Apple bans App Store’s 3rd-most prolific developer | Hacker News Reader

Apple bans App Store’s 3rd-most prolific developer

mobilecrunch.com

118 pointszaveri67 comments

I am really happy that Apple did this. There are multiple developers who are trying to do exactly what Khalid is doing with copyright infringement and taking advantage of dumb/stupid people (surprisingly some of his apps were in top 100 with 5 copied pictures @ $4.99).

This will definitely give a sigh of relief to legitimate developers.

Hell yes! My favorite example: iCounterstrike was a promotional image of the game with a few sound files ripped straight from an install of the game placed in a picker control.

Wow. I've never use the app store as I have a G1, but that's amazing that such an app ever made it through the approval process.

If you don't know what Counterstrike is, that app is structurally identical to any Fart app, just with SWAT team noises.

The reviewers are clearly not of our world -- they're probably the same people who were reviewing audio + video for the store before apps came along.

Yeah, def not familiar with what "iCounterstrike" is, but I do know what real Counter Strike is and it's amazing to me that apple would approve something so that so blatantly capitalizes on another, well-known commercial product's name.

Anyway the guy fooled Apple for 9 months with 900 apps.

hmm...

Seriously. Any guesses at the take? Assuming, of course that Apple doesn't withhold earnings of banned apps.

Clearly, Apple approved those apsp because (though useless) nothing was outwardly wrong with them. And clearly they revoked because of a pattern of brazen violation of the IP rules of the app store agreement.

Saying Apple was wrong in this is to suggest they must personally validate the ownership of all intellectual property of every app before approval.

And that's just absurd.

Maybe Apple shouldn't revoke apps for copyright infringement, nor should they personally validate the copyright status of all apps they post. After all, we already have a legal system to use for enforcing copyright, and in the US, it currently includes a well-defined process for handling accusations of copyright infringement (even though it is badly biased against the accused infringer), with infringement takedown notice and counternotice provisions. Apple could just use the DMCA safe harbor and remove apps when it receives accusations of infringement.

Exactly. This is why it is a bad idea to become gatekeeper to a platform, you end up being judge, jury and executioner.

It also raises the expectations of what you are liable for, after all if you've approved something you associate yourself with it. An open platform would never have those issues.

That's the problem! With an open platform, the copyright holder could only come after the developer. All of a sudden, Apple is liable for 100% of the content!

I would never want to be the gatekeeper to anything.

I would say that the Android Market is a much more open distribution channel than the App Store but still there are mechanisms built into the Android Market to counter illegal or harmful apps such as users being able to flag an application they consider to be one

The difference is that in a more open scenario it's the community that does the majority of filtering and not a corporation or a group of corporations. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not but still an interesting contrast.

Sure, but if they do that, who are they doing a favor? It's certainly not their customers.

I'm kind of surprised that they let the "App Store spammer" get away with it for so long. I mean, they could have righteously stopped him at 100 if you ask me.

I don't think they should be deciding what does and doesn't get installed on iPhones at all, but in any case I don't think they should be doing it on the basis of third parties' rights that may or may not have been infringed and who may or may not be unhappy about it.

Here are the parties they would be doing a favor:

* Themselves: they gain no benefit from putting effort into enforcing copyright law beyond what the law demands, and when they make a mistake, they may be setting themselves up for liability from whichever side loses out from their mistake.

* iPhone users, who would benefit from access to a wider variety of apps.

* Non-infringing app authors, who would face a smaller chance of erroneous rejection because Apple wasn't sufficiently convinced of the validity of their copyright licensing arrangements.

* Infringing app authors, obviously, who would have a much easier time publishing their apps.

What makes this so much more complicated is the fact that the App Store is the only (legit) way to get apps on your device.

If there had been other ways to promote and sell apps besides the App Store, then it would have been wrong of Apple to cancel their developer license.

Then they could just have banned them from the App Store — for spamming it. Clearly, they are just spamming the App Store with 900+ apps that does basically nothing in the hopes of tricking a few people to buy it (there's no money back guarantee).

That's a model I'd love to see: the App Store reduced to a store with "safeware" apps approved by Apple.

But the way it is now, that joker certainly is spamming the App Store, his entire business is based on fooling people — he and his company should be banned from it. It is, however, too bad he can't continue to sell his spam apps on the web and promote them on his own.

