When companies centralized and controlled app downloads, they did it primarily to make more money. Now their greed ends in the loss of real human rights. When America was founded, the fourth pillar of government was the free press, i.e. the gatekeepers of information. Today, capitalism and naked avarice have broken the back of this key democratic institution, and the effects on society in the U.S. and abroad will be continue to ripple for years to come.
It's like Obama was fond of reminding tech CEO's when they'd start pontificating on leadership... “Government will never run the way Silicon Valley runs because, by definition, democracy is messy. This is a big, diverse country with a lot of interests and a lot of disparate points of view. And part of government’s job, by the way, is dealing with problems that nobody else wants to deal with.
“Sometimes I talk to CEOs, they come in and they start telling me about leadership, and here’s how we do things. And I say, well, if all I was doing was making a widget or producing an app, and I didn’t have to worry about whether poor people could afford the widget, or I didn’t have to worry about whether the app had some unintended consequences … then I think those suggestions are terrific."
> Today, capitalism and naked avarice have broken the back of this key democratic institution, and the effects on society in the U.S. and abroad will be continue to ripple for years to come.
How do you interpret that China, a pseudo-capitalist country, bans skype and its because of the greed and avarice of private capital.
This is textbook china. It was before and there is no reason it won't be this way for decades to come.
Baloney. Pre-AppStore, you could only download a Windows binary version of Skype, and it was not the official Skype version. I didn't have Windows, but the download looked pretty sketchy. You can bet your last dollar that the Chinese government could listen in on your conversation. When Microsoft bought Skype, they de-P2P'ed it. You can bet all the dollars you wisely didn't bet earlier that a condition of Microsoft continuing to operate in China was that they enable the government to listen in. So now you just can't Skype at all. Doesn't have anything to do centralized app stores, and everything to do with a paranoid Chinese government.
> When America was founded, the fourth pillar of government was the free press, i.e. the gatekeepers of information. Today, capitalism and naked avarice have broken the back of this key democratic institution
It sounds like you're not at all familiar with the prior 230 years of American history as it pertains to Capitalism and the free press. Just as one example era, see 1880 to 1930. The market economy in the US was very lightly regulated, today it's extremely regulated. There were hardly any restrictions on press ownership during that time. There were few means to know who owned or influenced which entities, including the newspapers. Literal direct bribery was legal in most regards politically.
Today, the US is barely clinging to being a Capitalist nation. This is an era of innocence compared to when the US was a full-blown Capitalist nation. A better title now is mixed economy. Nearly all industry is extremely regulated. Taxation is extremely high compared to the first 150 years of US history. Government intervention into the economy is the highest it has ever been. At a time in which the US is the least Capitalistic it has been in its entire history, you're choosing to start blaming Capitalism for the weakness of the free press. You're missing a comically large error in the premise.
>When companies centralized and controlled app downloads, they did it primarily to make more money. Now their greed ends in the loss of real human rights.
Well, the Chinese get the right their chats to be surveilled by their own state (in their own platforms) - as opposed to being surveilled by the US (on Skype and such platforms).
The problem in this case isn’t centralized App Stores. It’s software that relies on a centralized server. If Skype we’re still P2P, then maybe it could evade the Great Firewall a bit easier. But it’s not, and China will just ban the Skype servers and render the app useless, even if you’re able to side load it.
Centralized control has made things a lot more secure. The fact that centralization also makes government interference easier is definitely a big negative. However, you can always go compile the app from source and install it that way, or sideload the app onto your device on iOS. It's not 2009, there are official ways to do this from Apple including for free.
> When America was founded, the fourth pillar of government was the free press, i.e. the gatekeepers of information. Today, capitalism and naked avarice have broken the back of this key democratic institution,
What makes you say this? I seriously don't follow.
> When America was founded, the fourth pillar of government was the free press, i.e. the gatekeepers of information.
The free press wasn't a pillar of government. When America was founded, the "free press" was pretty much propaganda outlets owned by and used by the wealthy to attack each other.
One of our oldest newspapers ( NY Post ) was founded by Alexander Hamilton purely to attack Thomas Jefferson.
The press was never gatekeepers of information. The free press was "fake news" straight from the get-go. Even before the founding of the US, during the colonial period, they were political propaganda tools. If you are interested, go read about what Benjamin Franklin's colonial printing history.
This sort of thing represents one of the true dangers of single-source App Stores on general purpose computers with no side-loading fallback, and is why we should be proactively working to make it illegal. It's not that Apple is malicious per se, or even that they're particularly slow at reviews or whatever (though that has been the case at times too), but the mere fact that they represent a single, easy to pressure choke point. Apple themselves have reacted to this appropriately when it comes to the hardware by removing more and more of their own ability to affect it once it's been sold and giving that power to the owners instead. That's not just a positive for owners' privacy and security (and in turn a selling point), it also reduces Apple's exposure and liability. If they don't hold a given set of data or power in the first place, then nobody can go after them for it.
