[_petronius]

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 business practice. I don't buy it.

There's a lot of logical contortion going on to dump the blame for this back on Google. "The suspension email stated that I was trying to impersonate another company" is followed quickly by "Well since Google was silent about the exact reason for suspension..."; he even admits to intentionally ignoring the warnings he was given because "if I thought a human at Google was giving me the warning, I might have listened more carefully."

That is, at best, negligently poor reasoning. At worst, it's a contemptuous disrespect for the other party you're engaging in business with, which is pretty good grounds for them exercising their option to terminate that business relationship.

Google, Amazon, etc., are for-profit commercial service providers. If you're going to violate their policies, they will stop working with you, regardless of the impact on your business. Anyone who depends on a third party supplier for anything, in any business context, should keep that in mind -- they have no duty to you beyond whatever contract you have signed (if, of course, you have signed one).

[sergiosgc]

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 independent revenue streams. It's inexcusable for Google to do this!

b) Google support is awful. This is a known fact. AdSense suspensions are probably the most common. I've been affected by one. Google does not answer. Ever. Period. (well, if you're lucky you get a canned response).

The conclusion is that an irresponsible and deaf company now holds power over huge swaths of people.

I'm uncomfortable. And so should you be.

[kazinator]

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 different app from "grep bar" because we changed the string that it looks for.

* he thinks that going from an "app" with a hard-coded YT channel to one with a user-configurable channel is a big step in development, the "real app".

* 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 cannot see what he obviously did wrong: make a spammy app that only re-frames other people's content, and infringes on trademarks, etc. In response to the first takedown, I would have pulled all copies of this app immediately.

Google only holds power over those swaths of people who surrendered some aspects of their lives to Google.

[cookiecaper]

Most normal users would search for apps for each channel. I don't think the guy is really trying to say that they are all totally unique codebases.

The author openly admits that this was a small, throwaway app that he wrote as an experiment, which contributed to his indifference as apps got suspended. It doesn't have to be complex to qualify as an "app".

I'm sure the author understands he can still write code for Android, but as he stated in the article, he might as well not if he expects any exposure. Alternative app stores and sideloaded APKs are used by approximately no one.

I don't think it can really be said he's liable for any kind of infringement just by using the YT API to wrap content. The issue would be in using the company name to imply endorsement of his applications, but even that could be a stretch. Should he have broken down to the old Red Hat trick and said "a prominent North American YouTube channel TV"?

While I probably wouldn't have made the same decisions this guy did, tolerance and handling of these types of uncommon miscommunications are part of the responsibility a company assumes when it decides to hook into so many parts of its users' lives. With the indispensability of something like Google, they really should be more careful before they mess up someone's life with this kind of action. Not everything can be resolved with a static, generalized FAQ.

The whole thing could've been averted if Google had taken the effort to clarify what was happening and why directly, by real communication from a human that is obviously personalized, at any point in the process.

[paraserv]

Excellent and logical response, cookiecaper. The developer's article could have been written more succinctly, but the points he makes are completely valid and the larger issue of how Google's unintended power to credibly damage a developer's career should not be taken lightly.

[baldfat]

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.

[SnacksOnAPlane]

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

[ssw1n]

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 ....

[kasey_junk]

To be fair, he claimed that those he would have charged out each of those apps at 50K for custom development time. I don't know if he has the pipeline, infrastructure, etc. to actually bill out clients for Android apps at that rate, but that doesn't sound like an extremely high number to me for custom software work.

You are confusing $500K worth of "work" with $500K worth of billing. A common problem in our industry.

[ColinCera]

Yeah, except he himself described the first app as "simple" and the next 9 apps after the first consisted of nothing more than changing the YouTube channel id the app pointed to and changing the app's name.

$50,000 seems pretty exorbitant for a "simple" app that does nothing more than embed YouTube videos.

$50,000 for the literally 5 minutes of work involved in changing the channel ID and app name is downright comical.

There's no way to spin this as $500,000 worth of work. I don't care what his billing rates are. (And I suspect his billing rates aren't very high to begin with — he doesn't strike me as the sharpest tool in the shed.)

[nimblegorilla]

50K of "billing" time for a prototype that views one youtube channel seems excessive. At $150/hr that's over 2 months of fulltime development for something a real developer could knock out in a couple days.

[SnacksOnAPlane]

I don't think he could have found clients gullible enough to pay that much for what's essentially a web view in a minimal wrapper. But I suck at the marketing.

[67726e]

His logic is probably: VALUE = timeSpent * overpricedBillingRate

In reality he only provided about as much value as people found in the app.

[sergiosgc]

> Google only holds power over those swaths of people who surrendered some aspects of their lives to Google

No. Google wallet is, as of now, an unacceptable payment processor for me. Its existence, however, precludes other competitors from entering the space. As such, even if I do not use Google services, its power still affects me.

For a reduction to the absurd, imagine Google wallet a payment processor monopolist, or a duopolist (with PayPal).

