5 ms·

Have your lawyer write a letter. As in, a real legal demand with a complaint attached that is addressed to their counsel and includes estimates of monetary dam

by rsync 5y ago

Have your lawyer write a letter. As in, a real legal demand with a complaint attached that is addressed to their counsel and includes estimates of monetary damages and alludes (not threatens) to the specific jurisdiction and court it would be submitted to for adjudication. Send copies of this letter, by registered/certified mail, to several contacts. They will have to respond to this and these responses will be expensive. If you are in the right - even marginally so - your account will get fixed because it will be much too expensive to continue to ignore you. Filling in web forms and emailing form addresses costs google nothing. It makes perfect sense that these actions (appear) to have identical results as doing nothing.

paxys 5y ago
You can send Google a hundred "legal demands" (whatever that means), but they have no reason or obligation to reply to any of them. You can sue them over it, but a company of that scale handles literally hundreds of lawsuits a day. Almost all of them are frivolous, and will be dismissed.
andrew_ 5y ago
This is the correct answer to the situation.
- pdonis 5y ago
  It might seem like a "correct" answer, but it's not, because it won't accomplish anything. Google has orders of magnitude more money and resources to fight a lawsuit than any individual plaintiff does. This particular plaintiff is not the first, or even the thousandth, to have this problem and find that it's not fixable. The only really correct answer to the root problem here is for developers to stop using Google Play as a distribution channel. There is more than enough data out there by now to make it crystal clear that everyone who does that is doing so at the mercy of Google's whim. No sane person should be trying to build an actual business that will provide income they and their families depend on on such a shaky foundation.
  - TomSwirly 5y ago
    > The only really correct answer to the root problem here is for developers to stop using Google Play as a distribution channel. But Google has deliberately made it essentially impossible to do this. 1. The user needs to discover that other app ecosystems even exist. 2. They will then need to jailbreak their phone. 3. This voids their warranty. That eliminates 99+% of your customer base off the top. And of course Google could and likely would refuse advertisements for these alternative app ecosystems.
    - pdonis 5y ago
      > Google has deliberately made it essentially impossible to do this. No, users have made it essentially impossible to do this. In other words: the majority of users don't care about the problems of developers. They just want apps without having to think about where they come from, and the simplest way to do that is to use Google Play if they have an Android phone. That's not a Google problem. That's a user problem. If it's indeed a problem. And the way for developers to fix it, if it needs to be fixed, is to not give users apps if users insist on only using Google Play. Make it so users have to go elsewhere to get apps at all, because developers refuse to "play" on Google Play, so there aren't any apps there. Then users will be on the same side as developers, and there are a lot more users.
oliwarner 5y ago
> They will have to respond to this Why? If they think they have the right to terminate your account, and you have no standing, why would you expect them not to ignore your lawyer in the very same way they ignore you? Taking this to court might get their attention, but you also have to show grounds for why you get to override their decision. IANAL, but I don't see why Google isn't allowed to just say "nope, you're outta here" to anyone it damned well wants. Sucks, but it's their reputation to ruin.
- lisper 5y ago
  > > They will have to respond to this > Why? They don't have to respond to the demand letter, but they do have to respond if a lawsuit if one is filed. If they don't, it's a default judgement for the plaintiff. (This is one of the things that is broken in the American legal system. You can force someone to spend a lot of money by suing them even if your complaint has no merit.) So while they don't have to respond to a credible threat of a lawsuit, it would be prudent for them to do so because otherwise there is a real risk for them of having it cost a lot more.
  - tiahura 5y ago
    How is it broken to require a defendant to respond to a lawsuit?
    - BeetleB 5y ago
      Because an innocent person can be bankrupted by repeatedly having to respond to frivolous lawsuits.
      - tiahura 5y ago
        Can anyone find an example of that actually happening?
        BeetleB 5y ago
        Not bankruptcy but this type of abuse? Sure: https://dailyillini.com/news-stories/2013/04/26/suburban-express-lawsuits-reach-125-this-year-conversation-continues-on-reddit/ https://dailyillini.com/news-stories/2013/04/26/suburban-exp... He would intentionally file lawsuits in another county because he knew it's too much of a burden for many students to travel there for court hearings. Students just settle even if they think they're completely innocent.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

