If I had to explain the issue at stake here, I'd do it this way.<p>Imagine you go into a fast-food restaurant. "I'd like a burger," you say to the cashier. You get a burger. The next day, you go to a different restaurant. "I'd like a taco," you say. They bring you a taco.<p>Just then, a lawyer bursts in. "I'm sorry, but my client, the burger restaurant, has a copyright on that. No other restaurant is allowed to accept orders in the form of 'I'd like a(n) X'".<p>Would that be crazy?<p>APIs are the computer equivalent. If you go to a blog and request a page like 'someblog.com/posts', then you go to a movie theater's site and request a page like 'moviesite.com/movies', you wouldn't think of those two actions as having anything in common. Sure, both sites use a url like '/items' to serve up that kind of item. Why wouldn't they?<p>But if the courts rule that APIs can be copyrighted, the movie site might either have to license the right to have URLs like '/movies', or do something else.<p>What else? Whatever they can think of - and think of it first. Because the race will be on to copyright every imaginable scheme. '/show/me/movies' and '/movies=all' and '/3932939' will soon be taken. Even if they can come up with a new convention, they'll likely be in court for the right to use it.<p>Does that sound good for consumers - ostensibly the ones whom intellectual property laws should benefit? Does it sound good for new businesses who don't have legal departments?<p>Or would it be crazy?