Cross Roads

The Facts of the Case as described by the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit:   Oracle America Inc. owns a copyright in Java SE, a computer platform that uses the popular Java computer programming language. In 2005 Google acquired Android and sought to build a new software platform for mobile devices. To allow the millions of programmers familiar with the Java programming language to work with its new Android platform, Google copied roughly 11,500 lines of code from the Java SE program. The copied lines are part of a tool called an Application Programming Interface (API). An API allows programmers to call upon pre-written computing tasks for use in their own programs.  The summary of the case goes on to say that it was the purpose of the lower courts to determine whether the owner of the Java SE could copyright the copied lines and whether Google copying constituted a permissible fair use of that material freeing Google from copyright liability.  The case between Go...

Yesterday, something important happened.  One of our Local Artistes Bebe Cool took some direct steps to enforce copyright law in Uganda.  In a story relayed by the WBS TV, and retold by a local late night WBS TV show, the artist  visited a section of the city where some of his music was being resold and made some arrests. His response made a lot of sense. He sounded rather exhasuted by the circulations in media,  songs and taunts by some of his detractors about, "the unbuilt house".  In all the seriousness that this involved there was a touch of humor when one of the women  at the scene expressed her joy at seeing the star and stated "Nandi mulabye di" when would i ever have  seen this star had it not been for this incident.  The host of the late night music show (popularly know as Chopper Chopper) was right when he stated that, "while the act of attempting to  enforcing the law was bold and in a sense right, the artist is in for a long and e...