by rsync 5y ago

paxys 5y ago

You can send Google a hundred "legal demands" (whatever that means), but they have no reason or obligation to reply to any of them. You can sue them over it, but a company of that scale handles literally hundreds of lawsuits a day. Almost all of them are frivolous, and will be dismissed.

andrew_ 5y ago

This is the correct answer to the situation.

pdonis 5y ago
It might seem like a "correct" answer, but it's not, because it won't accomplish anything. Google has orders of magnitude more money and resources to fight a lawsuit than any individual plaintiff does. This particular plaintiff is not the first, or even the thousandth, to have this problem and find that it's not fixable. The only really correct answer to the root problem here is for developers to stop using Google Play as a distribution channel. There is more than enough data out there by now to make it crystal clear that everyone who does that is doing so at the mercy of Google's whim. No sane person should be trying to build an actual business that will provide income they and their families depend on on such a shaky foundation.
- TomSwirly 5y ago
  > The only really correct answer to the root problem here is for developers to stop using Google Play as a distribution channel. But Google has deliberately made it essentially impossible to do this. 1. The user needs to discover that other app ecosystems even exist. 2. They will then need to jailbreak their phone. 3. This voids their warranty. That eliminates 99+% of your customer base off the top. And of course Google could and likely would refuse advertisements for these alternative app ecosystems.
  - pdonis 5y ago
    > Google has deliberately made it essentially impossible to do this. No, users have made it essentially impossible to do this. In other words: the majority of users don't care about the problems of developers. They just want apps without having to think about where they come from, and the simplest way to do that is to use Google Play if they have an Android phone. That's not a Google problem. That's a user problem. If it's indeed a problem. And the way for developers to fix it, if it needs to be fixed, is to not give users apps if users insist on only using Google Play. Make it so users have to go elsewhere to get apps at all, because developers refuse to "play" on Google Play, so there aren't any apps there. Then users will be on the same side as developers, and there are a lot more users.

oliwarner 5y ago

> They will have to respond to this Why? If they think they have the right to terminate your account, and you have no standing, why would you expect them not to ignore your lawyer in the very same way they ignore you? Taking this to court might get their attention, but you also have to show grounds for why you get to override their decision. IANAL, but I don't see why Google isn't allowed to just say "nope, you're outta here" to anyone it damned well wants. Sucks, but it's their reputation to ruin.

lisper 5y ago
> > They will have to respond to this > Why? They don't have to respond to the demand letter, but they do have to respond if a lawsuit if one is filed. If they don't, it's a default judgement for the plaintiff. (This is one of the things that is broken in the American legal system. You can force someone to spend a lot of money by suing them even if your complaint has no merit.) So while they don't have to respond to a credible threat of a lawsuit, it would be prudent for them to do so because otherwise there is a real risk for them of having it cost a lot more.
- tiahura 5y ago
  How is it broken to require a defendant to respond to a lawsuit?
  - BeetleB 5y ago
    Because an innocent person can be bankrupted by repeatedly having to respond to frivolous lawsuits.
    - tiahura 5y ago
      Can anyone find an example of that actually happening?
      - BeetleB 5y ago
        Not bankruptcy but this type of abuse? Sure: https://dailyillini.com/news-stories/2013/04/26/suburban-express-lawsuits-reach-125-this-year-conversation-continues-on-reddit/ https://dailyillini.com/news-stories/2013/04/26/suburban-exp... He would intentionally file lawsuits in another county because he knew it's too much of a burden for many students to travel there for court hearings. Students just settle even if they think they're completely innocent.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]