In India, VSNL is the only legitimate way to get internet connectivity from overseas. Does that mean that VSNL has an obligation to filter your internet access to prevent copyright infringement?

Well, with a contrived example, you can prove anything. I wouldn't say Apple's App Store interferes with your right to free speech.

I could see Apple doing the Wrong Thing with this very easily, but in this case, I have to agree with him.

This developer was violating copyright for the purpose of selling useless junk to users. Unlike some high-profile rejections, it's very clear in the written agreement that violating copyright is not allowed. It also doesn't appear that there was anything accidental about these violations; the developer understood exactly what we was doing, and no reasonable person would have thought it to be legitimate.

Hey, Apple actually leveraged their "we run this market" position in a positive way. Props.

So can we get Google Voice now?

I'll play devil's advocate here, since (almost) everyone seems to be applauding Apple for this.

The issues, as I see them, are:

1) high volume of apps,

2) low quality / low utility apps,

3) copyright infringement

A lot of the cheering seems to be related to 1) and 2) - getting an "app spammer" out of the app store, improving the user experience, etc. IMO, these are precisely the wrong reasons to cheer. They are perfect examples of the problems with the app store from a developer's perspective - arbitrary judgement calls which often end up being inconsistently applied. Apps do get rejected all the time for having "limited functionality" - these two concerns should be addressed during the approval process, and, if necessary, by removing specific apps, NOT by outright banning a developer AFTER the apps are approved (thus signaling to the developer that Apple is OK with them). If there are "too many" apps, throw in a per-app listing fee after a certain number of apps. If the app is low quality, don't approve it. These are messy, hard to define rules otherwise.

intellectual property complaints concerning over 100 of your Applications - Say a developer has 8 apps in the app store, one of the eight apps uses unlicensed images, and Apple bans the developer instead of removing the one app. I suspect the reaction here would be a bit different.

The ONLY acceptable reason in this case is repeated copyright infringement - easy to define, easy to detect, and simple for the developer to avoid in the first place. And yes, that is the reason Apple is giving - but it doesn't seem to be the reason most celebrated by the comments here, it's mostly that something bad happened to someone we don't like.

And even then, Apple should have nothing to do with it, that's between the copyright holder and the infringer.

It seems like he was banned primarily because of repeated third party intellectual property violations:

Apple has informed you of numerous third party intellectual property complaints concerning over 100 of your Applications and reminded you of your obligations to obtain the necessary rights prior to submission of your Applications. Nevertheless, we continue to receive the same or similar types of complaints regarding your Applications despite our repeated notices to you.

Where does that quote come from? Did Khalid post them?

At the end of the article, before the comments, there are two emails. One from Apple to Khalid, and the other from Khalid's company to anyone who applies to be a developer there. I'm assuming that TC is in contact with Khalid, since they have a quote from a phone conversation with him. So him forwarding the email to them isn't surprising.

Doesn't explain how they obtained the puzzling mail that was sent in response to Apple, though.

The article explains that the response is an automatic reply for any mail sent to the e-mail address that the authors found for Khalid's company. The response was not necessarily sent to Apple; presumably Khalid uses a different contact address for his App Store work.

He's submitted 900 applications and he's only the third most prolific developer? Who are 1 and 2?

From the article it seems like Brighthouse Labs is one of those top 2. I didn't finish reading the article so it's possible the other might also be mentioned.

2000 apps from a single developer is insane. So what is it? 4% of the total appstore? (assuming appstore has 50k apps).

We have a strict work schedule of 12 hours a day 6 days a week.

Maybe that explains how he's able to test all of his 5 apps that are made everyday in his company.

It's about time. There are good developers that are being pushed off the boards by crap like this. If your app isn't in the top 20 or top 50 than chances are it won't get bought by enough people. This guy has 900 apps of absolute crap. And some of them manage to clog up the leaderboards.

If you base your entire business model on another company than abide by their fucking rules. So Apple pulled your apps because you weren't playing their game?! Too bad, you know who else does this. Google Adsense and Secondlife. I also don't see anyone sympathizing for the people who get booted from Adsense when they try to game it.

You are more than welcome to create your own appstore, put in the infrastructure and people to support. Oh and develop a delivery method for it.

The app store is not a free market, regardless of what developers would like to imagine.