[fooqux]

>Its existence, however, precludes other competitors from entering the space.

Amazon and Paypal are still both way bigger than Google Wallet is. I sincerely doubt that anybody looking to get into the payment processing industry is saying "crap, we can't do this because Google already does". They're worried about competing with Paypal. Hell, even Bitcoin is accepted at more places than Google Wallet is, from my own life experiences.

[TuringTest]

Do Paypal and Bitcoin work as standard payment processors for applications in the Play store? And Amazon, for non-Kindle devices?

The whole point of the walled garden is that, in order to be able to access a customer base, you have to play by the rules of the gatekeeper (and pay the toll). I'm not comfortable with a market model where the only choice is what garden you want to be in.

[smt88]

PayPal is accepted in the Play Store. Do some research.

[Perseids]

> 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.

And how many people will find and buy such an app? You do know of the standard security advice to disallow app installations outside of the Play Store as this is the main attack vector for malware on Android, for example for banking trojans? Also I would have to be extremely motivated to get this app before I go through the hassle of paying via a non Play Store payment service.

> make a spammy app that only re-frames other people's content, and infringes on trademarks

What is Youtube if not a (not so spammy) service that reframes other people's content and for a long time infringed on copyrights?

[cma]

The Amazon app store is pretty popular, and you can install it on any android device.

[homulilly]

> 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.

[_petronius]

I'm not sure I was painting him as "different" from me, or even making it about him vs. me at all.

The onus is on you, the person using the service, to understand what terms and conditions you have agreed to abide by when using that service. If Google fail to uphold their end of the agreement and you lose revenue, you can seek remedy through legal means (although, obviously, that's a pretty crap position to be in); if the agreement doesn't protect you from arbitrary banishment from the service for life, then that is important to know up front.

It would be awesome if Google's support was better; it would be awesome if they were more responsive to the people that make their money through the marketplace they've set up; but ultimately they have no legal obligation to be any of those things, and in business your legal obligations are your only obligations. (I am making no qualitative defense of that fact, merely describing its existence.)

If one doesn't keep those things in mind, then regardless of how irresponsible Google is or isn't, that failure constitutes a kind of irresponsibility all its own.

Whether I personally would never fall afoul of something like this (possible, since I'm a programmer, not a lawyer) is secondary to the best way of dealing with a much larger company that holds all of the cards (follow the terms and conditions; heed the multiple warnings they give you). My personal discomfort at Google acting like jerks is, too (insofar as I don't currently rely on them for any kind of revenue).

[enraged_camel]

>>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.

[krschultz]

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 comparison to Apple's App Store. That's not the case. Apple filters up front, Google deals with terms & conditions violations after you are already published.

Now, I think the negative here is that he conflated his personal accounts with his publishing accounts. I generally recommend against that, even if you are a hobbyist developer.

[sergiosgc]

> 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.

But Google is ethically obligated not to punish the guy by closing associated services (GWallet). It is also ethically bound to treat the customer as good-intentioned, and bound to explain the basis for suspension.

Google failed on both counts.

[thefreeman]

He hasn't even tried to reactivate the wallet account. They requested information to verify his identity, which he claims "will be used to confirm and blacklist his address", so he hasn't provided it.

[gknoy]

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.

[_petronius]

To be a canny participant in the economy as it exists, we have to acknowledge how companies should behave doesn't always (or often) line up with how they do behave.

In business, many (if not most) participants will seek to maximize thier advantage within the rules; if you don't establish rules (via contract or something else) or understand and follow the existing ones, it's quite disingenuous to complain that you are at a disadvantage.

I don't like that fact, but (cultural sea-change aside) that's one of the costs of doing business, whether it's on a small scale or a large one.

But we can acknowledge that even as we work to change the status quo. So perhaps there is hope yet.

[moogleii]

I agree Google support is awful, but if I'm reading this correctly, he named one of his apps "Vice TV." He sounds pretty naive if he thinks he can get away with that. I don't buy it either. I think he intentionally played dumb.

[byuu]

B is probably a legal issue. If they give you any additional information outside of their canned, lawyer-approved responses, you may be able to use that in a legal claim against them.

[imsofuture]

>The conclusion is that an irresponsible and deaf company now holds power over huge swaths of people.

Walled gardens and all that. We're all choosing to play in them.

[sergiosgc]

The walled garden I can live with. The problem is that his actions inside the walled garden had effects outside. It's like crashing your car while drunk driving causes your insurance company to cancel your credit card (because the same company owns both your bank and your insurance company).

[midnightreactor]

You're awfully willful about this whole thread. To a degree that you might be the author.

It's a matter of convenience, not necessity, to bank and insure through the same company, but this exposes you to a greater degree of risk, which only compounds with irresponsible behavior as a customer. End of story. He shouldn't have used his personal account. That's part of the reason individuals do things like set up LLCs, to shield individuals from liability in operations related to business, but maybe this guy can't be bothered to understand stupid business or legal logic behind such decisions.

