[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?"

[Dylan16807]

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

[Eiriksmal]

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

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

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

[Dylan16807]

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

[mattstocum]

Except Google clearly told him that his actions violated the rules. This isn't even a trademark issue. There has been no legal action taken against him. This is a rules issue, and the sole arbiter of those rules told him he was breaking them, twice, before banning him. Can you blame Google for banning him? If he didn't get the message after the first two warnings, why would you expect him to get it after the 20th.