Most informed people on the issue aren't arguing that Apple should treat the App Store like it's a free market. I quite agree - it's not, and Apple shouldn't have to make it so. What people have a problem with is the inconsistency. Apple has intentionally made the App Store a major business platform, and start-up developers invest a great deal of time working on those Apps. When Apple begins to harm developer interests inconsistently and only in accordance with their own interests (regardless of obvious obligations), then people have every right to complain.

Apple creates App store. Developers apply and agree to Apple's terms. They get accepted.

Apple does something 100% within their power and terms of use.

People cry "unfair".

Nothing to see here, move along.

This is also amusing:

We develop iPhone applications exclusively using Objective-C and the Mac. We have a strict work schedule of 12 hours a day 6 days a week.

I thought Objective-C developers were relatively hard to find. Who would work 12 hours a day 6 days a week with such specialized (and presumably in-demand) knowledge?

There are a lot people in India who can programm and you do not need a lot of experience to produce this kind of crap, so you should find some programmers very quickly.

If you know some C and what OO code looks like, you shouldn't have much difficulty getting started with Objective C. And if you don't care about the quality of your code, you can ignore all the details, such as the iPhone not having GC support.

Amusing? some sleazeball getting rich running a white collar sweatshop makes me feel a lot of things, but amusement wasn't one of them.

As just as this is, I can't help but wonder at the timing. It looks like an attempt to distract people from the GV affair. If that's the case, it's just another, albeit subtler, abuse of the same power.

Oh, I so have seen this Khalid type before. They are called "spammers".

The guy has assembled a team of the blackhat-coder type and spammed the AppStore successfully with random crap for months, looking to cash in on the 6-to-9 percent social engineering toll (anything works for this percentage of people if you have a big enough audience). Props to him for acting quickly.

Props to Apple for recognizing spam. Shame on Apple for not labeling this type of app-spamming as spam. It's crawling up the Top-Paid list, it's all over the AppStore's search results, and will bring the AppStore down if it continues (you can't quite install an anti-app-spam filter on your iPhone/iTunes).

Next on the AppStore: Apps that take your C.V. and hand it out to money-laundering types, with catchy descriptions like "find your place within an international team of highly-paid professionals!" and "99% employment success rate!", etc.

Creeping jumping limping Jeesus...

I'm surprised such basic errors in math made it past any editors.

Khalid Shaikh ... [has] published 943 applications ... . That’s roughly 5 apps a day, every day, for 250 days.

(5 apps per day) * (250 days) = 1,250 apps.

943 applications is roughly 4 apps a day, every day, for 250 days. Or 5 apps a day, every day, for 190 days.

They were sending a copyrighted PDF to their job candidates. O_o

I want to review some "offline maps" apps. There are 2 nice apps that let's you download maps from OpenStreetMaps...

If you search for "offline maps" here:

http://appshopper.com/search/?cat=&set=&search=offli...

You get one offMaps, and the developer of the second result also has another nice app (oMaps).

But there is also a guy that has spammed the app store with hundreds of "offline maps" apps, one for each major city in the world, using the same OpenStreetMaps source. I think that he does that with an automated script, and he is not going to stop until he has an app for every city or village in the world.

Can they force him to pay refunds? I suppose customers who bought his (cr)apps would need to delete them because they contained unlicensed content. (A bit like the Kindle/1984 issue only I think Apple has no technical possibility to kill apps that have already been bought). Anyway, everyone should be entitled to a refund.

The process and the outcome (gaming the system) reminds me a great deal of the current state of the patent system.

In both cases, I think that the original reason for the process has been lost in the actual implementation, and there is a great risk of losing true opportunities for innovation.

Apple could make searching the store return the best match "per company". Doesn't help Apple with the review process, but it might be slightly harder for somebody to hurt the user experience...would have to incorporate dozens of companies rather than just submitting 900 apps.

from the comments: http://www.perfectacumen.com/welcome/

"prolific" is an ambiguous term. bad headline.

It boggles me as to why a programmer would willingly submit to a fascist scheme like app store.

I wonder if it is something in human nature, where the presence of a big brother makes you feel secure.

It might have something to do with the fact that the app store provides a market where people pay money for software.

There are others, freer markets, where you don't have to submit to a faceless master that uses his definition of hygiene and beauty to control what can and cannot be done.

Heck, you could even, I don't know, sell your software on the internet, by creating a page for it.

Seriously, I'm a libertarian, and apple's policies, specially in this area, bugs the hell out of me.