This whole thing reeks of an appeal to pity and logical fallacy. His background is not especially relevant to report on the situation. His switch from Apple to Android fandom and why he made that switch are even less important. If anything, his purported history as a developer should have given him every single indication that what he was doing was subjectively wrong, according to Google. He ignored these signs and subscribed to his own styling of reality. Seems like a sensitive homebrew developer with an overinflated ego ($500k worth of time, my ass) got iced for his bad behavior. Natural selection in action.

[sergiosgc]

> You're awfully willful about this whole thread. To a degree that you might be the author.

Come on! Unnecessary ad-hominem. I'm easily googleable and obviously not the author.

I won't dignify the rest of your comment with an answer.

[midnightreactor]

A tongue-in-cheek observation is hardly ad-hominem. The remark was made to point out that you have a habit of cherry-picking arguments and refuse to see any reason behind opposing views in the same vein of the author, to state plainly. I don't actually care about who you are. At all.

And responding to a reasoned argument is hard to dignify when you have neither a response nor dignity.

[angersock]

Relevant bit from the article:

Google explicitly states that any new accounts created by you will be immediately terminated. Google tracks everything you do. They track all the IP addresses you access your accounts from. They read your mail and track your location, they read your docs, they know your credit card numbers and home and work addresses. They also know who your friends are and who you chat with and email. It’s possible, but incredibly difficult to fool their surveillance.

His Google Music account was cancelled as well. And one could imagine, easily, Google launching a platform (Google Fraud Detection) to allow 3rd parties to determine if a developer or system is suspect--which in turn could result in blackballing for everyone.

[hashtag]

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.

[DanBC]

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

Mildly frustrating.

[Keyframe]

Judging by the names of the apps/wrappers (if they were same in the store) from here http://distantfutu.re/page/portfolio.html he is lucky to not get sued at the same time as well. He's even argumentative about trademark infringement in his post. I don't think he fully understands what he really did wrong.

[naiv]

Copyright and trademarks don't seem to be his strength, I doubt that he licensed the pictures on http://distantfutu.re/page/team.html .. But because he grew up "in the 70s/80s", these are public domain to him.

[pbhjpbhj]

Does he need a license to use those images in Reunion (or wherever his server is)? It looks like it could be a fair-use under USC too? Styling yourself as DeNiro in Taxi Driver might even class as parodical and so be an allowed use?

But your general point in your first clause stands.

[ColinCera]

This is not fair use. No court has ever held that it's fair use to reproduce copyright images because you think they look cool, you think they're funny, you think they illustrate some point you're trying to make, etc. And using an image of DeNiro as your avatar does not even begin to approach a legally acceptable form of parody.

Just because hardly anybody ever gets sued for using copyrighted images as avatars, as humorous blog illustrations, and so on, doesn't mean that they couldn't be sued — and the copyright holder would unquestionably prevail.

[pbhjpbhj]

Using the US courts 4-factor analysis where in particular do you think this use - of a low-pixel screencap transformed as an avatar - fails?

Do you happen to know the jurisdiction applicably here, as it's behind Cloudfront the location of the servers are hidden. Clearly there's the .re domain. It might be considered that Cloudfront's proxying causes a US jurisdiction claim of infringement to be pertinent no matter where the files are hosted, but that moves rather to my point that it's not a simple analysis and so the vilification of the alleged infringer seems unwarranted at this time.

>No court has ever held that it's fair use to reproduce copyright images because you think they look cool //

Low-pixel copies of images have been allowed for various purposes. Are you saying this particular issue has been addressed by the courts, I'm not aware of it, could you post the details? Thanks.

[__P]

"Fair-use" is a legal defence, when you get sued. Just like 'self-defence' is a legal defence if you murder someone.

It does not mean you have the right. (Like in countries like Korea, or Australia, where you do have the right).

[dragonwriter]

US Copyright "Fair Use" is basically a statutory exception that closely follows the parameters of what courts found were Constitutional limits on copyright restrictions imposed by the First Amendment free speech/free press rights, so, no, despite the fact that it is procedurally a statutory exception, it also does reflect the existence of a more basic right that the statute would have no power to infringe even if it didn't encode the exception explicitly.

[pbhjpbhj]

I'm sorry but you're quite wrong. Fair Use under the USC is an exception allowing, primarily personal [but by no means exclusively], use of otherwise copyright material. Eg fair-use covers limited educational exceptions, incidental infringements (you take a photo and it happens to have a copyright protected work in that isn't the feature of the image), etc., etc..

Fair Use is a legal defence against a claim that you have tortuously infringed someone's copyright. The reason it works is because under Fair Use exceptions there is no tort committed, that is why you get off. It's _not_ the court saying "well you committed a tort against them but it was only a small one" it's the court saying that under the USC there has been no tort committed.

If someone died whilst you were defending yourself, you don't "get off" it's ajudged to be (and considered in the relevant code or statute) acceptable, you didn't murder them. If you murdered them and you win on a legal-defence of "self-defence" then there was a miscarriage of justice.

