[nerdjon]

What law is actually being broken in Brazil?

Are MMO’s illegal in Brazil? Is PlayStation Plus illegal in Brazil? Is Spotify, Apple Music, etc etc etc also illegal in Brazil?

It would be ridiculous to argue that I could pay for a subscription to World of Warcraft and make my own third party client to play the game with. (Obviously you are free to argue it all you want but I would be very surprised if this was actually illegal).

> And in many cases like Claude Code and the Anthropic models, they can and do work perfectly independently.

Unless I am mistaken Claude Code does not have a local model built into it, so it requires a server side component to work?

As far as the Anthropic models, yes like many other services they ALSO have a public API that is separate from the subscription that you are paying for.

The critical difference here being that in the subscription it is very clear that you are paying for “Claude Code” which is a combination of an application and a server side component. It makes no claims about API usage as part of your subscription, again the technical implementation of the service you are actually paying for “Claude Code” is irrelevant.

When it comes to “Claude Code” for all that we should care about, again given that “Claude Code” is what you are paying for, they could be sending the information to Gemini or or a human looks at it. Because it’s irrelevant to the end user when it comes to the technical implementation since you are not being granted access to any other parts of the system directly.

[rglullis]

> What law is actually being broken in Brazil?

"Tie-in sale": the business practice where a seller conditions the sale of one product (the tying good) on the buyer’s agreement to purchase a different product (the tied good).

The examples you are giving are not "tie-in" sales because the service from Playstation Plus, Spotify, Apple Music, etc is the distribution of digital goods.

> Unless I am mistaken Claude Code does not have a local model built into it, so it requires a server side component to work?

Which part are you not understanding?

I don't care about Claude Code. I do not want it and do not need it. All I care about is the access to the models through the client that I was already using!

> When it comes to “Claude Code” for all that we should care about, again given that “Claude Code” is what you are paying for.

No, it is not! I paid for Claude Pro. Claude != Claude Code.

[nerdjon]

> "Tie-in sale": the business practice where a seller conditions the sale of one product (the tying good) on the buyer’s agreement to purchase a different product (the tied good)

I will keep my response to this part in particular limited because I have limited understanding of this law. However based on doing a little bit of searching around the law is not as cut and dry as you are presenting it to be. It is possible that Claude code would fall under being fine under that law or no one has gone after them. I honestly don’t know and I don’t feel like having an argument that it is highly likely both of us don’t fully understand the law.

That being said I do question how exactly “Claude code” differs from those services as a digital good.

> I don't care about Claude Code. I do not want it and do not need it. All I care about is the access to the models through the client that I was already using!

OK! That is not what you’re paying for as part of Claude Pro, end of story. You are not paying for the API. It is no different that the people that have a free plan and can only chat through the web and the app also don’t get access to the API even though it is obviously using an API to access those endpoints as well.

Or are you also going to argue that free users should have access to the API because they are already using them in the browser.

> No, it is not! I paid for Claude Pro. Claude != Claude Code.

Claude Code is one of the features you are paying for as part of Claude Pro so yes in a way you are paying for it. And again not on that list is the API.

[wrs]

Claude Pro = claude.ai, and they made no changes to that arrangement. Both claude.ai and Claude Pro are products built on top of the Claude API. You are free to buy access to the Claude API itself, with or without the other two, but the pricing is different because the price of claude.ai and Claude Code includes the API charges they incur.

[rglullis]

> but the pricing is different because the price of claude.ai and Claude Code includes the API charges they incur.

If that was true, then getting equivalent usage of the API without claude.ai and Claude Code should cost less, not more.

You can try to find all sorts of explanations for it, at the end of the day is quite simple: they are subsidizing one product in order to grow the market share, and they are doing it at a loss now, because they believe they will make up for it later. I understand the reasoning from a business point of view, but this doesn't mean they are entitled to their profits. I do not understand people that think we simply accept their premise and assume they can screw us over just because they asked and put it on a piece of paper.

[wrs]

We don't know if, on average, paying API prices for Claude Code is cheaper or not, so we don't know if they're operating it at a "loss". That math doesn't make sense in any case since it would be a "loss" based on their own external prices. The entire company is operating at a loss, regardless.

In any case, the point is it's not tying; you're free to choose any combination of products.

[rglullis]

> n any case, the point is it's not tying; you're free to choose any combination of products.

These products can function independently, and the acquisition at a heavy discouont for one of them is conditional on the acquisition of the other. It definitely is a tie-in sale.

[skeledrew]

> All I care about is the access to the models through the client that I was already using!

But that's not a product that they're offering. That ability was an undesired (from their business perspective) trait that they're now rectifying.

[rglullis]

> But that's not a product that they're offering

Of course it was.

  - It was possible to do it.
  - OpenCode did not break any security protocol in order to integrate with them. 
  - OAuth is *precisely* a system to let third-party applications use their resources.

It's not what they wanted, but it's not my problem. The fact that I was a customer does not mean that I need to protective of their profits.

> (from their business perspective)

So what?!

Basically, they set up an strategy they thought it was going to work in their favor (offer a subsidized service to try to lock in customers), someone else found a way to turn things around and you believe that we should be okay with this?!

Honestly, I do not understand why so many people here think it is fine to let these huge corporations run the same exploitation playbook over and over again. Basically they set up a mouse trap full of cheese and now that the mice found a way to enjoy the cheese without getting their necks broken, they are crying about it?

[skeledrew]

> Of course it was.

You'd have to point me to an authoritative source on that (explicitly saying users are allowed to use their models via private APIs in apps of the user's choosing). If something isn't explicitly provided in the contract, then it can be changed at any point in any way without notice.

Honestly, I'm not big on capitalism in general, but I don't understand why people should expect companies to provide things exactly the way they want at exactly the prices they would like to be charged (if at all). That's just not how the world/system works, or should, especially given there are so many alternatives available. If one doesn't like what's happening with some service, then let the wallet do the talking and move to another. Emigration is a far more effective message than complaining.

[rglullis]

> I don't understand why people should expect companies to provide things exactly the way they want at exactly the prices they would like to be charged

This is a gross misrepresentation of my argument.

I wouldn't be complaining at all if they went up and said "sorry, we are not going to subsidize anyone anymore, so the prices are going up", and I wouldn't be complaining if they came up and said "sorry, using a third party client incurs an extra cost of on our side, so if you want to use that you'd have to pay extra".

What I am against is the anti-competitive practice of price discrimination and the tie-in sale of a service. If they are going to play this game, then they better be ready for the case the strategy backfires. Otherwise it's just a game of "heads I win, tails you lose" where they always get to make up the rules.

> Emigration is a far more effective message than complaining.

Why not both? I cancelled my Pro subscription today. I will stick with just Ollama cloud.

[skeledrew]

It's not tie-in. They give users 2 choices: a) use their service via their public API, with the client(s) of their choice, at the regular price point; b) use the apps they provide, which use a private API, at a discounted price point. The apps are technically negative value for them from a purely upfront cost perspective as their use trigger these discounts and they're free by themselves.

Good on you re that cancel. May you find greener grass elsewhere.