Eh. Nobody is forcing you to put up with the iPhone, the fact remains that iPhone has created an experience that is compelling for customers; and that for all it's shortcomings is better than most of the competition at getting end users to part with money for software.

That's pretty bullshit, I don't care if the guy's apps were questionable, don't approve them. Killing an entire business in 1 day, is pretty fucked up.

If your "business" is dependent on repackaging otherwise free content — that you may not have the rights to — then, is it really a surprise that it gets shut down?

then its up to apple not to approve the stuff during the approval process. They pretty much used a nuclear option, without trying something less lethal.

My guess is that the App Store reviewers don't look at where the content is from, and instead look at what the content actually is. In this case, the content was OK. The content source was questionable.

The reviewers at Apple decided to OK the apps. And they then received enough reports that it was pulled. If the reviewers didn't approve the apps initially, we would be seeing a different story: "Apple rejects harmless application from developer".

The App Store has problems. But this decision fixed one small problem that existed, not created another problem.

//Edit: And from the article, Apple did try less lethal options. It sounds like they contacted Khalid and told him their concerns. And he chose to ignore Apple.

If your "business" is dependent on publishing an application on Apple's App Store then, is it really a surprise that it gets shut down? :)

It's tongue-in-cheek, but it's true: this isn't a free marketplace, it's Apple's playground, and only the business models and application domains that Apple approves of will be permitted. I don't like this guy any more than anyone else here, but a single decision by Apple effectively killed that aspect of his business.

Similarly, if you were to build a business around, say, a Google Voice application for the iPhone, you'd be in the same situation.

The implication that it's somehow wrong to base a business on the App Store is goofy. It's not much different from basing one on a single OS or a mobile platform or even a particular line of automobile or type of entertainment.

It's not a requirement that Apple (or any other company) protect your business model at the expense of their own.

True. But you could at least expect:

- consistency

- open rules

- an appeal process

The way it is it is more like a gamble.

I agree to a point, but I don't think this is much different than developing accessories for someone else's product(s) that need to be approved by the owner of the target product. (Example: Official iPod accessories.) Those companies seem to get on just fine risking some money in R&D while trying to get official approval for an item. You can bet they don't just develop in a vacuum, either, but that's what a lot of the very loudly complaining app store devs seem to be doing.

It doesn't have to be such a huge gamble developing for the iPhone. There are Apple representatives that developers can talk to, meet in person at events like WWDC, and even send development builds to. They give feedback and can warn of potential issues with approval, etc. These resources are there, but somewhat scarce. Apple obviously cannot guarantee everyone who pays their $99 access to significant face time with an insider without the dev putting in some effort. As a developer who's aiming to be serious about this, you have to be proactive in elbowing your way into the system - but once you're in, the "risk" is greatly reduced. The big iPhone and OSX studios all know this and work behind the scenes within the system to the benefit of both parties (usually).

When you build accessories for the ipod, you talk with apple before you go and make it to see if they would be fine with it.

That's exactly my point. You can do that with apps, too.

They are not very inconsistent with rules. I have 24 apps on the appstore and the ones that were rejected and later accepted were consistent with the policies aggregated here: http://appreview.tumblr.com/

I am upset because apple rejected google voice but so far I haven't seen anything which was rejected and was not on the list in the link.

Moreover, apple does have an appeal process. Once the app gets rejected they ask you to make changes, and resubmit the app.

There are definitely things that apple can do to improve the process for example, they should definitely get rid of changing the availability date with updates because a lot of developers just keep on posting updates with no real updates to be on the new release list. Check McPhun for example and they are actually able to keep themselves in top 10 for the past 6 months just because they have an update every week. But other than these minor issues which I am pretty sure apple will solve, there are a lot of good things going with it, which people tend to ignore.

They are not very inconsistent with rules

I disagree. The rules might be consistent, but Apple certainly doesn't apply them consistently. The classic example is a simple bugfix update, which adds no new functionality, being rejected for something that is already in the approved version of the app. (happened to me, happened to Nine Inch Nails).

I completely disagreed with you, but that didn't mean I voted you down...

What's going on here, people? Can we protect a variety of differing opinions on things, or are we going to be passive-aggressive about people who don't share our worldview?

Well, I'm Romanian. Go figure.

The main problem is that Apple didn't know the submitted apps violated copyright at the time they were submitted. (And how could they, until the owners started filing complaints?)

While there are plenty of examples of inconsistencies in App Store policy, this is not one of them. The article is wrong in this respect.

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