Unfortunately on the software side they have not sought any of the better tradeoffs available between security and vetting vs owner power and decentralization, and in turn find themselves in the crosshairs for every single app. Not even just from governments though they're most coercive, but from any public cultural/religious interest group at all. Since Apple has to approve everything, Apple is also seen (correctly) as directly responsible for everything on the App Store. The result has been exactly as you'd expect: they're more conservative on average about what sort of content they'll allow, not merely about objective issues like security.
Perhaps negative PR from actions like this might be sufficient eventually to get Apple to change course on their own. They wouldn't actually need to do very much, even selling a one-time permanent single device signing cert might be sufficient [1], and could form the basis of alternate App Stores even. But if Apple (and others) won't move it should be legislated. Improving wearable displays will ultimately mean the merger of "mobile" and "PC", that is the next disruptive evolution in computers. We should not allow that to become the end of bazaars for software too.
----
1: Right now they have a free one, but it only lets apps run for 7 days, and the developer one is yearly and subscription based.
My take away from this is quite different. Or at least tangential.
I expect Apple and any other company to have to comply with local laws in various countries. It's unavoidable. What else could they do? Refuse and loose access to that population?
But right now, as regards device encryption and back doors, there is a sort of mutually assured destruction. A MAD that the US law enforcement (e.g. FBI et al) are constantly trying to undermine. Right now Apple claims the iPhone is designed such that they cannot unencrypt it. The FBI wants to force them to create a method.
Regardless of the technique used that then will make every similar device world wide subject to the whims of local law as regards allow that country access.
What would stop any country from then demanding blanket access to devices? But at the moment this doesn't seem happen because there's an unspoken detente among adversarial countries to not demand such back-doors.
This situation reminds me of that. Since it is possible for Apple and others to block things on their app stores, countries demand it.
It's a cautionary tale of why it's important for companies to design certain things from the bottom up to prevent bad behavior.
This has nothing to do with centralisation. Every (even decentralised) shops need to comply with local laws. You can debate the laws, but not the compliance of shops. It's the same reason you can't just buy weed from 7-Eleven.
If you care to read the article, Microsoft says they are working with the government and the app will soon get reinstated.
> and is why we should be proactively working to make it illegal.
Absolutely, it should be outlawed now! Do you have an address for the person in the Chinese legislature that I should be writing to, to pass the relevant law?
The title clearly states that it disappeared from multiple app stores not just apple's. At least for Android China has multiple app stores not just Google Play.
While I agree with your point and distributed App Stores sound like a proper way for users to be independent from various risks.
But what makes me paranoid is that decentralised stores would be another source of malware, where even Google as a central entity fails miserably.
You might not like Apple’s walled garden, but it’s pretty much irrelevant to this story.
In fact Skype has been removed from the Android stores as well so the non-walled gardens aren’t faring better. Also, since this class of apps is about communication, the app stores are just a side-skirmish in the war for control. The real power is in controlling the network, which the Chinese government does (and Apple does not).
That brings us back to the real problem here: the repressive control of speech and communication by the Chinese government.
The relative openess of tech ecosystems means little in an environment of a repressive, controlling government.
They only put “Apple” in the headline for the clicks.
There was a theory that they were working on end-to-end encryption for Skype. If true, this may be related to that. I sure hope it's true, otherwise they will not be able to say that they "can't" provide people's communications with a court order, as they're now doing in Belgium.
Also, the court classified them as a "telco," likely because Skype offers integration with regular phone lines. It's also why, in the U.S., the government can use CALEA to intercept Skype calls.
So if they want to keep using that excuse, they may want to offer a "secure" data-only version of Skype, too (that's the default Skype), and provide a deprecated version that's integrated with regular phone calls.
This would also make it easier for them and everyone else to move on from the convoluted WebRTC 1.0 standard to the ORTC-based WebRTC 1.1. It would've been ideal to make this change with the overhaul of Skype's design to be more easily accepted by people, but oh well, better late than never.
I'd like to see a P2P app store on the same kind of system as cryptocurrency. Like torrents meets P2P consensus for file verification, with weights for trusted sources.
No need yet, they usually can’t compete with incumbents. And as a US consumer I am fine with keeping local companies in competition with foreign ones because it usually means I just get more options.
Seems like The New York Times has invented a new annoying method of mouse hijacking. When click selecting the text while reading I am `swiping` to the next article on desktop. And double click increases font size?
In case it goes, does anyone know a good alternative to connect from the US to China that didn't require VPN usage in China? I've found wechat's call quality awful.
* controlling data about Chinese citizens from going outside of Chinese control (e.g. onto international/US servers where it can be subpeona'd by the foreign government host)
* protecting local industries from foreign competition
I wonder what is their attitude to other communication software and protocols, especially FOSS ones.
