It's shocking that it's illegal to make an OS that allows people to install apps from other sources after warning them, but not illegal to not allow that at all.
The courts take existing laws and regulations and try to make them fit, and different courts come up with different answers because the laws they're using never imagined this precise scenario.
Ideally we'd have a functioning Congress that would debate these issues and write carefully thought-out laws to regulate app stores. Until then, we just get messes of seemingly contradictory rulings that seem to be decided more by chance than by any clear cohesive principle.
In other words -- blame the legislature, not the courts.
We simply do not have enough judges to handle caseloads in a timely fashion. But also, whenever a major company is sued you end up with 8 billion motions that the court has to rule on before you even get close to a trial date.
A major problem is there's no real penalty for wasting the court's time. Companies are incentivized to make longshot motions because in the worst case, the court will just say no. For lawfirms, the more motions you make the bigger their paycheck so they not only go unpunished, they are rewarded for making as many motions as possible.
Why is it ideal that there are more laws, more regulations...?
These scenarios precisely avoided the law
That hasn't been established yet. This wasn't a court decision, it was a settlement. Epic separately sued both Google and Apple and won against Google but lost against Apple, but both of the cases are being appealed and you don't have a national precedent until you have a Supreme Court decision.
They're not required to do that and when it comes to nonsense results like trying to reconcile the different outcomes in Epic v. Apple and Epic v. Google, they're going to have a think and then make their own decision.
> Also, even if SCOTUS rules one way, it can just overrule itself a few years later if it wants to (like it did in the summer).
That wasn't a few years, it was half a century, and in general they try to avoid that. The case you're referring to was quite possibly the most controversial case in living memory.
[1]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/katiejennings/2023/10/31/some-a...
(Although in this case the legality hasn’t been adjudicated because a settlement was reached).
If you create a platform and app market with strict rules, that’s not illegal. The logic here is that you’re new in the market and if the terms aren’t commensurate with market conditions, you will never grow. If you do grow, then the market has decided that the gains outweigh the limitations you imposed.
There comes a point where you have gained enough dominance where your actions can be scrutinized. But in general as long as you don’t actively tighten the reigns, you’re in the clear. So if you had strict rules when you started and despite those strict rules you grew and since then you haven’t made the rules stricter, then you’re in the clear because you haven’t abused your market dominance.
The flip side of this coin is that if you created a platform and app market that didn’t have strict rules and was very open, but once you’ve gained market dominance you put up hurdles or you impose stricter rules, then there could be a problem because now it can be explained as you abusing your market dominance after everyone got in.
Personally I don’t think the so called “scare screens” fall under dominance abuse because they serve a legitimate purpose. If anything I think they’re not enough.
Nokia’s Threat Intelligence Report in 2021[0] reported that Android makes up more than half of all the infected systems in the recent 2023 report this had dipped to 49%[1]. But as they’ve done in prior reports, this year they again highlight that most Android malware is a trojanized version of legitimate apps distributed via alternative means:
> Android based devices are not inherently insecure. However, most smartphone malware is distributed as trojanized applications and since Android users can load application from just about anywhere, it’s much easier to trick them into installing applications that are infected with malware. Android users can protect themselves by only installing applications from secure app stores like Google Play and installing a mobile anti-virus product on their device.
In any case, whether something is legal or illegal in this case depends on whether it was or wasn’t done while having market dominance.
0: https://pages.nokia.com/T006US-Threat-Intelligence-Report-20...
1: https://www.nokia.com/networks/security-portfolio/threat-int...
1. Corporations have been determined to be people.
And to the question why the owners should not be able to express themselves: They can express themselves individually all they want, but if they want to use a company to do it they should also be personally responsible for everything the company does. And since one of the primary reasons to have a company is to isolate the owners from being sued personally ... there's a bit of a problem here.
You’re focusing on the “group” aspect of this, but that’s irrelevant to the argument. A PR spokesperson has individual rights, even if they choose to use that voice to advance a company’s goals.
And yes, the individual risks acting in ways their company doesn’t like, but they can do things to lower that risk, such as asking other individuals within that corporation what their desired action is.
But it’s still individuals acting, so they’re afforded all of the protections the Constitution provides.
If you think that someone acting in the name of a company can act in his name there doesn't seem much to discuss.
You're presupposing your conclusion and seem completely closed to the idea that you may be wrong.
I'm not a lawyer, but the fact that a representative of a company can't manage the company's funds however he wants is:
* what I've always known
* obvious on the face of it
* apparently confirmed by quick searches of terms like misappropriation and embezzlement
You seem to be just trying to win a debate competition and I have zero interest in that; especially since there isn't someone around to judge it.
I did and I've gotten the nth confirmation that you're not really reading what I write, and maybe not really here for a discussion
I know you're not supposed to say that here, but at this point I can't imagine you're doing anything else than trolling.
(I support the right to express your opinions, at most)
I also think that at the base of most US problems there's the freedom to corrupt politicians ("lobbying"), so, yeah, I really don't care much how legal it is
Your beliefs are worthless to everyone else if you can't explain them, and no all you've done so far is declare what you believe to be correct, and have crumpled at the slightest sign of resistance. That demonstrates the weakness of your belief.
If you're here to win debates for the sake of it, you can have the last word.
I only mentioned those beliefs and I'm not interested in debating them in a hacker news thread, right now.
This is useful because if anyone else reads this, they will get a pretty standard idea of how people who think like you can’t really justify their beliefs when challenged.
I do appreciate it, but I doubt you do. Easier to dismiss me and ignore any dissent, than it is to consider that you might actually be the bad guy here.
I told you this approach weakens your advocacy. Too bad you can’t listen.
This branch of the thread was just about a mention of some ideas that I have no intention to discuss right now.
Not that you offered any support for your ideas, other than "I think that my constitution says so".
If you're for freedom of companies corrupting politicians and politicians lying to everyone, you're free to be, maybe you're on the side who benefits from it.
I was hoping to have closed the discussion about eight messages ago, I'm not really here for this.
It doesn't have to be that way if you can convince the shareholders differently. You are free to bring up a vote to Disney shareholders to change their mission into finding every mouse in the world and naming it Mickey.
By the way, there's a very widespread view that companies are legally required to maximize their shareholders' monetary profit.
Can you name many corporations that in the long term were shown to not having behaved so?
If we are making a wishlist; government bailouts to corporations should trigger a termination clause for the the whole c-suite.
There's no "iOS app distribution" market for Apple to act anti-competitively in.