DirectX are 3D APIs that can be used to write 3D games. However, the design decisions and structure of API is quite different.

Only extremely trivial problem spaces yield fixed APIs. Massive APIs like the Java API which contains thousands of methods are not trivial and should receive copyright protection. Why should Google benefit from Java API's good design with $0 license payment?