There are many good guides, http://copyright.columbia.edu/copyright/fair-use/what-is-fai... - note in particular the penultimate para on balance. Even some commercial uses are judged "fair use" just as educational or library uses aren't always allowed. For example Google are allowed to show thousands of DeNiro images on their site under a fair use exception (eg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_10,_Inc._v._Google_Inc.).

IMO the de minimis use of single, low-pixel size, established cultural images for avatars where there is no actual commercial harm to the image maker and perceivably no commercial gain in the meets with the balanced consideration of the 4 characteristics of fair-use material.

[I've no idea where the page is hosted nor the copyright system in place in the Reunion islands (which may or may not be relevant), do they use French law, are they signatories to the Berne Convention or TRIPs???]

[__P]

Apologises, I was a bit flippant, I merely meant fair-use wasn't a 'right'. It was instead a 'defence'. Saying it was like self-defence, was incorrect. You are correct.

But my point is, it is unlike other countries where it is a right (i.e. you cannot be taken to court at all for it).

[rrrx3]

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.

[TuringTest]

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?

[claudius]

There was no crime (at least no criminal prosecution of one form or another) and no punishment. There was a violation of the contract the OP agreed upon and the other party decided to make use of their right and terminate that contract. That other party has no obligation whatsoever to continue to uphold the contract or not make use of the clause which allows them to exit. The other party is also under no obligation to provide someone some leeway to “learn the ropes”. Lastly, the ropes which the author failed to learn are founded in civil and criminal law, not in the ToS of the other party specifically. Since ignorance of the law is not a valid excuse to violate said law, there is particularly little reason for anyone to give the OP any sort of leeway to learn obeying the law.

TL;DR: Don’t trust companies with important stuff if you are not certain to have appropriate forms of recourse if they decide in a way you don’t like. Don’t ignore civil and criminal law because they’re just “rules”. Read the terms of service if you agree to them.

[danielweber]

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.

[TuringTest]

According to the timeline, all the applications that got his account suspended were already in place when he got the first notice. So it's not as if he continued doing the same thing - he was sacked by inaction, and the warnings didn't contain sufficient notice that more action (removing the other applications, which hadn't got a warning yet) was required on his part.

[aceperry]

His friends consisted of "99.9% of everyone I know uses iOS", are probably contemptuous of Android. Which seems to be a common attitude amongst the apple fanbois. I don't think his friends could've helped him.

[Cthulhu_]

> 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.

[pbhjpbhj]

"Khan Academy TV - youtube.com/user/khanacademy"

Is that impersonation? Basically his app let you have a "bookmark" that opened a YouTube provided channel.

Sure he seems to be naive about the trademark issues (but interestingly never mentions how much money was made, if any) but Google were highly flawed in their customer service/developer relations [as usual]. The trademark issue isn't entirely clear cut (but I wouldn't want to try and defend it in court) as it's descriptive of what it is. There's an exhaustion of rights angle too - like being able to sell Nike shoes and call them Nike shoes as long as they are really from Nike. My point I suppose is it's not entirely without complexity.

Google, how hard is it to have a pro forma response that says "You can not use other business names or trademarks, which you don't have a license for, as part of your app name.".

[GFischer]

To continue your analogy, it would be more akin to selling Nike shoes in your store, and calling your store Nike Store Seller, and using Nike's logo prominently in your store.

I'm sure Nike wouldn't like that, even if you were actually selling Nike shoes.

I agree that Google wasn't exactly communicative (they never are).

[sjs382]

>The question is, was the punishment proportional to the crime?

Yes.

>The 'whine' was about being banned for life because of novice mistakes made without bad faith. How is one supposed to learn the ropes?

The novice mistakes were made without bad faith, I agree. This is why his first app was suspended.

The reason he was banned however, was continuing to ignore warnings. He has no concept of what he did wrong—he's not someone I would want to do business with, either.

[avz]

It's a misrepresentation to cast the account suspension as if it was a punishment for a crime.

Google has the right to terminate a business relationship with partners who violate their terms and conditions and ignore their warnings.

Developer account with Google is not a birthright. The provision of it is a business relationship conditioned on following certain rules which the author broke multiple times and despite warnings.

[nl]

How is one supposed to learn the ropes?

Maybe listen to one of the many warnings he was given?

[pbhjpbhj]

Warning, your post is in breech of my policies, the policies of HN, the law local to you or some other policy that applies due to jurisdiction that applies to the server, you, me or HN.

Please correct this error immediately or your account will be terminated. /s

[mattstocum]

He was warned. Repeatedly. What the hell else did he want? An overt act of divine intervention?

[wolfgke]

What he wanted is stated clearly in the article:

"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 any additional information. So, I just left the app in the suspended state and never attempted to update it since I really didn’t know what I needed to change".

