Avoiding the temptation to set bigger and more far-reaching precedents than is strictly necessary for the case at hand avoids giving the impression that the judicial branch is doing the job of the legislative branch.
I have fundamental problems with an unelected council that serves for life creating law.
However, we have an extremely inefficient form of Government that doesn't allow for quick adaptation, and legal questions will arise tomorrow that did not occur to legislators today. The courts are supposed to help resolve any ambiguity.
The question over whether or not APIs are copyrightable is, however, not a question of ambiguity. APIs are software (or documentation, or source code, etc), and any category you place them into is copyrightable under the current law. If we don't want APIs to be copyrightable, then they must have explicit exemptions carved out in the law. The courts are bound to consider an API as copyrighted right now, and the only question is whether violating that copyright is fair-use.
I think the Court did the right thing in skirting the question. That's up to legislators, the Court cannot help. We need fundamental reform of IP protections for software anyway.
That really is the root issue here. So many problems we're seeing (Pai's clownshow in the FCC, SCOTUS legislating from the bench, federal agencies trampling citizens' rights, etc.) stem from the legislative branch abdicating their authority to third parties -- the librarian of Congress, the FCC, SCOTUS, and even (by legal reference) professional organizations and laws in other countries. It's ridiculous.
A first principle of a democratic government is that citizens can soon fire someone whose legislation and/or executive decision they do not like. We would all have voted Pai out if we could have... but he shouldn't have had the power to do what he did in the first place (remove network neutrality rules). Congress gave him that power - which I would argue was an abdication of authority vested in them.
Legislators assigning regulatory power to bureaucratic agencies is one of the cornerstones of modern democracies - it wouldn't work otherwise. Many of our legislators are barely qualified to send their own emails, let alone decide what is a telecom utility or how much ppb in drinking water is safe for a toxic chemical. Assigning that power to regulatory agencies allows experts to decide those issues in a neutral setting.
Pai's FCC aside, that structure prevented significant disruptions in the last four years and our country continues to function despite decades of increased partisanship and deadlock at the highest level.
If your democratically elected legislators don't like a bench ruling, they are free to make a new law that specifically overrides that ruling. The legislature is the ultimate source of authority in the land. The courts only have a bit of wiggle room in interpreting unclear statutes.
The system is designed well. Unfortunately, democratically elected legislators at the moment would rather obstruct, wreck, and go on wild-ass conspiracy rants, than legislate.
If that legislature spent half the time it complains about activist judges actually drafting law, it would have nothing to complain about. If you, as a constituent are unhappy about the current state of affairs, vote in legislators who are willing to do their job.
But I really do think this case falls squarely inside the parameters of "interpretation" as most members would see it.
Well, that's the theory.
In fact, they are doing the job of the legislative branch, they can't stop people from noticing this, and sticking to this approach just means they're doing their job badly.
