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Google cancels Google Play publisher account and ends family’s source of income

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Re: Google cancels Google Play publisher account and ends family’s source of income

#241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it broken to require a defendant to respond to a lawsuit?

Because an innocent person can be bankrupted by repeatedly having to respond to frivolous lawsuits.

I discussed this very particular issue with my friend who is an attorney, he mentioned that you can't actually abuse the system with frivolous lawsuits. Judges will start throwing your cases out and you can be disciplined by the BAR.

Re: Google cancels Google Play publisher account and ends family’s source of income

#242
post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not prudent unless it's likely to both happen and succeed. Not only is "I'll sue you" often just bluster, if they already think they're in the right —and I'm yet to understand that they're not— they'll be betting that you're not actually going to risk paying their legal fees to make a faulty argument in court. In making that bet, only lose out by having their legal team engage with you. That's expensive. In a lo…

> you're not actually going to risk paying their legal fees to make a faulty argument in court. In the U.S. a losing plaintiff does not pay the defendant's legal fees unless the lawsuit is deemed to be frivolous, which hardly ever happens.

Which i think is a failure of the system - it makes some court cases that would be ruled in favour of the "small guy" to not take place instead, which makes the "big guy" win by default.

The US should adopt a small claims courts system which costs less (like a copyright small claims etc), which would admit frivolous DMCA take downs etc, as well as cases like these. And amend the damages awarded to include fees incurred as part of the case.

Re: Google cancels Google Play publisher account and ends family’s source of income

#243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can’t really develop a mobile app at all without running this risk

Yes. I wouldn't recommend it as a revenue stream. I've written two. They're available for free. If Google decides to can me tomorrow I'll put them on my personal site available for side-loading, maybe put them on the Amazon app store, and call it a day. Don't tie critical revenue streams to the whim of a private corporation. It's high risk.

So why doesn't other bigger companies hit the same problem? What do they do differently? Why can't you do the same personally? Is it just cost?

Re: Google cancels Google Play publisher account and ends family’s source of income

#244
post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > They will have to respond to this > Why? They don't have to respond to the demand letter, but they do have to respond if a lawsuit if one is filed. If they don't, it's a default judgement for the plaintiff. (This is one of the things that is broken in the American legal system. You can force someone to spend a lot of money by suing them even if your complaint has no merit.) So while they don't have to respond to…

It's not prudent unless it's likely to both happen and succeed. Not only is "I'll sue you" often just bluster, if they already think they're in the right —and I'm yet to understand that they're not— they'll be betting that you're not actually going to risk paying their legal fees to make a faulty argument in court. In making that bet, only lose out by having their legal team engage with you. That's expensive. In a lo…

"It's not prudent unless it's likely to both happen and succeed."

No, that is incorrect - there is an asymmetry here which is (oddly) in the ops favor.

Paying my lawyer (for instance) to create and send a letter like this, etc., might cost me $3-800. Properly responding to it and covering all the bases and carrying out ones legal duties vis a vis google might cost 5x that.

... and the letter writer will be dealing with an entirely different operation at google. Real people will be considering the case.

Re: Google cancels Google Play publisher account and ends family’s source of income

#246
post #242
post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you're not actually going to risk paying their legal fees to make a faulty argument in court. In the U.S. a losing plaintiff does not pay the defendant's legal fees unless the lawsuit is deemed to be frivolous, which hardly ever happens.

Which i think is a failure of the system - it makes some court cases that would be ruled in favour of the "small guy" to not take place instead, which makes the "big guy" win by default. The US should adopt a small claims courts system which costs less (like a copyright small claims etc), which would admit frivolous DMCA take downs etc, as well as cases like these. And amend the damages awarded to include fees incurr…

There are small-claims courts, but the limit on what you can sue for there is typically <$10k. Not enough if your entire livelihood is at stake, as it is in this case.

Re: Google cancels Google Play publisher account and ends family’s source of income

#247
post #229
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the government allowed to shut them down without a court order? If not, why should you be able to? Do you feel you can do a better job? There's something to be said for not shutting down someone unless they break a law. I do acknowledge the court would need to be much faster and easier to access for these kinds of things though, you don't want to burden a provider with enormous legal bills just to deal with this k…

If you do the same in a public space, a cop will stop you immediately without waiting for a court order. Or even a security guard. Judges are definitely not the starting point of all security actions.

Cops aren't allowed to stop you from saying neo-Nazi things on a government-owned public space unless you live in a country where free speech doesn't exist.

Re: Google cancels Google Play publisher account and ends family’s source of income

#248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because an innocent person can be bankrupted by repeatedly having to respond to frivolous lawsuits.

I discussed this very particular issue with my friend who is an attorney, he mentioned that you can't actually abuse the system with frivolous lawsuits. Judges will start throwing your cases out and you can be disciplined by the BAR.

At the same you don’t think google is big enough to hire lawyers to file n-1 the amount to get fined or punished frivolous lawsuits against you and keep rotating lawyers?

Re: Google cancels Google Play publisher account and ends family’s source of income

#249
post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Platforms can have any arbitrary rule. If I host a service for manchester city fans, why would I not be able to ban annoying united fans? Who cares if what they do is legal. What if I post NSFW content here on hn. It's not illegal so it's okay? Just this month content creators from Russia or belarus have been banned from dozen of services, they did not violate any law. It's ridiculous to think that yout platform isn'…

That's not the same question though, that's basically a strawman. We're talking about platforms that are not so restrictive in their topics.

But my point doesn't change, on my platform I'm judge, jury and executioner too.

Unless you can prove in a court of law you're being restricted for illegal reasons, there's not much you can do.

Internet is full of stories of people losing their livehood overnight in these services and there isn't much one can do.

Re: Google cancels Google Play publisher account and ends family’s source of income

#250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect it's because a lot of these automated bans are done without any clear actual reason beyond "our machine learning model found something, but we can't really get a coherent picture of why". Last week I created a brand new Facebook account as I recently moved to a new city and am somewhat desperate to meet people, and Facebook events can be useful for this (as much as I loathe Facebook, my mental health is a b…

I doubt it, personally. At least in the case of the article. I have no special knowledge of this, but tenure would be one of the first override parameters I would use to trigger human review. It seems unlikely to allow an account that has been active and making money for six years to be banned without a human analyst in the loop. As to your FB ban, I'm sorry that happened but I have no insight to share.

I'm not so sure about that; like you said in your previous comment: the scale of all of this is huge, and the amount of money these companies are making is similarly huge. It's genuinely a hard problem, and they can afford to lose this business.
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