[rmrfrmrf]

Some developers have a serious problem with understanding that there are times when an app's problems aren't about checkboxes on an issue tracker. The entire spirit of this app is about infringing on intellectual property rights. Furthermore, the app is so basic that it provides zero value to simply bookmarking the YouTube channel in your browser. The entire concept is so terrible that he had to hide behind an appeal to emotion (i.e., "b-bu-but my kids needed it!") just to sell it.

"Maybe I'm naive" is truly the understatement of the century here. This guy credential-izes himself out the ass (developer since 1991!), yet still can't grasp the concept of copyright infringement? At a certain point, you, as an adult, need to learn to swim or stay 20ft away from large bodies of water. This guy belly-flopped right in and dropped straight to the bottom. Then, Google pulled him out and he went right for the diving board again. This guy was clearly hopeless from Google's perspective and in no way worth the trouble he would cause (assuming that this is truly naivety and not some sort of sympathy trolling). Good riddance.

[Eiriksmal]

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?"

[mattstocum]

And that's all well and good, until you read the rest of the chain of events leading up to that. He had an app suspended, and was given a clear reason why ("The suspension email stated that I was trying to impersonate another company, and that this was forbidden"). Whether or not he agreed with the logic is immaterial. Then a second app gets suspended for the same reason. Any sane individual would take the rest down at this point. It's clear Google considered what he was doing a violation of their rules. But he just kept on trucking a long.

God had already sent him two boats, waiting for the helicopter is the act of a mad man.

[hxw]

I have never submitted anything to Google Play, but there has to be some sort of guidelines for what you can submit and not?

Or he could have just searched the web - "(...) searching the web I find dozens of similar stories"

[tim333]

There is a guide and it's pretty clear: https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answ...

"For example, if your app displays the brand, icon, or title from another app [...] your apps can be suspended and your developer account terminated."

[agrotera]

I was trying to feel some kind of sympathy for the guy and though that maybe the terms and conditions may have been full of jargon and hard for someone without a legal background to understand. That's about as clear as can be.

[jasonlotito]

If one person does it, it's a whine. When Airbnb or Uber does it, it's fighting back against the establishment.

Not suggesting he was right, but you can't be apart of this community without noticing these things.

[jamesbrownuhh]

Releasing an application called "Top Gear TV" is remarkably naive on its own (it's one of the BBC's biggest worldwide commercial franchises) - doing it with 10 other major properties just turned something that was only a matter of time, into an absolute inevitability.

[hoektoe]

did his apps display ads over/with the content provided by third party? Did youtube ads still play in the viewer?

Either way, don't really approve of his arguments

[icebraining]

Here's a copy of the app information, copied by some app discovering site: http://www.myappwiz.com/home/getapp?platform=Android&appID=c...

[danielweber]

Technically it's a very nice idea. I'd love to, say, funnel my younger son into the Schoolhouse Rock channel without him going off and watching teenagers swear at Angry Birds.

But he completely botched the execution.

[palakchokshi]

he used their logo too? That is just wrong. the OP seems like a naive developer who doesn't grasp even the basics of trademarks and if he does then he has complete disregard for them and should be banned for life.

[Renaud]

On top of that, you can only use a .re TLD if you are a EU citizen or a company that resides in the EU...

http://www.afnic.fr/en/products-and-services/the-re-tld/

[cookiecaper]

This is pretty unfair. It's super common to get country TLDs just because they make your service or site sound cooler. I think it's well-accepted that such rules are meaningless at this point.

[Renaud]

They shouldn't be. When we registered a .re TLD we were asked to provide a business license to prove that the business in question was local. Desirable local TLDs get taken by squatters and opening them to the world at large dilutes the meaningfulness and availability of that TLD to local businesses who need the recognition.

[ryan-c]

There are companies that will set up a local shell company for you to own whatever TLD you want.

[Loque]

From that website; http://distantfutu.re/page/team.html

Two Founders, Two PR people and One Engineer....

Good structure :¬P

[jbigelow76]

You'd think at least one of the PR people could have handled this fiasco. This would be their time to shine!

[Anderkent]

>I don't think he fully understands what he really did wrong.

Well, yeah, that's the point of the article. That google never made it clear what he did wrong, so that he could fix it.

[wolfgke]

> I don't think he fully understands what he really did wrong.

Google not making it entirely clear in their hellbanning email what he did wrong makes the hellbanning double unfair in my opinion.

[Someone1234]

They did make it clear and it is in the developer agreement the OP agreed to when signing up.

https://play.google.com/about/developer-content-policy.html

> 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 if that is not the case. Products or the ads they contain also must not mimic functionality or warnings from the operating system or other apps. Products must not contain false or misleading information in any content, title, icon, description, or screenshots. Developers must not divert users or provide links to any other site that mimics or passes itself off as another app or service. Apps must not have names or icons that appear confusingly similar to existing products, or to apps supplied with the device (such as Camera, Gallery or Messaging).

The OP's apps clearly violate the "title, icon" provisions above. Google even sent him an email about it listing the exact reason in the email, but yet that too is still not enough?

