[mikekchar]

This idea that APIs are copyrighted in the US is a bigger problem beyond its borders. I don't know how familiar Americans are about how aggressively the US pushes its own legal interpretations of copyright law into other countries, but it is a continuing hassle.

The main problem here is that many countries do not have fair use! So if the legal interpretation that APIs are copyrighted spreads, it doesn't matter if it is fair use in the US. Even if countries specifically enact laws to exclude APIs from copyright law, you can bet that there will be huge pressure from the US to include it.

The Java trap after all -- only worse. We can't even reimplement it. We can't even implement to specs unless there is a license agreement (and we thought that patents were bad...)! I hate to be Chicken Little, but the sky does seem to be moving ominously quickly in the downward direction.

[woliveirajr]

In some countries, like Brazil, softwares are not copyrighted, nor ideas. They are considered as "art", like a book, so you can't copy, use, etc., without authorization. But you can get the idea and rewrite it. You can't use the same buttons from some Microsoft product, but nothing stops you from deciding that a disk symbol means "save".

[chc]

That sounds like copyright.