Skype by its closed nature could contain all sorts of CIA/NSA spying routines, but what about Ekiga for example? Open Source software would hardly justify any national security concerns except those implied by letting common people freely communicate.
Well, Skype has vigorous anti-debugging measures to keep most of its unwarranted behavior under wraps. And when MS bought Skype, it was taken down for a significant time, thought to be when the NSA [etPhoneHome] method calls were added. It's all just conjecture though... But I'd stick with other voip/telcos. I really can't blame China for not wanting their people subject to what is pretty obvious US spying.
Wasn't it taken down to be rearchitected (spelling?) to a "superhub" peer to peer setup? Kind of a half way house between fully 'cloud' (centralised) like it is now and fully peer to peer like it was before MS bought it?
I guess that doesn't preclude it becoming part of PRISM and I might be misremembering the details too.
[+] [-] rd108|8 years ago|reply
It's like Obama was fond of reminding tech CEO's when they'd start pontificating on leadership... “Government will never run the way Silicon Valley runs because, by definition, democracy is messy. This is a big, diverse country with a lot of interests and a lot of disparate points of view. And part of government’s job, by the way, is dealing with problems that nobody else wants to deal with.
“Sometimes I talk to CEOs, they come in and they start telling me about leadership, and here’s how we do things. And I say, well, if all I was doing was making a widget or producing an app, and I didn’t have to worry about whether poor people could afford the widget, or I didn’t have to worry about whether the app had some unintended consequences … then I think those suggestions are terrific."
[+] [-] conanbatt|8 years ago|reply
How do you interpret that China, a pseudo-capitalist country, bans skype and its because of the greed and avarice of private capital.
This is textbook china. It was before and there is no reason it won't be this way for decades to come.
[+] [-] prewett|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adventured|8 years ago|reply
It sounds like you're not at all familiar with the prior 230 years of American history as it pertains to Capitalism and the free press. Just as one example era, see 1880 to 1930. The market economy in the US was very lightly regulated, today it's extremely regulated. There were hardly any restrictions on press ownership during that time. There were few means to know who owned or influenced which entities, including the newspapers. Literal direct bribery was legal in most regards politically.
Today, the US is barely clinging to being a Capitalist nation. This is an era of innocence compared to when the US was a full-blown Capitalist nation. A better title now is mixed economy. Nearly all industry is extremely regulated. Taxation is extremely high compared to the first 150 years of US history. Government intervention into the economy is the highest it has ever been. At a time in which the US is the least Capitalistic it has been in its entire history, you're choosing to start blaming Capitalism for the weakness of the free press. You're missing a comically large error in the premise.
[+] [-] coldtea|8 years ago|reply
Well, the Chinese get the right their chats to be surveilled by their own state (in their own platforms) - as opposed to being surveilled by the US (on Skype and such platforms).
Which sounds like a win.
[+] [-] cmelbye|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] omarforgotpwd|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] IanDrake|8 years ago|reply
On the other hand you’d rather a different economic system, I presume, where the government has even more say, such as socialism.
Please try to reconcile your conflicting opinions because they don’t make sense.
[+] [-] fullshark|8 years ago|reply
What makes you say this? I seriously don't follow.
[+] [-] techer|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pdeuchler|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alentodorov|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eighthnate|8 years ago|reply
The free press wasn't a pillar of government. When America was founded, the "free press" was pretty much propaganda outlets owned by and used by the wealthy to attack each other.
One of our oldest newspapers ( NY Post ) was founded by Alexander Hamilton purely to attack Thomas Jefferson.
https://www.politico.com/story/2010/10/alexander-hamilton-at...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Post
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_American_newspapers
And following that, we had decades of yellow journalism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism
The press was never gatekeepers of information. The free press was "fake news" straight from the get-go. Even before the founding of the US, during the colonial period, they were political propaganda tools. If you are interested, go read about what Benjamin Franklin's colonial printing history.
[+] [-] xoa|8 years ago|reply
Unfortunately on the software side they have not sought any of the better tradeoffs available between security and vetting vs owner power and decentralization, and in turn find themselves in the crosshairs for every single app. Not even just from governments though they're most coercive, but from any public cultural/religious interest group at all. Since Apple has to approve everything, Apple is also seen (correctly) as directly responsible for everything on the App Store. The result has been exactly as you'd expect: they're more conservative on average about what sort of content they'll allow, not merely about objective issues like security.
Perhaps negative PR from actions like this might be sufficient eventually to get Apple to change course on their own. They wouldn't actually need to do very much, even selling a one-time permanent single device signing cert might be sufficient [1], and could form the basis of alternate App Stores even. But if Apple (and others) won't move it should be legislated. Improving wearable displays will ultimately mean the merger of "mobile" and "PC", that is the next disruptive evolution in computers. We should not allow that to become the end of bazaars for software too.
