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Comment by mojzu | Hacker News Reader

It seems like they were just a client for Instagram which was stripping out the ads, which would probably be a pretty clear cut violation of Instagram ToS or whatever API they were using, so I'm not surprised Google/Apple would remove it from their stores

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Google and Apple aren't, or shouldn't be, the ToS enforcers for Meta.

It's a ToS violation, not a legal one.

They are however copyright enforcers and have detailed copyright infringement policies

The copyright law in many countries contains a specific interoperability exception that explicitly allows such cases to enable "information exchange".

"Courts have recognised that reverse-engineering is important for public benefit and to encourage inventors and businesses thereby maintaining healthy competition in the market".[0]

[0] https://lexinsight.wordpress.com/2020/06/08/achieving-intero...

Yet most technology giants are based in the States thus do what they want - within the permissive laws of their country. It's ironic how the folks here on one side get upset every time Google/Meta does something evil, yet at the same time get upset when the EU does something against Google/Meta.

It is unclear whether a third-party client that accesses content you are otherwise licensed to access is actually infringing, and it's likely to differ in many countries as well.

This is not copyright infringement. The users logging in have the ability and license to view the material.

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