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Court issues permanent injunction in Epic vs. Apple case

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Re: Court issues permanent injunction in Epic vs. Apple case

#201

Post by makeitdouble »

41209 wrote: post #112
yurishimo wrote: post #15

I'm really happy to see this moving forward, but I loathe the potential future landscape. Every fortune 500 is going to immediately pivot to their own IAP options which will make my life harder compared to Apple Pay. I'm hoping with this movement, tools like Stripe/Paddle will develop some better IAP flows to make it as easy as possible. Adding my card information to 50 different in-app wallets does not sound appeali…

Vote with your dollars. If App A requires you to use their payment gateway and App B uses apple pay, use App B. I imagine this will cause a sort of race to the bottom where apple will lower its own fees to match.

It feels ironic to ask customers to bear the burden to make big companies behave, in a thread about a court ruling regulating anti-competitive behavior.

Re: Court issues permanent injunction in Epic vs. Apple case

#202

Post by endisneigh »

skohan wrote: post #114
yurishimo wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bundling the OS with hardware Is this really an issue? I agree Apple has been pretty shady but this is a facet of any hardware you buy today from any manufacturer. Now, preventing/obfuscating the install of _other_ OS software, I agree, total bullshit.

Yes exactly. It's not the bundling that's the problem, it's preventing free use of the hardware.

Is that actually an issue though, given that Apple has never advertised their hardware as being "free-use"?

Re: Court issues permanent injunction in Epic vs. Apple case

#203

Post by ethbr0 »

kodah wrote: post #84
smnrchrds wrote: post #10

> “The court cannot ultimately conclude that apple is a monopolist under either federal or state antitrust laws,” she writes in the ruling. “Nonetheless, the trial did show that apple is engaging in anti-competitive conduct under California’s competition laws.” It's nice to see that you don't have to be a monopolist to be legally barred from anti-competitive behaviour. I hope this puts a permanent stop to all the thr…

From my perspective folks are arguing two things: The current definition of a monopoly. Whether the current definition of a monopoly needs to change. If you are mixing the two arguments discourse can go nowhere because you're substantively discussing cause and effect. The current definition of a monopoly needs to change , imo, then we can talk about whether Apple is a monopoly. I'm also interested in discussing congl…

Exactly. Plus a relatively small percentage of HN (or anywhere) knows the current legal tests of a monopoly.

But everyone always becomes substantially less interested in topics once it becomes hashing out legal language. Which is why we pay lawyers well.

Re: Court issues permanent injunction in Epic vs. Apple case

#204

Post by bialpio »

gpm wrote: post #186
borski wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is not the right interpretation. They didn’t say they cannot conclude one way or the other - they said they cannot conclude that Apple is a monopolist, period - meaning that they have concluded Apple is not a monopolist (under current state and federal laws). They did not say “we cannot ultimately conclude whether Apple is a monopolist” which would be your interpretation. [edit] Given the downvotes (really?) I s…

They literally did, at the bottom of page 1 of the ruling > Given the trial record, the Court cannot ultimately conclude that Apple is a monopolist under either federal or state antitrust laws. [snip explanation] The Court does not find that it is impossible; only that Epic Games failed in its burden to demonstrate Apple is an illegal monopolist.

Thanks, I haven't skimmed that far!

Re: Court issues permanent injunction in Epic vs. Apple case

#205

Post by dannyw »

mbell wrote: post #175
smnrchrds wrote: post #10

> “The court cannot ultimately conclude that apple is a monopolist under either federal or state antitrust laws,” she writes in the ruling. “Nonetheless, the trial did show that apple is engaging in anti-competitive conduct under California’s competition laws.” It's nice to see that you don't have to be a monopolist to be legally barred from anti-competitive behaviour. I hope this puts a permanent stop to all the thr…

That quote is a bit of a cherry pick resulting a wide interpretation that isn't supported. The actual ruling is something more like "Epic failed to prove that Apple is a monopoly in the market the judge decided is the relevant market: digital mobile gaming transactions". Here are the relevant sections of the ruling: > The Court disagrees with both parties’ definition of the relevant market. > Ultimately, after evalua…

Sounds like if Spotify sued, they'd have a better chance.

Re: Court issues permanent injunction in Epic vs. Apple case

#206

Post by ecf »

smnrchrds wrote: post #10

> “The court cannot ultimately conclude that apple is a monopolist under either federal or state antitrust laws,” she writes in the ruling. “Nonetheless, the trial did show that apple is engaging in anti-competitive conduct under California’s competition laws.” It's nice to see that you don't have to be a monopolist to be legally barred from anti-competitive behaviour. I hope this puts a permanent stop to all the thr…

> It's nice to see that you don't have to be a monopolist to be legally barred from anti-competitive behaviour

Can someone ELI5 why Apple is considered to be anti-competitive for not dedicating resources to assisting another business in creating a competitor to a market for a platform they and they alone created?

If Epic wants to have their game on a phone, it makes sense they abide by the rules enforced by the company that allows the whole ecosystem to exist. If they don’t like it, they can go and create their own phone hardware and app ecosystem.

Maybe I’m just naive.

Re: Court issues permanent injunction in Epic vs. Apple case

#207

Post by legohead »

Rels wrote: post #136

I don't understand the logic behind this ruling. So, Apple was in the wrong about forcing app devs to use their payment processor (and taking a 30% cut at the time - 15% or 30% now), and they have to change that. But Epic was also in the wrong when they tried to go around this rule, and they have to pay 30% on every transaction they made after their update in which they used direct payment? But if Epic didn't try to…

I wonder if there is a "secret reason" of not ruling in favor of Epic closes the door on a ton of other lawsuits popping up.

Re: Court issues permanent injunction in Epic vs. Apple case

#208

Post by np_tedious »

kodah wrote: post #84
smnrchrds wrote: post #10

> “The court cannot ultimately conclude that apple is a monopolist under either federal or state antitrust laws,” she writes in the ruling. “Nonetheless, the trial did show that apple is engaging in anti-competitive conduct under California’s competition laws.” It's nice to see that you don't have to be a monopolist to be legally barred from anti-competitive behaviour. I hope this puts a permanent stop to all the thr…

From my perspective folks are arguing two things: The current definition of a monopoly. Whether the current definition of a monopoly needs to change. If you are mixing the two arguments discourse can go nowhere because you're substantively discussing cause and effect. The current definition of a monopoly needs to change , imo, then we can talk about whether Apple is a monopoly. I'm also interested in discussing congl…

Some good faith changes to the definition of monopoly could certainly be valuable.

However, I fear most efforts would start with "Companies X, Y, and Z need to be categorized as monopolies. Let's write rules to fit"

Re: Court issues permanent injunction in Epic vs. Apple case

#209

Post by gjkngr »

here's the meat:

"Accordingly, a nationwide injunction shall issue enjoining Apple from prohibiting developers to include in their:

Apps and their metadata buttons, external links, or other calls to action that direct customers to purchasing mechanisms, in addition to IAP.

Nor may Apple prohibit developers from:

Communicating with customers through points of contact obtained voluntarily from customers through account registration within the app."

And it applies to all apps, not just games

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