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Banned for Life

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Re: Banned for Life

#261

Post by DanBC »

hashtag wrote: post #260
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…

While I don't disagree that Google support is abysmal, they do respond if you know the appropriate channels. I've gotten support for both Adwords and Adsense and can successful claim I've been unbanned from both at different periods of time. That isn't to excuse your point but wanted to put this out there that while difficult, it is possible.

I couldn't get through to Google help pages for adsense because their webforms block on my (real) surname.

Mildly frustrating.

Re: Banned for Life

#262

Post by msandford »

krschultz wrote: post #233
msandford wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 somethi…

It's not crazy. Guess what, sometimes publishing an app is more than just writing code. I've had to dig through them before too. Compared to what the iOS team has to deal with I consider it a pretty lightweight process. If you just want to hack around with some code, then post the APK somewhere and tell your friends to download it. If you want to publish an app in an app store, that is a fundamentally different thing…

If I sue someone for something I don't get to just say "your honor, look at the law and this contract, they're clearly violating it!" and blammo get a judgement against them. I have to enumerate my claims as to what they did wrong. I have to CITE things.

Should we hold Google to the same standard that we hold the criminal justice system? No obviously not.

But if it's so obvious what portion of the T&C he's breaking surely a hyperlink to that portion of the document should take only a second to generate. And if it's not obvious and requires some nuanced thought then perhaps a paragraph explaining would be warranted. And some links.

But to suggest that Google explaining itself would prove some kind of undue burden on Google for their actions is ridiculous! They've already hired people to police this kind of stuff. To suggest that Google couldn't have these human reviewers take a second to explain their decisions (at a fairly lost cost) boggles the mind.

Re: Banned for Life

#264

Post by krschultz »

msandford wrote: post #262
krschultz wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not crazy. Guess what, sometimes publishing an app is more than just writing code. I've had to dig through them before too. Compared to what the iOS team has to deal with I consider it a pretty lightweight process. If you just want to hack around with some code, then post the APK somewhere and tell your friends to download it. If you want to publish an app in an app store, that is a fundamentally different thing…

If I sue someone for something I don't get to just say "your honor, look at the law and this contract, they're clearly violating it!" and blammo get a judgement against them. I have to enumerate my claims as to what they did wrong. I have to CITE things. Should we hold Google to the same standard that we hold the criminal justice system? No obviously not. But if it's so obvious what portion of the T&C he's breaking s…

"The suspension email stated that I was trying to impersonate another company, and that this was forbidden."

Impersonation or Deceptive Behavior: Don't pretend to be someone else, and don't represent that your app is authorized by or produced by another company or organization. .. Apps must not have names or icons that appear confusingly similar to existing products

I don't know how Google can be any more clear about that. By the authors own admission, the email used the exact same words as the T&C he violated. If I had to bet, there was a link in there to page. You're arguing here without actually reviewing the underlying documents.

Re: Banned for Life

#265

Post by bg451 »

> The suspension email stated that I was trying to impersonate another company, and that this was forbidden.

> I decided on “Vice TV”

> I didn’t plan on trying to sell Vice TV

> I was also secretly hoping I would get a contract job out of this or someone might say, “Hey, add my blog and Facebook pages and I’ll buy the app from you.”

The last quotation isn't necessarily in context with the third one, but nonetheless this guy was either stupidly naive or ignorant.

Re: Banned for Life

#266

Post by Eiriksmal »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #248
Eiriksmal wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My beef with this article is that he knew something was wrong, hence his questions basically asking, "Which of my many actions violated copyright law?" And tattles on himself when he admits everything about his "app" revolved around unfair use of others' copyrighted material: "I 'borrowed' your icon and your name when I created my 'app.' Is that wrong?"

If you tell me I've done 'something' wrong I can make an enormous series of increasingly-tenuous possible justifications in my mind, but that doesn't mean I have any clue if I've actually done something wrong or if there was a mistake in evaluation somewhere.

"A few weeks went by and I got an email stating one of my apps had been suspended. ... I could understand if an uptight lawyer out there didn’t want my app on the store displaying their videos."

"The suspension email stated that I was trying to impersonate another company, and that this was forbidden. I had no intention of impersonating anyone." I would say, in this gentleman's situation, that's pretty specific. Especially since he admits above, below, and all around his Google correspondence that he's got a very good understanding that what he's doing violates either US copyright law or Google's terms of services, regardless of intent.

"You, sir, are in violation of copyright law. What? You didn't intend to violate copyright law and have a "disclaimer" in your app? Oh, well in that case..."

Re: Banned for Life

#267

Post by msandford »

krschultz wrote: post #264
msandford wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I sue someone for something I don't get to just say "your honor, look at the law and this contract, they're clearly violating it!" and blammo get a judgement against them. I have to enumerate my claims as to what they did wrong. I have to CITE things. Should we hold Google to the same standard that we hold the criminal justice system? No obviously not. But if it's so obvious what portion of the T&C he's breaking s…

"The suspension email stated that I was trying to impersonate another company, and that this was forbidden." Impersonation or Deceptive Behavior: Don't pretend to be someone else, and don't represent that your app is authorized by or produced by another company or organization. .. Apps must not have names or icons that appear confusingly similar to existing products I don't know how Google can be any more clear about…

"Apps must not have names or icons that appear confusingly similar to existing products"

Okay so then a single extra sentence stating "The icon and name you have chosen are unacceptable because you are not X, Y or Z and constitute impersonation in our opinion" would have cleared up all the problems.

But that didn't happen did it? Nope!

Re: Banned for Life

#268

Post by api »

rmrfrmrf wrote: post #259
api wrote: post #202

"I was a die hard Apple fan since 1985 and was an Apple developer all through the darkest days of the Apple death spiral. I continued to be an Apple fan until they announced the “walled garden” and the app review process for iOS. I am totally against having to get permission from a corporation to write and sell apps, and I certainly don’t think I should be forced to sell my work through their store and their store on…

I think you missed the part where Microsoft and Apple had completely different core businesses.

I'm talking about how mobile platforms are completely locked down and gated, with app stores taking ~30% of your app revenue and no ability to install what you want.

That sort of thing would never have been tolerated in the PC world, yet in the mobile work nobody seems to care.

Re: Banned for Life

#269

Post by idlewan »

icebraining wrote: post #25
mempko wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What this shows is how anti-user closed app eco-systems are. Some users probably found his app very useful but can't use it because lawyers.

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.

If you were on the open web, his app would be a page with youtube's embed code for each video.

I doubt you would use a DMCA takedown request for this. You'd just disable embedding of your videos in your youtube options. Youtube probably already knows when a video isn't requested from either youtube's website or the official youtube app.

Re: Banned for Life

#270

Post by Dylan16807 »

Eiriksmal wrote: post #266
Dylan16807 wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you tell me I've done 'something' wrong I can make an enormous series of increasingly-tenuous possible justifications in my mind, but that doesn't mean I have any clue if I've actually done something wrong or if there was a mistake in evaluation somewhere.

"A few weeks went by and I got an email stating one of my apps had been suspended. ... I could understand if an uptight lawyer out there didn’t want my app on the store displaying their videos." "The suspension email stated that I was trying to impersonate another company, and that this was forbidden. I had no intention of impersonating anyone." I would say, in this gentleman's situation, that's pretty specific. Espe…

There were no copyright issues here, only trademark / impersonation. Those rules are extremely fuzzy, and the usual method of mentioning a trademark you don't own, practiced even by mega-corporations, is by attaching a disclaimer that it's not their trademark.
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