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Based on South Korean parliament records, the amendment bans app store operators with dominant market positions from forcing payment systems on content provider

by jefftk 5y ago

Based on South Korean parliament records, the amendment bans app store operators with dominant market positions from forcing payment systems on content providers and "inappropriately" delaying the review of, or deleting, mobile contents from app markets. It also allows the South Korean government to require an app market operator to "prevent damage to users and protect the rights and interests of users", probe app market operators, and mediate disputes regarding payment, cancellations or refunds in the app market.

ClumsyPilot 5y ago
It's clear the days of this oligopoly operating unchallanged are numbered. I dont know a single person outside of the SV bubble who is buying 'mah free market!' argument so prevalent here.
- misnome 5y ago
  > I dont know a single person outside of the SV bubble who is buying 'mah free market!' argument so prevalent here. Most of the arguments I've seen here, that you are probably classifying under this aspersion, are probably some variant on: - This doesn't look illegal under current (US) laws - New laws to restrict this are hard to write constitutionally (in the US) - If this happens a lot of the good parts of the ecosystem get thrown out also (arguments through security, fraud) Whereas an awful lot of the other side looks like "This is unfair so must be illegal!" (30% arguments, very narrow definitions of the word "monopoly" that favour the arguer). Very few seem to actually argue that anything Apple/Google have done are illegal under current laws. I don't think the segment you are attacking for pure "It is free market therefore good" ideology exists. It'll be interesting to see what happens if/when other countries, who aren't tied by the same conditions, start restricting this stuff.
  - flavius29663 5y ago
    Everything was legal until it wasn't. It was the same for Standard oil before 1911: they said it's all legal to have such a monopoly on oil. For some people at the time, it was obvious this was an unfair advantage on the market, so they fought to make it illegal. It's the same now. Of course Google and Apple mostly respect the laws of the land, but if a large swath of the population/industry thinks they are unfair, their position will soon become illegal as well.
    - ericmay 5y ago
      The reality is that there's a vocal minority (looks around here) and the vast majority of people couldn't give a shit less. Not once in my life has my dad, my grandma, or some random friend I met up with at a bar gone "jeez, Apple and Google sure do have a monopoly on pricing in their respective app stores and this harms me as a consumer". Nobody cares. In fact, most people probably think everything is amazing how it is now and don't think there's a problem. Personally, I'm knowledgable enough and I think things are way better now than they might be in a future state where this is changed. I know exactly what is going to happen. They are going to be forced to allow competing app stores (in the case of Apple) and then everybody I know is going to have like 5 stores installed, garbage apps spying and harvesting personal info, and it's going to just be a shit storm of stupid knock-offs, crappy products, and outright theft. There's no way around it and if you don't understand that you're now going to have to fix your grandma's iPhone now because Facebook wasn't on the Apple App Store but was on the whatever App Store you're living in a fantasy bubble where people are even moderately technically literate. There's just a few disgruntled developers who don't like the rules so they complain loudly, and some billion dollar corporations who can make some money if they win legal cases. Small, but vocal players. Unfortunately that's how a democracy in a country as large as the United States works. Most people don't care about something so one group can just shout loudly and eventually get their way, even if it is bad for the country as a whole. Then they get entrenched and laws are nearly impossible to repeal now. Then we overcorrect and pass new laws, but then these laws have loopholes or carve out exceptions. /rant
      - flavius29663 5y ago
