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Squatters Abusing iPhone App Store
An anonymous reader sends in a new report on a not-so-new problem, one that has had little visibility so far. A quirk in the way Apple's iPhone App Store works has enabled squatters to move in, and in fact has encouraged legimate developers to grab and squat on dozens of app names that they might use some time in the future. "It turns out you can exploit the registration process to gain ownership of as many app names as you like, without any intention of actually writing a single line of code. 'A developer can pretend to submit an app, but abandon their submission at the last moment, avoiding the need to actually create an application, but keeping hold of the app's name. In limbo. Maybe forever.' says iPhone app developer Atomic Antelope, who found that their app name 'Twitch' and its variations were stuck in limbo . 'Squatters have moved into the app store. They're worse than domain name squatters though, because you can't even enter into negotiation with them. You don't know who they are, or where they are.'" The solution seems simple: for Apple to flush all the apps that have not submitted binaries, and to repeat periodically.
The solution seems simple: for Apple to flush all the apps that have not submitted binaries, and to repeat periodically.
Simple solution needs a simple response: compile Hello World! tutorial app and name it XYZ app and upload it to your desired squatter name. Use same binary or recompile for tiny differences to avoid sum checking. You have a complex problem that no simple solution will fix. Anything short of charging a nominal fee (a la domain registration) will probably not work and the fee idea is a horrible one for people who just want to get their app out there. If it doesn't cost money, the rest of the dominoes will fall like a house of cards. Checkmate. Ball's in your court.
My work here is dung.
I don't see why it would be to hard to do one of the following:
1) require the binaries to be present when uploading the app, if you back out it doesn't save anything.
2) give a 7 day grace period to upload the app binaries. If they are not uploaded by then, you forfeit the rights to the name
Your name isn't accepted until your product is accepted to the App Store. This way Apple have to approve both the name and the application so if you create an application that just prints out "hello world" but call it "GPS navigation" then it gets bounced because the name is wrong.
Sure this means people will bleat and complain about Apple rejecting names sometimes but it would remove the problem of squatting.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Not really. Since an app has to go through Apple's approval process, Hello World apps that don't actually do what the submitter indicates should not make it into the store. Of course, given the opaque approval process and the number of fart apps that made it in to the store, the approval process is not a guaranteed firewall.
Apple could them flush the "empty" apps that do not have approved binaries, or at least binaries in the approval process, if they have been empty for more than 3 months or so.
This is just another thing that Apple, and the Android and Palm folks, will have to deal with. The real fun will be when apps are available on multiple platforms, but have different names because of conflicting approvals processes, squatters, and other things that have not yet surfaced.
Charge $20 for an application. They obviously review each and ever app on the site. If it fails, not only do you lose the $20, but they have the option of banning your account if the app is obviously a place holder.
Should the application be successful, your money is refunded.
If you take the profit out of squatting, people won't do it.
please learn to read
I don't ask you to read the article just the summary
They're worse than domain name squatters though, because you can't even enter into negotiation with them.
The way I look at any "hostage situation" is that negotiation is what gives them their power. If you refuse to negotiate with them, and they know that negotiation isn't an option, it severely limits what they can do or what benefits they can reap from their actions. Look at china, they have a simple rule, they do not negotiate with criminals under any circumstances. You don't see anywhere near the hostage-ish problems over there because any criminal knows they have little to gain.
Its the same way with domain squatting. The reason they do it is so they can extort or gouge you for a fortune to get the name because they can negotiate with you. If it wasn't possible for them to contact you or you to contact them to negotiate, domain squatting wouldn't be 1/100th the problem it is now. The LAST thing in the world the ITMS needs is some way for a squatter to be contacted by someone that wants the name.
The solution here is as the article mentions, the same thing that was done to domain tasting recently, for Apple to make it impractical by limiting how long someone can squat without using the name.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Why would a single developer (aka $100 fee) submit dozens or hundreds of apps at one time? With a 2 week turnaround it would make sense to only allow a handful (5?) apps to be submitted and waiting for approval by a single developer at once.
Better known as 318230.
Welcome to mass market! The growth of the iPod, iPhone etc has put Apple in a new position. They will adjust no doubt, but this is new territory for them. Hey, when you catch the attention of DVD Jon ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DoubleTwist) you've made it...
Then how can these evil squatters make any money?
The problem is us humans. We all know statistically that there is going to be a percentage of us that, no matter what is done, will find a way to be the low-life scum-sucking dirt bag we're all capable of.
And let's be honest with each other, can Apple HONESTLY check all these apps for approval? It's impossible. There is no way they invest enough money to check all these programs released... over 70,000, yeah right.