----
1: Right now they have a free one, but it only lets apps run for 7 days, and the developer one is yearly and subscription based.
[+] [-] ickwabe|8 years ago|reply
I expect Apple and any other company to have to comply with local laws in various countries. It's unavoidable. What else could they do? Refuse and loose access to that population?
But right now, as regards device encryption and back doors, there is a sort of mutually assured destruction. A MAD that the US law enforcement (e.g. FBI et al) are constantly trying to undermine. Right now Apple claims the iPhone is designed such that they cannot unencrypt it. The FBI wants to force them to create a method.
Regardless of the technique used that then will make every similar device world wide subject to the whims of local law as regards allow that country access.
What would stop any country from then demanding blanket access to devices? But at the moment this doesn't seem happen because there's an unspoken detente among adversarial countries to not demand such back-doors.
This situation reminds me of that. Since it is possible for Apple and others to block things on their app stores, countries demand it.
It's a cautionary tale of why it's important for companies to design certain things from the bottom up to prevent bad behavior.
[+] [-] arihant|8 years ago|reply
If you care to read the article, Microsoft says they are working with the government and the app will soon get reinstated.
[+] [-] Angostura|8 years ago|reply
Absolutely, it should be outlawed now! Do you have an address for the person in the Chinese legislature that I should be writing to, to pass the relevant law?
[+] [-] ma2rten|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shadowtree|8 years ago|reply
Nothing to do with Apple.
You can't sell telephony software in China as a Western company directly anymore. Not matter how.
[+] [-] jernejzen|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jmull|8 years ago|reply
In fact Skype has been removed from the Android stores as well so the non-walled gardens aren’t faring better. Also, since this class of apps is about communication, the app stores are just a side-skirmish in the war for control. The real power is in controlling the network, which the Chinese government does (and Apple does not).
That brings us back to the real problem here: the repressive control of speech and communication by the Chinese government.
The relative openess of tech ecosystems means little in an environment of a repressive, controlling government.
They only put “Apple” in the headline for the clicks.
[+] [-] shadowtree|8 years ago|reply
China requires any software vendor that provides telephony to sell its software through a Chinese telco-licensed company.
Pure VoiP is fine. The moment you offer dial-in / call me as Skype, WebEx, G2M, Zoom do, you're toast.
This is China walling off their market a bit more, making it far easier for their own telcos to compete.
[+] [-] agentgt|8 years ago|reply
Or do they not even explain it and just do it. Is it similar to USA where we say its to catch the "bad guys".
I guess they could argue they are "protecting" their citizens by perhaps lowering the security attack surface.
[+] [-] mtgx|8 years ago|reply
https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/93006358956574720...
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/10/27/belgian_court_fines...
Also, the court classified them as a "telco," likely because Skype offers integration with regular phone lines. It's also why, in the U.S., the government can use CALEA to intercept Skype calls.
So if they want to keep using that excuse, they may want to offer a "secure" data-only version of Skype, too (that's the default Skype), and provide a deprecated version that's integrated with regular phone calls.
This would also make it easier for them and everyone else to move on from the convoluted WebRTC 1.0 standard to the ORTC-based WebRTC 1.1. It would've been ideal to make this change with the overhaul of Skype's design to be more easily accepted by people, but oh well, better late than never.
[+] [-] unsigner|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] oblio|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] afrophysics1|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] niksmac|8 years ago|reply
- file storage - verify app developers - prevent cracked apps.
If you can justify all these questions, id like to work on the same idea further.
[+] [-] dilippkumar|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] canjobear|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] commenter1|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mattnewton|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aapjesverkoper|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smeyer|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] usaar333|8 years ago|reply
In case it goes, does anyone know a good alternative to connect from the US to China that didn't require VPN usage in China? I've found wechat's call quality awful.
[+] [-] ksk|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alexbeloi|8 years ago|reply
* controlling data about Chinese citizens from going outside of Chinese control (e.g. onto international/US servers where it can be subpeona'd by the foreign government host)
* protecting local industries from foreign competition
[+] [-] squarefoot|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tony101|8 years ago|reply
This is the key. They don't want people freely communicating without interception capabilities.
[+] [-] codezero|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tcas|8 years ago|reply
You need a billing address/CC/PayPal in that region though, so you can't just simply register a new account and access it without basic validation.
[+] [-] 0xJRS|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Canada|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] goldenkey|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PuffinBlue|8 years ago|reply
I guess that doesn't preclude it becoming part of PRISM and I might be misremembering the details too.
[+] [-] qwerty456127|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Andrenid|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pathsjs|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] runjake|8 years ago|reply
Windows Store
Samsung has their own deal.
[+] [-] stevespang|8 years ago|reply
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