        You should read upon the woman who brought down Standard Oil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ida_Tarbell#Standard_Oil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ida_Tarbell#Standard_Oil It was basically a person that took on the largest monopoly in the world, and won. What we have today is a significantly larger momentum against tech monopolies. Look at some of the practices that brought the case forward: "An office boy working at the Standard Oil headquarters was given the job of destroying records which included evidence that railroads were giving the company advance information about refiner's shipments.[85] This allowed them to undercut the refiners" Does that sound familiar? Google knows everything that happens on your phone; and they can just undercut every other successful app if they wish so? Or how Amazon can simply analyze all the sales and create their own version of the successful products?
  - madeofpalk 5y ago
    Isn't that the point of laws and governments? That if enough people think something is bad or unfair, but is not currently illegal, then you introduce new laws to make it illegal?
  - nabla9 5y ago
    > - New laws to restrict this are hard to write constitutionally (in the US) This is obviously not true. The current Borkist interpretation of antitrust is barely 40 years old. The movement towards "New Brandeis" antitrust philosophy is just going back to old normal with adjustments to new environment.
  - int_19h 5y ago
    That it doesn't look illegal under current laws is not because the laws as written didn't anticipate it, but rather because the laws were reinterpreted in a way that is more convenient to monopolies: https://washingtonmonthly.com/2018/02/06/the-borking-of-america/ https://washingtonmonthly.com/2018/02/06/the-borking-of-amer... So how about we just get back to the original intent of the law, for starters?
- realmod 5y ago
  > It's clear the days of this oligopoly operating unchallanged are numbered. Funnily enough, South Korea is a country essentially full of monopolies almost as large as the state.
  - sooheon 5y ago
    It is a country built on state-sponsored oligopoly as competitive advantage.
    - mullingitover 5y ago
      I think ultimately this is why Apple and Google will get off with a slap on the wrist - like Korea, Japan, et al, we have our state industries that compete in the global economy. Apple and Google are our champion competitors, and while the US wants to appear principled, we also want to crush our global competitors. There is a snowflake's chance in hell that the US is going to cripple our champions in the name of principles, because it's not principles that are the concern, but the appearance of being principled. Why would we help the non-US businesses compete with the home team?
      - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
        "Why would we help the non-US businesses compete with the home team?" Because your home team is trashing your house, racketeering your businesses and pissing in your garbage bins. They harm US consumers first and foremost
        mullingitover 5y ago
        > They harm US consumers first and foremost Problem is, it's hard to find these consumers who are 'harmed' and clamoring for redress of their grievances. I'm one of them and I'm actually very happy with the value delivered per dollar in the existing mobile space. Other businesses harmed? Maybe, but if you think that Epic is going to drop their prices 30% in lockstep with a hypothetical elimination of app store fees, I have a bridge to sell you. This dream of a breakup of Google and Apple is not going to be the boon to consumers that some idealists are imagining.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  Nope, since it is South Korea, it is obvious Samsung is at play here.
  - tooltalk 5y ago
    Are we talking about the same company whose CEO was paroled recently after spending much of the year in jail in South Korea?
    - sangnoir 5y ago
      This is slap on the wrist considering the repeated crimes (bribery, corruption) - courtesy to his position in a vitally important chaebol. Having a CEO take a 1-year hiatus while serving a prison sentence wouldn't fly at any publicly listed American company, very few private companies with independent boards would countenance that either.
    - pjmlp 5y ago
      Yep the same.
- vineyardmike 5y ago
  > I dont know a single person outside of the SV bubble who is buying 'mah free market!' argument so prevalent here. No one i know outside of SV bubble has even thought about this issue at all. Most immediately say "isn't it good that apple protects people?" and gives it no more thought. As much as businesses would love it, i think attacking apple is still a hard political sell.

