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Banned for Life

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Re: Banned for Life

#211

Post by gknoy »

krschultz wrote: post #146
enraged_camel wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>but ultimately they have no legal obligation to be any of those things, and in business your legal obligations are your only obligations. So businesses don't have any ethical obligations then? Cool.

They do, but I don't think Google is ethically obligated to let this guy post spammy apps that are closely named to companies he doesn't officially work with. I've been a professional Android developer for 2+ years and a user for longer than that. I'm 100% in support of Google banning this guy from the Google Play store. One of the major misunderstandings about the Play Store is that there "are no rules" in compariso…

I don't have a big problem with banning his dev account from the Play store. I rather dislike the fact that all of his other Google accounts (Wallet, buying things on Play, Music, etc) got banned as well. That's exactly the kind of thing that makes me wary of actually ever making an Android app in my own name.

Re: Banned for Life

#212

Post by spinlock »

_petronius wrote: post #2

The author used other people's content, packaged them into an app, and then repeatedly submitted the same app (with one minor modification -- the use of someone else's content) to the Play store. 'Beta' apps or apps that you write for close friends/family can be distributed via other means than the main app market. This article admits that he ignored all of the warnings he was given, and now accuses Google of unfair…

That's just bad business. It's like the MPAA and RIAA suing their customers. In the short run you can bully a few independent people but, in the long run, you are eroding your user base -- or developer base in this case.

I consider the apps in question fair use. Now, I've never read google's TOS but, then again, neither has anyone else. You'll notice that the op was working with the system to try to understand its rules. That's the quintessence of what a hacker does. It seems to me that google is making themselves vulnerable to an open app store. One where you can experiment and collect user feedback before committing resources to a project.

Re: Banned for Life

#213

Post by JamesMcMinn »

cookiecaper wrote: post #161
JamesMcMinn wrote: post #5

The author used others people's content and spammed with play store with official sounding apps, then ignored warnings to stop. Got caught and punished for it, now Google won't let him do it again. Honestly, it just sounds like Google were doing the right thing and protecting it's users from low quality spam apps.

The author didn't use other people's content. He simply used the YouTube APIs for exactly what they're there for -- remixing the YouTube experience to match a specific use case YouTube has not yet accommodated. What else are APIs supposed to be used for? The original uploader of that content still retained all control over the content. If the original uploader didn't like his content being reskinned, he shouldn't upl…

So using YouTube's API to use other people's content isn't using other people's content? I don't follow the logic there.

Yes, he was not banned simply because he used other people's content. He was banned because he was using other people's content to create low quality apps which (even if unintentionally) imitated official applications. Taking someone else's content and serving it up in a way that looks like it's official is just asking to be banned, especially when the thing you're imitating is YouTube and the app is on the Play store.

If someone is, for all intents and purposes, spamming your app store with imitation apps, why should you waste time giving them a "polite human touch"? If this had been a Chinese company rather than someone with a sob story would you still expect Google to offer a polite human touch?

Re: Banned for Life

#214

Post by msandford »

krschultz wrote: post #160
jpwagner wrote: post #16

Sure Google is a private company. Sure this means they have no formal responsibility to this developer. Programmatically, he seems to deserve to be sanctioned: he violated their policies for several weeks with several different apps. I emailed Google back and asked them to tell me exactly what I need to change to be compliant with the rules. Is it the icon? The name? The disclaimer? What? Google refused to give me an…

A good faith effort would be reading the terms & conditions. He obviously didn't, because they are quite clear about not being able to put other companies' names in your app name. If the article was about someone that had this happen, and they read the conditions and didn't see anything that they had violated, and then asked Google - that would be a different story. This guy just can't be bothered to put the effort i…

Yeah because I'm sure the T&C is only a page or two long, not like say 50k words.

https://play.google.com/intl/en_us/about/play-terms.html

The idea that you should have to scrutinize that entire document to determine what you did wrong is crazy.

Ostensibly someone on the Google side of things determined what he did that was not OK right? I mean they don't just ban people for the hell of it right? He had to do something SPECIFICALLY wrong, and that might correspond to some portion of the T&C. Is it so unreasonable to ask WHAT section you're violating?

I get that everyone on HN thinks the guy is a douche and deserves what he got. But to refuse to even say what? That's douchey too.

