Banned for Life – The hidden danger when developing for Android | Hacker News Reader

Banned for Life – The hidden danger when developing for Android

medium.com

19 pointshkphooey13 comments

OMG, was this posted for comic relief?

"I decided on “Vice TV” It was simple informative and it fit on screen just right. I didn’t think they would mind..."

I called _my_ new app "CBS TV". What it does is pull stuff from cbs.com and puts it in a browser wrapper. CBS shouldn't have a problem with that, right?

"It’s free advertising and I was in no way profiting from using this name."

Ah, the ol' "we won't pay you for your work, but it will be great exposure" line. Plus, the author did plan to profit from it, that profit just hadn't emerged yet: "I was also secretly hoping I would get a contract job out of this or someone might say, 'Hey, add my blog and Facebook pages and I’ll buy the app from you.'"

"Maybe I’m naive"

That might be a huge understatement. But I'm not buying the naivety routine. The content that belongs to others is packaged up into an app that uses the content owner's name. They're spammy apps at that, you know, the kind that wrap an RSS feed into an app and then 200 different variations are posted to the app store. You get warned, but blow it off. Google told the author that there was a problem, but the author thought the rules didn't apply to him.

Or perhaps naivety is is the reason. In that case, the experiment produces useful data: the author is not cut out for running a business and should stick to coding for someone else. Before you hit that downvote button, dear reader, consider the lack of knowledge of copyright, trademark, and content ownership. Note the lack of follow-up when a business partner says that there is a problem that needs resolution. And finally, realize the profound lack of acceptance of any responsibility in all of this. Those are not the characteristics of a person who will build a successful business.

I got the impression the apps were free and he was using them as a test bed. Declaring him not cut out for business is as harsh as banning him for life. Besides, many businesses have done much worse things and made much more money.

An alternate take:

You used other people's content without their permission, ignored multiple warnings that specifically told you that your account would be suspended if you continued, and now you're surprised that Google doesn't want you back.

Did you ever even consider asking any of the content owners for permission here? Did you ask Google for clarification after the first application was suspended? No, you pretended you were doing the content owners a "favor" (valued at tens of thousands of dollars?!!) by reusing their content, and you assumed the suspensions were routine.

This is exactly the kind of thoughtless behavior that I can fully understand Google having no interest in enabling.

So ban him for life? I didn't even think of youtube as a content owner situation, and what kind of content owner doesn't want their content spread. Maybe a litigious one?

Perhaps the content owner is making ad revenue having their content on Youtube, and won't get that revenue from the mobile app. Or perhaps they plan to launch a mobile app of their own at a later date, or license the content to someone who might.

Point is, you can't go assuming that just because something's available on the Internet, you're free to make use of it however you please without so much as asking. That's just plain rude.

It appears you forgot to read the whole article. He claims to have asked Google for clarification after the first application was suspended:

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.

But you can't resolve a content licensing problem just by changing some text or graphics around -- that's a fundamental misunderstanding of the problem! There is no meaningful answer to the question as stated in that quote.

He asked "I need to change to be compliant with the rules" - the answer is, if you are correct, "Get your own content, or properly license this content". An easy answer really.

A serious question. How different is this from Firefox or Chrome app ? They allow you to watch Youtube videos. Should the firefox and Chrome also get the permission from every content owner out there ?

Were you ever able to get in touch with an actual human? I feel that since you uploaded 10 apps for the same purpose, you should have gotten only one warning and all the apps taken down, not a warning per app.

Google Play Store needs a "sandbox" area for people who are new to the app store, which can be promoted if enough users rate the app positive, or if the developer has good standing.

A friend of mine in the UK just got a violation email from google too, in the ad realm. Same ambiguity, lack of description, ad identifier, ANYTHING that could say "why" the violation even happened in the first place.

Google's contact details? Post, mail. "POST?! Did we go back in time or something?!" was his response.

Is this the future? Where Google, Amazon, Square (payments processor), et al. provide no personal support, no way to reasonably and honestly correct our own behavior?

Looks like Google can dish out lifetime App Store bans without any recourse or transparency, and cancel your other services like Google Wallet and even Google Music.

>Who am I?

I’m an indie software developer living in San Francisco. I have a wife and two kids. I have had a long software career since 1990 creating successful apps for MacOS / OS X.

...

TL;DR:

Tried to become a professional Android developer. Didn’t realize posting some apps for beta testing would result in being banned for life by Google before even having a chance to get started. I assumed a human would be involved in any banning process and they would clearly see that I was not intending to fool anyone and that my apps were harmless. Consider this before investing time and money into developing for Android. If one of their algorithms thinks you’re a bad guy, you’re banned for life.

So the author won't just create a new google account and start over because google will find out since it knows his credit card numbers, location, IP addresses, and more.

Still, I wonder how the author can attribute such intelligent surveillance to a company who fails to classify him correctly and bans him for such innocuous apps?

If they were really de-duping users by location data, and IP address I'd expect more complaints from false positives like the author.

Edit: Why don't you give it a try anyway?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com