by jefftk 5y ago

ClumsyPilot 5y ago

It's clear the days of this oligopoly operating unchallanged are numbered. I dont know a single person outside of the SV bubble who is buying 'mah free market!' argument so prevalent here.

misnome 5y ago
> I dont know a single person outside of the SV bubble who is buying 'mah free market!' argument so prevalent here. Most of the arguments I've seen here, that you are probably classifying under this aspersion, are probably some variant on: - This doesn't look illegal under current (US) laws - New laws to restrict this are hard to write constitutionally (in the US) - If this happens a lot of the good parts of the ecosystem get thrown out also (arguments through security, fraud) Whereas an awful lot of the other side looks like "This is unfair so must be illegal!" (30% arguments, very narrow definitions of the word "monopoly" that favour the arguer). Very few seem to actually argue that anything Apple/Google have done are illegal under current laws. I don't think the segment you are attacking for pure "It is free market therefore good" ideology exists. It'll be interesting to see what happens if/when other countries, who aren't tied by the same conditions, start restricting this stuff.
- flavius29663 5y ago
  Everything was legal until it wasn't. It was the same for Standard oil before 1911: they said it's all legal to have such a monopoly on oil. For some people at the time, it was obvious this was an unfair advantage on the market, so they fought to make it illegal. It's the same now. Of course Google and Apple mostly respect the laws of the land, but if a large swath of the population/industry thinks they are unfair, their position will soon become illegal as well.
  - ericmay 5y ago
    The reality is that there's a vocal minority (looks around here) and the vast majority of people couldn't give a shit less. Not once in my life has my dad, my grandma, or some random friend I met up with at a bar gone "jeez, Apple and Google sure do have a monopoly on pricing in their respective app stores and this harms me as a consumer". Nobody cares. In fact, most people probably think everything is amazing how it is now and don't think there's a problem. Personally, I'm knowledgable enough and I think things are way better now than they might be in a future state where this is changed. I know exactly what is going to happen. They are going to be forced to allow competing app stores (in the case of Apple) and then everybody I know is going to have like 5 stores installed, garbage apps spying and harvesting personal info, and it's going to just be a shit storm of stupid knock-offs, crappy products, and outright theft. There's no way around it and if you don't understand that you're now going to have to fix your grandma's iPhone now because Facebook wasn't on the Apple App Store but was on the whatever App Store you're living in a fantasy bubble where people are even moderately technically literate. There's just a few disgruntled developers who don't like the rules so they complain loudly, and some billion dollar corporations who can make some money if they win legal cases. Small, but vocal players. Unfortunately that's how a democracy in a country as large as the United States works. Most people don't care about something so one group can just shout loudly and eventually get their way, even if it is bad for the country as a whole. Then they get entrenched and laws are nearly impossible to repeal now. Then we overcorrect and pass new laws, but then these laws have loopholes or carve out exceptions. /rant
    - flavius29663 5y ago
      You should read upon the woman who brought down Standard Oil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ida_Tarbell#Standard_Oil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ida_Tarbell#Standard_Oil It was basically a person that took on the largest monopoly in the world, and won. What we have today is a significantly larger momentum against tech monopolies. Look at some of the practices that brought the case forward: "An office boy working at the Standard Oil headquarters was given the job of destroying records which included evidence that railroads were giving the company advance information about refiner's shipments.[85] This allowed them to undercut the refiners" Does that sound familiar? Google knows everything that happens on your phone; and they can just undercut every other successful app if they wish so? Or how Amazon can simply analyze all the sales and create their own version of the successful products?
- madeofpalk 5y ago
  Isn't that the point of laws and governments? That if enough people think something is bad or unfair, but is not currently illegal, then you introduce new laws to make it illegal?
- nabla9 5y ago
  > - New laws to restrict this are hard to write constitutionally (in the US) This is obviously not true. The current Borkist interpretation of antitrust is barely 40 years old. The movement towards "New Brandeis" antitrust philosophy is just going back to old normal with adjustments to new environment.
- int_19h 5y ago
  That it doesn't look illegal under current laws is not because the laws as written didn't anticipate it, but rather because the laws were reinterpreted in a way that is more convenient to monopolies: https://washingtonmonthly.com/2018/02/06/the-borking-of-america/ https://washingtonmonthly.com/2018/02/06/the-borking-of-amer... So how about we just get back to the original intent of the law, for starters?
realmod 5y ago
> It's clear the days of this oligopoly operating unchallanged are numbered. Funnily enough, South Korea is a country essentially full of monopolies almost as large as the state.
- sooheon 5y ago
  It is a country built on state-sponsored oligopoly as competitive advantage.
  - mullingitover 5y ago
    I think ultimately this is why Apple and Google will get off with a slap on the wrist - like Korea, Japan, et al, we have our state industries that compete in the global economy. Apple and Google are our champion competitors, and while the US wants to appear principled, we also want to crush our global competitors. There is a snowflake's chance in hell that the US is going to cripple our champions in the name of principles, because it's not principles that are the concern, but the appearance of being principled. Why would we help the non-US businesses compete with the home team?
    - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
      "Why would we help the non-US businesses compete with the home team?" Because your home team is trashing your house, racketeering your businesses and pissing in your garbage bins. They harm US consumers first and foremost
      - mullingitover 5y ago
        > They harm US consumers first and foremost Problem is, it's hard to find these consumers who are 'harmed' and clamoring for redress of their grievances. I'm one of them and I'm actually very happy with the value delivered per dollar in the existing mobile space. Other businesses harmed? Maybe, but if you think that Epic is going to drop their prices 30% in lockstep with a hypothetical elimination of app store fees, I have a bridge to sell you. This dream of a breakup of Google and Apple is not going to be the boon to consumers that some idealists are imagining.
pjmlp 5y ago
Nope, since it is South Korea, it is obvious Samsung is at play here.
- tooltalk 5y ago
  Are we talking about the same company whose CEO was paroled recently after spending much of the year in jail in South Korea?
  - sangnoir 5y ago
    This is slap on the wrist considering the repeated crimes (bribery, corruption) - courtesy to his position in a vitally important chaebol. Having a CEO take a 1-year hiatus while serving a prison sentence wouldn't fly at any publicly listed American company, very few private companies with independent boards would countenance that either.
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    Yep the same.
vineyardmike 5y ago
> I dont know a single person outside of the SV bubble who is buying 'mah free market!' argument so prevalent here. No one i know outside of SV bubble has even thought about this issue at all. Most immediately say "isn't it good that apple protects people?" and gives it no more thought. As much as businesses would love it, i think attacking apple is still a hard political sell.