What is it people in this thread want? Do Google personally need to go around OP's house, sit him down, and explain through the developer agreement line by line?

[ascendantlogic]

The only thing I side with him on is this:

"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 any additional information."

If you ask why, you should be told exactly what is wrong. Or better yet, be told exactly what is wrong right away. Obviously packaging other people's content is the issue here, but you should be told exactly what rules are being broken so there's no ambiguity.

[Fuxy]

I find it amazing that everyone here seems to be a lawyer or extremely well versed in the rules while agreeing with them.

What's wrong with packaging other people's content as long as you're not profiting from it?

If the content owner wants it removed there should be a way to request that while not negatively affecting the developers account.

Plus the whole 3 strikes rule seems a bit too strict for me especially if it's going to be enforced so heavy handedly for what is obviously a minor issue that could have been resolved by a email conversation.

Not to mention other Google accounts like Google Wallet and Google Music getting banned for something like this.

What does one have to do with the other? Do you mean to tell me if i get banned in the Play store all Google account on all services get banned including my Google drive, Google docs, gmail etc

Doesn't that seem a bit absurd to anyone?

How would you like your entire music library deleted because your developer account got banned?

[PeterisP]

"What's wrong with packaging other people's content as long as you're not profiting from it?"

Everything, and the "you're not profiting from it" part is completely irrelevant and can be skipped from the sentence.

Redistributing other people's content without their consent is simply not allowed, and the fact that they have made this content freely available on channel A doesn't give you permission to make it freely available on channel B.

And no matter what position you take on copyright, impersonating their name, as the original poster had done, is clearly unethical and unexcusable.

[tim333]

Aside from the legal and policy issues, as a user this stuff can be pretty annoying. You just want say the Facebook app and you have to wade through half a dozen spam apps saying Facebook in their name before you get to the real one. With facebook it's fairly obvious but if you are trying to download some app you don't know well it's easy to get a bogus one by mistake.

[Fuxy]

The Description of the app clearly states that the app is not actually affiliated in any way with the original content creator.

So it's not really impersonation is it?

Plus they can always just request nicely for it to be removed if their really that bothered by it.

What is with this need of taking drastic measures for something as simple as this. Whatever happened to talking to the developer and sorting it out like gentlemen.

[dpark]

They did request for it to be removed. They sent Google the request, which is what I would do, because dealing with some spammy app developer isn't worth my time. And frankly, given how this guy doesn't admit to wrongdoing or even breaking the rules, I don't buy that he'd be particularly responsive. I expect I'd get a defensive and argumentative email in response.

[Fuxy]

This is why we can't have nice things you just assume he's not going to comply but you don't even make an attempt to resolve the issue in a gentlemanly fashion.

Why? Because you can't be bothered to.

You would rather give him a black mark on his account with the knowledge that only 3 in his life time would get him permanently banned.

[rmrfrmrf]

Even worse: he'd offer to sell you the app for $50,000!

[true_religion]

Their policies don't necessarily need to be due to 'ethics' or laws, but just their opinion of what makes a good marketplace.

Perhaps they feel that repackaging other peoples content leads to needless confusion about what is official and not, since anyone and their cat can put up an app that wraps a Youtube channel.

Maybe they feel that apps like that are low quality, so to set a bar they'll restrict it to only the actual rights holders who have a more vested stake in making a good app.

It's really a business decision.

[Shivetya]

Packaging another person's content should result in an immediate take down of an app. A content owner should not have to opt out of other people using their material, that is akin to telling people you can use someone's stuff until they catch you. I put along the lines of, would you let people use your house just because the door was open? Take your car? It is content/stuff you own. Why do some many discount digital content in value?

In some ways the www is still the wild wild west, anything goes until they come looking for you. Looking for gold on another person's land and such.

[ZoFreX]

OK, so let's ban Firefox from the app store for packaging other people's content. He didn't package, nor did he take their material - that implies that his app somehow contained their content. It did not. It simply let you browse their YouTube channel for content the content holder had made freely available.

(also, your comparison to houses and cars is nigh-on nonsensical: copyrighted material is not a possession, and one person using it does not preclude another person using it, whereas if someone took my car I would be down by one car.)

[klibertp]

You can have your content just fine without anyone taking it from you - just don't publish it. Wanting to both give the content to people and keep it to yourself at the same time is a bit contradictory IMHO. I'm not strictly against people being able to restrict how their content is used, but they definitely should have to explicitly state this. The content itself wants to spread and it will do so if left alone. Unlike your car, remember, which won't magically multiply so that every single person looking on it gets his own version. Anyway, if you want your content to be restricted in some way you should just say so, because what you want is unnatural and exceptional in case of content (and perfectly reasonable, natural and common place in case of your car, where, conveniently, you don't have to do anything if you happen to wan't it to not be stolen).

[wolfgke]

> Packaging another person's content should result in an immediate take down of an app. A content owner should not have to opt out of other people using their material, that is akin to telling people you can use someone's stuff until they catch you.

