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Comment by CharlesW | Hacker News Reader

It’s surprising that anyone would think EU politicians might punish Apple for deplatforming a single BitTorrent app. Surely those politicians aren’t dense enough to believe users are relying on their phones to distribute Linux ISOs.

iTorrent's ability to play while "sharing" was the bridge too far. There are plenty of players for personal media in the App Store (Plex, Jellyfin, etc.), but as a BitTorrent client it's clear that its primary purpose was to play media that was vanishingly unlikely to be the user's.

It also didn’t help that AltStore PAL regularly spotlighted these apps, basically taunting corpos and eurocrats alike. On the bright side, qBitControl won’t be affected, since it isn’t a BitTorrent client itself but merely a remote for qBittorrent.

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The fact that they retain the technical capability to deplatform apps outside their app store is a violation of the DMA.

It would be surprising if the EU they didn't hit Apple with billions in fines for the most obvious form of malicious non-compliance after going through all that effort of passing the regulations.

> The fact that they retain the technical capability to deplatform apps outside their app store is a violation of the DMA.

Not in general, and courts would have to decide whether it's a violation in this specific case. The DMA doesn't force Apple to platform apps used primarily for piracy, it just requires that they be able to justify restrictions and keep them as narrow as possible. De-platforming a specific app is about as narrow as it gets.

Also, it's arguable that the DSA (Digital Services Act), which is just as applicable, actually compels Apple to de-platform this app. The DMA is a competition law, and allowing an app whose primary purpose is distribution of infringing content undermines fair competition among legitimate content providers.

Yes in general. The whole entire premise of the DMA is that gatekeepers should have their power to meddle with competitors taken away.

Article 6(4).

> The gatekeeper shall allow and technically enable the installation and effective use of third-party software applications or software application stores using, or interoperating with, its operating system and allow those software applications or software application stores to be accessed by means other than the relevant core platform services of that gatekeeper.

By requiring notarization, Apple requires users and developers to use their core platform services in order to access 3rd party apps.

> it just requires that they be able to justify restrictions and keep them as narrow as possible

But they haven't provided a justification for this. The least you'd expect would be a "this app violates notarization guideline x.x.x". They might have to edit the CSS on their website a little (add the .lighter-override class) but after that they could just cite 5.2.3 [1].

[1] https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#leg...

To add:

> it's arguable that the DSA (Digital Services Act), which is just as applicable, actually compels Apple to de-platform this app

I'll assume this is completely bogus, unless you elaborate.

Also, the text of the DMA confirms that they can only restrict apps outside of the App Store if they endanger the integrity of the OS, not for any other reason. Not even for "enabling IP infringement" (which browsers would also be guilty of).

The EU does seem to take violations of the DMA seriously, and this is unambiguously a violation.

> I'll assume this is completely bogus, unless you elaborate.

IANAL, but here's the bit where I explained this: "…allowing an app whose primary purpose is distribution of infringing content undermines fair competition among legitimate content providers."

To elaborate on that a bit more: Apple is a DSA-designated VLOP. Articles 34–35 obligate them to respond to risks on its platform (like apps used primarily for piracy) with proportionate mitigation. That's why EU courts (if they're ever involved) will find that blocking iTorrent is unambiguously a lawful and proportionate response according to the DSA.

Not sure where you're getting that from. Firstly Apple App Store is a VLOP, not Apple as a whole. Apple shouldn't even be in the loop as a digital service to third party app stores but even if they are, it's not covered by the DSA as their notarization service doesn't constitute a "Very Large Online Platform".

Secondly, articles 34-35 say no such thing. Article 34 only calls out "the dissemination of illegal content through their services" as a systemic risk. A torrent client is not illegal content.

Article 35 lists "illegal hate speech" and "cyber violence" as pointed examples of illegal content.

> c) adapting content moderation processes, including the speed and quality of processing notices related to specific types of illegal content and, where appropriate, the expeditious removal of, or the disabling of access to, the content notified, in particular in respect of illegal hate speech or cyber violence, as well as adapting any relevant decision-making processes and dedicated resources for content moderation;

i use it to share pictures from my NAS to my phone. And play video from it. Also, in Belgium, it's completely legal to rip and share ( within family circle ) copyrighted content.

This is an unusual (and risky) choice for most people, since BitTorrent is designed for swarm distribution, and ISPs generally don't look kindly on subscribers seeding torrents on their networks. I think it's safe to say that 99.99% of people use options like DLNA/UPnP, Plex, Jellyfin, or simple SMB/NFS shares for personal media sharing.

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