I started laughing at the bit about all Apple products being banned in his household to make a statement about freedom, and I just didn't stop.
Banned for Life
41–50 of 294 posts
Re: Banned for Life
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
The rule is explicit: it's called trademark law. You can't just copy the name and logo of another company, append " TV" and distribute it publicly. This is an official app of The Verge: http://www.myappwiz.com/home/getapp?platform=Ios&appID=54251... This is OP's unofficial app: http://www.myappwiz.com/home/getapp?platform=Android&appID=c... It's pretty clear that this is prone to cause confusion, even with the discla…
The only thing that seems odd here is that Google appear to be proactively defending other companies' trademarks. Shouldn't the Khan Academy or Vice have been the ones to send the takedown notices? Or perhaps they did behind the scenes and this manifested itself in the app bans.
Isn't it in Google's interest not to have a store filled with spammy stuff that confuses users?
Re: Banned for Life
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed - the whole thing reads like a giant whine, to me. The author has zero concept of what he's done wrong, which is astounding to me.
The question is, was the punishment proportional to the crime? The 'whine' was about being banned for life because of novice mistakes made without bad faith. How is one supposed to learn the ropes? It's like learning to drive in a country where driving schools didn't exist and the full extent of traffic laws applied to you. How possibly could the author learn what he was doing wrong?
The majority of the post was "it's their fault that they didn't stop me!"
When his first app was suspended, Google should have given a better response when he asked what he did wrong. But to just continue forward doing the exact same thing he was doing before was asking for trouble. If Google wouldn't give him a clear answer, he should have asked his friends or the community.
Re: Banned for Life
#44The 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…
And to be honest I don't know why he's scared to make a new google account. Yeah sure they track your IP address and whatnot but they certainly wont do anything about it. They wont ban an entire household, that's just bullshit. I don't know why he thought getting suspended wasn't a big deal because he was "innocent". That's also a fairly stupid idea as well.
If you are trying to monetize, you have likely given Google your real name and address and bank account information, and would need to do the same thing for your new account. Submitting fraudulent information in order to get money could cross you into serious trouble with the IRS or the law.
Re: Banned for Life
#45> Anyone using my simplistic beta quality app would know instantly that this is not “official”
A silly assumption that both generalizes the audience and is ignorant of copyright laws, imo. Not a valid argument in a court situation either. I could make the crappiest Geocities site out there, but as soon as I put a Google logo somewhere, people may assume it is an official Google site or affiliated with it.
> One of my apps contained the channel id for Vice.com. Since the length of the app name is so limited I decided on “Vice TV”
Yup, there you go. Using a brand name, showing a brand's video - intent isn't the issue here, the author was impersonating Vice.com there.
The author is guilty of being naive and lax about copyright and trademark laws, imo.
Re: Banned for Life
#46The 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 lack of feedback would be annoying.
Re: Banned for Life
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed - the whole thing reads like a giant whine, to me. The author has zero concept of what he's done wrong, which is astounding to me.
The question is, was the punishment proportional to the crime? The 'whine' was about being banned for life because of novice mistakes made without bad faith. How is one supposed to learn the ropes? It's like learning to drive in a country where driving schools didn't exist and the full extent of traffic laws applied to you. How possibly could the author learn what he was doing wrong?
> The question is, was the punishment proportional to the crime?
Well yeah, repeated trademark infringement / impersonation; if Google wasn't strict about that kinda thing, the owners of those brands would sue them for millions, just as much as they were with Youtube. They're similarly strict with Youtube videos for that matter.
Re: Banned for Life
#48The 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…
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.
I think its fair to ask why you can't get human intervention on these kinds of problems and for Google to _at least_ consider what happened was an honest mistake and not something intentionally attempting to damage other peoples trademark (or whatever).
That's another trouble with so many of these mega companies now that don't seem to have any kind of instance of customer or end user support at all. It's easy to code auto response systems, and bots that track down spam and malicious software, but to get an actual person to review what is being done is nearly impossible.
Re: Banned for Life
#49Summary: No sympathy for the blog author, but its still terrifying how broad Google's ban-hammer can be if you run afoul of them.
idk, these are a bunch of products I barely even knew about.
I thought google wallet went away around the same time google wave did, for instance.
Re: Banned for Life
#50March 25th post that was on Hacker News at least twice already. This is the only article on his blog. Here is hi github page: https://github.com/sgehrman He is still developing. I am wondering what the updated status is on this? Seems that if he is still developing he isn't banned for life? There already were some petition at https://www.change.org/petitions/sergey-brin-respect-the-eff...
So that petition is accusing one dude in Google of disrespecting 'small and indie android developers' when they're blatantly violating trademark law? Lols.