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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

Awfully hard to feel much sympathy for a team that builds and submits to the app store an application which overtly contravenes one of the very first terms of the AT&T wireless terms of service.

Intuitively, I believe AT&T's tether pricing to be a travesty, but rationally I also know that it's their network and their terms are going to be their terms, even if I find them odious. Both intuitively and rationally, an application that exists solely to bypass their most basic terms of service seems more like an elaborate troll than a real offering.

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But there are hundreds (?) of carriers worldwide, all of which support the iPhone. AT&T is just one of many.

So I don't see what the AT&T TOS has to do with Apple's App Store. Five years ago, sure, but not now.

It directly violates Verizon's terms of services too.

We could (unproductively) relitigate whether Apple should police submissions to the app store at all, but as long as they do, they're obviously going to reject applications that violate the terms of the vast overwhelming majority of their US users carrier contracts.

If they're set on policing, why not filter available apps by the capabilities you have? Going to the lowest common denominator seems like a bad compromise. They already filter by country and know who your carrier is, the parts are there.

iOS has built-in tethering support for carriers that are OK with it.

They are set on policing, so let's not pretend there's a debate to have where there clearly isn't one.

>We could (unproductively) relitigate whether Apple should police submissions to the app store at all

Transparent false dichotomy. This has nothing to do with curating versus anarchy. It is the standard of a subset of carriers in one country dictating policy for all Apple devices worldwide. Wasn't Apple the one who saved people from carrier influence and control?

No matter how outraged anyone pretends to be about this incident, not a single person on this thread would have bet $50 at any odds on Apple not pulling this app out of the store. That's all I'm trying to say.

> But there are hundreds (?) of carriers worldwide, all of which support the iPhone. AT&T is just one of many.

All of these carriers can enable the built-in access point feature of iOS. In fact, it's enabled by default so all of these carriers can not disable the built-in AP feature of iOS.

> So I don't see what the AT&T TOS has to do with Apple's App Store. Five years ago, sure, but not now.

The TOS in question have to do with tethering/cell-as-modem, not with the appstore, I'd guess.

> But there are hundreds (?) of carriers worldwide, all of which support the iPhone. AT&T is just one of many.

On the carriers which do not have a TOS forbidding free usage of the data plan for tethering, iOS's built-in tethering is already enabled, and this app violates the rule forbidding apps from duplicating built-in iOS functionality.

The only possible reason for this app. is to subvert a carrier's TOS, since iPhones have tethering capability built in.

How is tethered data access a "most basic" term of service, though?

I mean, it's more or less by definition undetectable by the carrier. They can't (in the general case) tell what you're doing with those bytes. But they sell them anyway.

The issue with tethering is practical. "Usually" desktop software uses "more" data than "mobile" software. Sometimes. So they outlaw it and try to sell it as an upgrade, but it's a fragile hack. It will always be a fragile hack.

That they write it into their contact verbiage doesn't make it inviolable. They have lots of other crap in there that people ignore routinely, I'm sure. Why is this one special?

It's "most basic" in the sense that it's among the very first things spelled out in the terms of service you agree to when you sign up for data service with AT&T.

How easy or hard tethering is to detect has zero to do with the validity of that contract.

I honestly think you're flat wrong about that. Contract terms aren't like code. They have squishy validity that depends on interpretation. IANAL, obviously, but I think the ability of one side to even tell whether or not the contract condition was violated certainly does have an effect on whether that clause is enforceable.

Companies put all kinds of crap into contracts. It's routine that this stuff turns out not to be enforceable when and if it goes to court.

My quibble is that you're starting from a weird place in your argument: it's OK for Apple to pull an app because a different company decided to put something in their contract. And you wave that away by saying that it's "obviously" a violation. And I don't see the obviously part at all.

The app doesn't violate AT&T's contract. Using the app does. You haven't read AT&T's contract, or you wouldn't have phrased your objection this way. Go read it and guess why I predicted you hadn't already.

OK, timeout. Now you're just flaming. The words "an application which overtly contravenes one of the very first terms of the AT&T wireless terms of service" are yours, not mine.

So now you've completely lost me. Can you explain from scratch why you think Apple is justified in enforcing AT&T contract verbiage on the rest of the iOS world? I just don't see it, sorry.

By definition, "tethering" means "using your data service to enable another device to access the Internet". If you look at the contract --- which, again, respectfully, I don't think you've bothered to do yet --- there's no way you can accidentally violate the term.

I'm just not interested in arguing with you about whether tethering clauses are enforceable or not. We both know that Apple wasn't going to allow this app into the store. Everyone here knows that.

I'm also not interested in arguing about whether Apple has a legitimate interest in enforcing AT&T's contract. They obviously don't care whether you think their reasoning is legitimate, and they have far more arbitrary restrictions on app store apps than "designed specifically to contravene AT&T and Verizon contracts".

Still very easy to feel no sympathy for the Apple. Their app policies are great in one way (quality over quantity) but very bad in a way that they are blocking (potentially) great apps. This, Google Voice (they used to), Opera Mobile, ...

There's no question of feeling sorry for Apple: a the largest Tech company in the world brought to it's knees by "iTether"? Not likely. But, it's really easy to feel no sympathy for the iTether guys. NO ONE was surprised they'd take it down: it's completely expected that if you violate Apple's terms you will be removed. Period.

On another note: GVoice and Opera are there. Honestly, they're crap. I'd also note to all of the conspiracy theorists, Apple doesn't care if you use Opera, and the make no $$ off of using the phone app – they let in crap, but crap that makes an effort to follow the rules.

Yes, Opera for iPhone is crap. That's the idea behind Opera Mini: it loads web sites fast, pretending JavaScript and HTML5 don't exist. It's one rung above Lynx [1].

However, parent was talking about Opera Mobile, which isn't available in the App Store.

[1] http://www.opera.com/docs/specs/productspecs/

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