Why do you place the content into the internet if you don't want other people to use it? You also don't complain about search engines indexing your content or other people linking to your content.

[tomjen3]

Lets not get into the car analogies here. Please.

I don't see how wrapping that content is/was different from what Firefox does - except that firefox allows you to go to more than one webpage.

This is, in my mind, a separate issue from impersonating a company.

[thefreeman]

The difference is Firefox doesn't put one app for every website it accesses in the App Store named after the website and using the websites logo.

[tomjen3]

I specifically said they were two distinct issues. He could have named the app "watch car shown online".

[msandford]

Here's the deal. When you're talking about physical stuff when I have it, you can't have it and vise versa. If you have a car and I steal it, you are denied the use of said car.

When it comes to copies of things, though, that all breaks down. When you make a movie and I make an illegal copy (I don't pirate things but let's suppose for a second) you aren't prevented from owning the movie any longer. You've lost a sale for sure, but I didn't just take the copyright away from you and now it's mine and I can sell it and you can't. But that's not even what this guy did.

What we're talking about here is the creation of an "unauthorized" front-end that uses public APIs to display things which are already public.

When you said "take" you're really abusing language in a preposterous way.

First of all nobody was denied use of anything so it's not STOLEN.

Second this content is already freely available on the web.

Third it's freely available via the generic youtube apps google publishes.

Fourth his app didn't download copies to his servers which it then served up (which would be copyright infringement) denying the originating youtube channels views or likes or whatever.

By your "packaging" logic anyone who embeds a bunch of a particular youtube channel's videos onto a webpage should have their servers nuked from orbit. That doesn't pass the laugh test.

https://www.google.com/search?q=youtube+embed+channel

If using an unauthorized front-end is really so naughty then why are people allowed to embed things?

Should youtube channel owners be able to dictate which browsers people are allowed to use to view their channels on youtube? Should they be allowed to say "IPv4 only" and disallow the use of IPv6? Should they have the right to dictate which networks are allowed to transport their video? Maybe their content should only be visible to Mac owners and sufficiently cool linux guys but under no circumstances should a windows user be able to view their video.

[Fuxy]

How about a bit of text near your content warning me that I'm not allowed to use your stuff regardless of my intentions be it a free fan app that will actually spread your content further or whatever.

That would be helpful and remove all the confusion.

Edit: We don't all live in the US so don't assume your laws apply to everyone lawyer-san. Even if something equivalent did exist in every other country it still doesn't make it sane. We all know copyright is broken in many ways. The default should be open like it originally used to be.

[icebraining]

The text is in 15 U.S. Code § 1114.

Edit: We don't all live in the US so don't assume your laws apply to everyone.

I'm well aware that we don't all live in the US; I don't, either. But if you publish an app in an US marketplace, it's subject to US law.

[stonemetal]

>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. Obviously some will get it from you instead of me because it is so much cheaper and I will make less profit, or not meet costs. If you don't see what is wrong in breaking your word (and a legally binding contract) and causing harm to someone just because you didn't profit from it, I don't know what argument would.

If they had given you access to the content under a license which allowed you to share it then yeah sure who cares repackage away. If they shared it with you with the specific previsions that you can do this but not that, then you turn around and do that. Then why would you think it is OK to do that?

[cookiecaper]

He used the YouTube APIs exactly as they are intended to be used. There is no issue with his use of the YouTube APIs to wrap a channel. The only potential issue would be the implication that the trademark holder endorsed his app by including their name in the application title, and I think that's an arguable point. I definitely believe that the trademark owners would complain, but I don't think he necessarily did anything technically illegal.

[alistairjcbrown]

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.

[Keyframe]

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.

[stonemetal]

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.

[alistairjcbrown]

"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.

[Dylan16807]

Piracy is making unauthorized copies, either to or from another person.

[Dylan16807]

If you want that analogy to be right, the person would be buying copies of the DVD and then repacking them 1:1 at a cost of 5 cents. It's totally OK to do that.

Remember, their app is nothing more than a small blob of java[script] that provides a limited but improved window onto youtube.

[Anderkent]

That's completely not the scenario, though?

All the content is already available on youtube. He's just providing a different way of finding it. Nothing wrong with it.

[einrealist]

Google does not do that, because it could bite them if they do and if this goes to court.

[therobot24]

"I thought I was doing these guys a favor. The apps I wrote would have cost about $50,000 each if I had charged for my time. I basically donated $500,000 to the Android community. That’s how I saw things."

This is where i stopped reading - the author is a bit delusional.

[bicx]

Yeah, he clearly wasn't thinking straight on that one. Even if the time he spent on the first app was worth $50k, he said earlier that he created the other apps just by changing the YouTube channel on the first app and repackaging. Definitely not $500k of work by any stretch.

[lyndonh]

I very nearly stopped at this point:

"All Apple products are banned in my household to make a statement about programmer freedom."

Sorry kids, to increase freedom I'm taking away your iPhones and you have to use Samsung.

