[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.

[dpark]

The BBC should not be expected to reach our to every spammy app developer personally to politely ask that their infringing app be removed. Not only would this be more costly for them than interacting directly with Google, it would likely get some IP enforcement employees there fired when someone higher up noticed that apps were not being taken down promptly.

I don't like that Google banned this guy from Google wallet and from buying apps, but I have no issue with them banning him from publishing new apps. He blatantly violated trademarks repeatedly, and he published low-quality apps that by his own admission were identical except for an ID change, and provided no functionality aside from being a YouTube wrapper. He's a spammer.

[mootothemax]

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

Yes, because it's a waste of time and resources.

One developer, one email conversation, fine, not the largest time investment.

What about all of the other developers in the world?

Especially if this became a recognised method of gaining work?

Suddenly you need full-time staff dedicated to the non-core-business activity of writing "gentlemanly" emails.

It's unworkable.

[PeterisP]

Gentlemanly fashion would involve the guilty party to invest all the effort in resolving the situation and apologize to everyone involved, instead of demanding others to educate him and point out how exactly to improve his wrongdoings.

Noone is really entitled to free handholding from others in the first place, and doing harmful stuff (such as spamming the appmarket with those fake apps) doesn't offer any extra rights, it can only offer extra duties.

It would be harsh to punish someone after the first offense, but if someone is showing both with his words (the "clarification" sent to google) and actions (the other two strikes) that he perceives those actions as socially acceptable, then there's no duty for anyone to reeducate him when just putting him on lifetime ignorelist achieves the required result (protecting appstore customers from such publishers) much cheaper, faster and better.

[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.