[HN Gopher] Epic Games Began Planning 'Project Liberty' Lawsuit ...
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Epic Games Began Planning 'Project Liberty' Lawsuit Against Apple
Two Years Ago
Author : beepboop77
Score : 24 points
Date : 2021-04-08 17:59 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.macrumors.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.macrumors.com)
| zamalek wrote:
| If this is true then Epic should definitely be punished. The
| mechanism by which this has been brought to widespread scrutiny
| doesn't indemnify Apple, either.
|
| The idea that Apple should have app store monopolization _written
| into law_ (their words) because of the tactics Epic used is
| ridiculous.
| curryst wrote:
| I don't really see why. Epic has to show harm to have standing
| for a lawsuit, so there was always going to be some planning in
| terms of "when do we do this so Apple shuts it down so we can
| sue".
|
| Apple is also very good at PR. I don't think it's particularly
| malicious to try to get out ahead of Apple's PR department. The
| "Small Business Program" was a brilliant bit of PR on Apple's
| part, that does indeed try to undermine Epic's case from a
| public perception standpoint.
|
| I'm not enthused that this is how things get done, but I take
| Epic's actions as a symptom of a flawed system rather than some
| kind of character flaw in the company.
| zamalek wrote:
| > Epic has to show harm
|
| The government is the plantiff in an antitrust case.
| sombremesa wrote:
| A monopoly is not objectively a bad thing, just like debt is
| not objectively a bad thing. Else we should abolish the patent
| office.
| zamalek wrote:
| Patents have an expiry date because the patent office agrees
| that monopolies are bad. The purpose of a patent is to allow
| an inventor to establish their market, not to establish a
| monopoly.
| john_minsk wrote:
| What is the chance that Apple kept their 30% policy unchanged
| anticipating that one day they need to make this argument in
| court. This company doesn't stop to impress me.
| sjtindell wrote:
| I strongly dislike this argument against modern tech companies
| that they are anticompetitive for not supporting other
| marketplaces. It feels to me like suing a Chinese restaurant and
| saying they don't offer other menus. It's tough because Google
| and others are huge, they buy out competitors, it's not anything
| like the restaurant market. But this particular argument is so
| weak imo.
| cforrester wrote:
| > It's tough because Google and others are huge, they buy out
| competitors, it's not anything like the restaurant market.
|
| Not just that, they go to great effort to lock you into their
| ecosystem so that the difficulty of changing becomes a big part
| of the calculation.
|
| If I had to make a comparison, instead of a restaurant, I'd
| suggest a company town. When you buy a Company X phone, you're
| moving to Xville, where everything is sold with predatory
| prices and low variety by the company store.
| SllX wrote:
| Their lock-in amounts to "be more appealing in some ways".
|
| Is there anything you couldn't replace switching from your
| platform of choice to a different one? I have a lot of 3rd
| party software it would be difficult to replace and it would
| be a quality of life hit, but software is software, I could
| replace what they do with something else if I was forced to.
| cforrester wrote:
| You said it yourself, switching would be a complication,
| and manufacturers are happy to maximize that complication
| as much as possible. I consider it unethical to impose
| artificial hurdles to switching upon consumers, especially
| when they most likely aren't familiar with vendor lock-in.
|
| iMessage is a good example for me. It replaces a federated,
| universally-compatible service with a centralized service
| that works only on Apple devices. The upgraded features are
| nice enough to be alluring, and now a significant portion
| of American smartphone users feel compelled to remain with
| Apple so that they don't experience any difficulties
| communicating. This is a sticking point for me in
| particular; I used to be a heavy user of multi-protocol
| messengers like Trillian, during the time when multiple
| providers offered mutually incompatible messaging services.
| SllX wrote:
| > You said it yourself, switching would be a
| complication, and manufacturers are happy to maximize
| that complication as much as possible.
|
| Actually I said it would be a quality of life hit. I'm
| convinced that what I use are already the best choices,
| so switching to something else would feel like a quality
| of life hit. Bet you I'm not the only one that uses
| something just because I like it the most.
|
| It would also be a complication, but for me, personally?
| Somewhere between a day and a weekend to bootstrap and I
| would replace things as I go. Actually I've done this at
| a few points in my life.
|
| I feel your pain on the multi-protocol front. I used to
| be a heavy user of Adium, but at some point that wasn't
| sustainable. Sticking mostly with iMessage does feel like
| a quality of life downgrade in many ways, but it's also
| an upgrade in a few other ways, so call it it a wash?
| Sidegrade maybe?
| hypertele-Xii wrote:
| Usually vendor lock-in actually amounts to "smart and well
| paid people think of clever, evil, but technically legal
| ways to make it as difficult as possible to leave the
| ecosystem".
| SllX wrote:
| Yes, but is it actually all that difficult to switch
| between two vendors? Mac and Windows? Windows and Linux?
| Android and iPhone?
|
| It's some work, it isn't that much work. You would be
| surprised at all the things people don't care if they
| lose.
| pornel wrote:
| The analogy doesn't work: there's a low barrier to entry for
| restaurants, and there are many to choose from.
|
| In mobile phones it's basically iOS-Android duopoly. The
| barrier to entry was too high even for Microsoft. To compete
| you need to write a compelling OS, attract millions of app
| developers, and survive against competitors who subsidize their
| OS development with their bigger businesses.
|
| So it's more like complaining that "Panda Corp." and "Chopstick
| Inc." control the entire food supply chain, block sales of food
| for dishes they don't like, and force all restaurants to pay
| them 15%-30% of all their revenue.
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