There must be a Franklin quote there, somewhere ?

[pessimizer]

It's about as oxymoronic as refusing to play Sun City to support freedom in South Africa.

[mattstocum]

"The app was simple. Launch it and it display the videos for a single YouTube channel. I made the app, and it was really nice and a pleasure to use."

I'm assuming his hourly rate is $50,000/hr. Did he do anything other than wrap the web page for the channel in a web view? I'm not familiar with Android, but on iOS, you can accomplish this without writing a single line of code, everything could be done inside Interface Builder. I can't imagine it's any more difficult on Android.

[therobot24]

he probably factored in all the time he spent learning to build the first app, and then multiplied it by 10...if he's an independent developer i'd be very hesitant to contract him given his poor billing techniques

[Dylan16807]

On the other hand I would be quite hesitant to hire a developer to build a customized video player for tens of thousands of dollars if he was going to go on and sell that same code to others for $200 a pop.

[mattstocum]

Neither approach is right. There's nothing wrong with the write-once sell-many approach, that's basically all of non-custom software development. You shouldn't be charging for your time to learn, either. His 10 apps aren't worth $500,000 in any universe. Maybe you could argue that the entirety of the development was worth $50,000 and value each app at $5000. Maybe. I wouldn't argue that, but someone else could...

[mturmon]

Yes, this is a bad post.

It gets close to an interesting question (using multiple Google services can result in a domino effect if you violate the TOS of one).

But it raises so many peripheral points, and is so full of whiny after-the-fact juvenile justifications like the one you noticed, that it's impossible to filter out the interesting part.

[mangecoeur]

You're missing the nub of the issue - sure the guy made mistakes and ignored warnings. But the fact remains that he was banned by an impersonal, automated system with no chance of appeal, and as such is now effectively locked out of the entire android app ecosystem for ever - an therefore an entire possible line of business. Note there's also no possibility for him to mend his ways and be re-instated.

Imagine if the same applied to people who run physical businesses - some shop owner skips some paperwork thinking it'll be harmless, gets caught, gets a fine... and then is banned from ever owning a shop ever again for the rest of his life, no appeal.

This is our brave new cloud-oriented future - where all the power to regulate what content is available to millions of users lies in the hands of a couple of private companies. I find the whole thing very worrying, and am very glad that the FirefoxOS and Ubuntu phone projects are moving forward to provide some kind of alternative.

[Chinpokoman]

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.

[rgbrenner]

Wait.. so Google's terms state that any new accounts will be terminated.. but you're saying he should just go ahead and violate that term of Google's policies as well?

And assuming that Google won't carry out the threat is a poor way to run a business.. at any time, Google may decide any earnings he's made will be forfeited.

[tomjen3]

Well he has already violated the terms, might as well keep going - he has very little left to lose.

[g051051]

In addition to carefully making Google's case for them, he then descended into paranoia about Google's tracking. For someone supposedly so experienced in software development, he has some weird ideas about what's right and what's wrong.

[danielweber]

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.

[chrisBob]

If you are making a business out of this then creating a new business entity shouldn't be that difficult.

[mempko]

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.

[pogue]

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.

[Pxtl]

As a user, I tend to disagree. Finding the store full of knock-offs that just are a skin over a YouTube channel is frustrating when looking for actual content and not a simple YouTube skin. He's not the first guy to make this YouTube-wrapper app, there are a lot of them. Too many.

[cookiecaper]

First, this sounds like a problem the application store provider needs to solve with an improved interface, not nuking anything they don't personally find useful from orbit.

Second, what's "actual content"? Official content only? Undoubtedly some people who searched for "top gear" were looking for exactly what this guy put out.

[icebraining]

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.

[ben0x539]

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

[icebraining]

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".

[tomjen3]

Actually no. The DMCA is a nationalistic piece of absolute garbage, but it does allow you to file a counter notification, google does not.

[idlewan]

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.

[VLM]

Mentioning that venue B is screwed up, is hardly proof that that venue A being screwed up, is a good thing.

[icebraining]

I'm not saying it is a good thing. I'm saying it's not a problem caused by "closed app eco-systems". Trademarks apply to both closed and open marketplaces.

[on_and_off]

I tried one of his apks : The Verge TV. It installs an app of the same name. The First Screen is the logo of the website on 2/3 of the screen and a description of the website. In a corner there is a disclaimer button, clicking on it leads me to a disclaimer explaining that 'The Verge TV is not affiliated with The Verge'.

I find it hard to believe that he did not realize that an app copying the names & graphics of popular websites would get him banned for impersonation. Chances are that some of these websites reported him to Google.

[spinlock]

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.

[poopsintub]

Youtube provides videos that users specifically label as a creative commons license, and are available for commercial use. He may have not been in the wrong, though it's pretty doubtful considering his questionable judgement on everything else.

[hawleyal]

Completely disagree. People at Google acted in a ridiculous manner. This is atrocious.

[norswap]

"It's all your fault any way." Very mature, man.