Re: Banned for Life

#215

Post by ssw1n »

SnacksOnAPlane wrote: post #134
baldfat wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He also claims to have done $500,000 of development for the eco system for Google in the spirit of Open Source with the development he had done before being banned.

Yeah. That's a bit ridiculous. If that was $500,000 of work, I should be a billionaire.

What was funny to me was that the author claimed, "Ah, those are just silly, throw-away apps I developed for my kids and friends." at the start of the article, and then jumped to, "I dedicated $500,000 worth of my efforts on these apps!" later on in the article. Well, that escalated way too quickly ....

Also, what is that statement that amounts to "Nobody uses Android in San Francisco"? I found it pretty ridiculous ....

Re: Banned for Life

#216

Post by icebraining »

ben0x539 wrote: post #53
icebraining wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd have the same problem if you were on the open web and the company sent a DMCA takedown request to your hosting company.

At least the DMCA takedown wouldn't also somehow disable his google music subscription.

That's a problem with bundling services under a single account, not with the closed-ecosystem part. For example, GoDaddy suspends all your sites when you get a DMCA takedown to any single one of them.

I agree that the approach is bonkers, but it's not an issue exclusive to "walled gardens".

Re: Banned for Life

#217

Post by alistairjcbrown »

stonemetal wrote: post #153
alistairjcbrown wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh? Did you read the post? "I wrote a simple YouTube client app using the latest YouTube APIs" - The content was not pirated, he created an app with one purpose; to allow you to play videos from one particular YouTube channel.

What is your definition of pirated? Accessing content, and helping others access content in ways that you have not been given permission to rather sounds like piracy to me. The method of access doesn't really matter weather it be boot leg DVDs or youtube.

"helping others access content in ways that you have not been given permission" - That doesn't sound like what he did.

The videos were uploaded to YouTube and he used the YouTube API to display those videos as part of his app.

Re: Banned for Life

#218

Post by Keyframe »

alistairjcbrown wrote: post #127
stonemetal wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What's wrong with packaging other people's content as long as you're not profiting from it? Say I made a show and sell DVDs of the show for $20 to cover all the costs of the show. When you buy the DVD you agree to not reproduce them so that I can continue to sell more copies to cover the cost of the show. You then start reproducing them and selling them at your cost(no profiting right?) which is about $0.05. Obvious…

Eh? Did you read the post? "I wrote a simple YouTube client app using the latest YouTube APIs" - The content was not pirated, he created an app with one purpose; to allow you to play videos from one particular YouTube channel.

I think there would be no issue with it if he had not used trademark names and logos. API calls to youtube, pulling up a channel, playing videos... if Youtube/Google doesn't have a policy like Apple to not allow apps that duplicate their apps functionality, I don't see how it could be a problem. Most probably is that problem arose with trademark infringement. This is a serious issue since 3rd party using your trademark without authorization can tarnish your carefully crafted design/brand experience as well as confuse customers.

Re: Banned for Life

#219

Post by homulilly »

kazinator wrote: post #115
sergiosgc wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your position is a common response: paint the affected individual in such light that you can safely state he's different from you, and making it obvious this wouldn't possibly happen to you. The important facts, irrespective of the correctness of app suspension are: a) App suspension led to Google Wallet suspension. Google Wallet can be used as a payment processor, so this decision could have affected entirely indepe…

I can't speak for _petronius, but what makes this guy obviously different from me is: * he thinks that an icon which links to something on the web is an "app", whereas I think that an app is something which contains a significant amount of program logic. * he thinks that changing the configuration (like YT channel id) generates a whole new app. This is like claiming that, at your Unix command line, "grep foo" is a di…

> he thinks he can no longer write apps for Android, whereas it is obvious to me that you can put a .apk file up for download anywhere you want, and get paid by means other than Google Wallet.

He justifies this pretty well. Very few people are going to buy your app if it's an APK on a random website or even on another app store. The next biggest marketplace I can think of is Amazon's and it's still puny compared to Google Play. Without access to the main store it's not financially viable to develop for Android.

Re: Banned for Life

#220

Post by izzydata »

Is there anyway to call google help directly? I've heard plenty of stories of google automated email support that never adequately explains anything, but I'm curious if you can actually call them.

If anyone has seen the movie "The Internship" there is a scene where they all have to learn how to do phone support. I would find it very weird if that is entirely a lie and it is nearly impossible to call them.

Also he smashed his apple devices because he disagrees with their ideals? That seems kind of immature.

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