They need to start using the user review system more which unfortunately is also run by the same type of person I mentioned before. I hate squatters with all my being but is there are way around them... not in a free, capitalistic way there isn't and I'm willing to live with them in order for freedom.
So lets see... we now have:
- App name squatting
- List jockeying (continuous updates to apps with no description of what was actually changed)
- List flooding (releasing dozens of variations of the same app with only minor differences... like a picture of a kitty!)
- Born-again apps (repeated removal and relaunching of the same app over and over)
Did I miss anything else?
8==8 Bones 8==8
I thought the whole point of the AppStore was to bless apps before they're posted. How does Apple anoint a nonexistent binary?
ARE YOU SAYING APPLE IS ONLY IN IT FOR THE MONEY AND DOESN"T GIVE A SHIT ABOUT THEIR USERS??/??
iSquatter?
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
I can have 2 songs in my iTunes library called "Once". They're from different artists, so sorting is no problem.
Also, IANAL, but I believe you can't trademark a common word like "Twitch".
This type of squatting is even nastier than domains, because there is no such concept as a top level domain. So with domains, there would be no problem if there is already a domain called ajax.com if you have a local soccer club called Ajax. You'd just register ajax.nl or something.
The App Store knows about regions -- there are five regions in the app store. But this division is not across application names themselves. The app store does have another division: app category. Perhaps one solution would be to let apps have the same name, but only one in each category.
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
There is no simple solution, really.
Periodic flushing? Well, what if your app takes a long time to develop? Maybe you weren't thinking of a simple 99-cent app, but something that's more than a novelty? If you flush too often, you discourage people from these kinds of apps because now they have to keep reserving it, and someone else can snatch it. This applies to anything - big devs or small. And you can't say "let's make it once a year" - people being squatted don't want to wait a whole year. But "let's make it monthly" means apps undergoing slow development have to bear the burden.
Flush apps with no binaries? Same issue - dev will just submit a skeleton app to hold it off.
Limit of X apps/year? Well, that's just silly. Microsoft can pull it off, but the next /. headline you'll see is "Apple Limits Devs to 5 Apps". Sure it may help to avoid doing the next 10,000 flashlight and fart apps, but geez, that seems low and arbitrary. Good devs may find themselves caught in this as well - that's over 2 months of development per app, and some useful apps just don't command that sort of development time. Even a reasonable limit has to be rather high - probably around 100?
First app with name submitted gets it? Well, then you have the patent deal - you deny the guy who submitted a few minutes later an app with the same name. There are probably going to be a ton of unintended consequences, too.
Still, the Apple solution of non-negotiation (by not revealing the squatter's identity) is probably a good one - DNS squatters are in it for money, and they'll sell. Here, the name is reserved, but since you can't negotiate, all the squatter is doing is being an ass. There's no financial incentive to squat on a name because anyone wanting to use it can't find your details and contact you to pay $1000 for the name. So it's costing them $100/year with zero gain. At least domain squatters can get several thousand per name to help pay for the domain registrations. The Apple method leaves them $100 poorer each year - it's not listed on iTunes, there are no ads, and no one can contact you to buy the name.
Maybe a solution is no developer can hold more than say, 5 names at any one time. Approval of an app removes that name from the list (so they're holding 4 names and can add one). Those extra names can be returned to the pool at any time - for example, a developer creates an app which can go under 5 possible names, then at the last minute they pick one and submits under that name. Since they have no use for the other 4, they can release them so freeing up more reserved name slots for their next app. Big dev houses probably already have multiple dev accounts, so they can reserve multiple names for multiple apps. 5 or 10 names reserved for apps in development ought to be enough. Implement it right (e.g., a dev can test to see if a name is taken before having to give up one of their existing ones) and it may reduce this problem.
Still - why squat on the names? People can't buy it off of you, so there's no financial incentive (which is why there are so many domain squatters), other than being an ass.
So...
1. squat
2. flush
3. repeat
4. errrr, profit?
I've seen quite a few ideas around here about clearing out blank entries. So what happens if I have an idea and a name and I want to register it at the very beginning of the development cycle so that I don't have to find a new name after I've done all the work? So for a month or two there's nothing there until I finish my dev cycle. So then apple clears out my entry and some squatter takes it. Guess I'll have to write a program that polls the app store for variations of my app's name.
Hate to break it to you, but I bought the phone. Fuck you, asshole.
looks like somebody needs a hug
do not read this line twice.
Squatter, or just extreme slacker?
When I first reached out to google for the definition of squatter, I got a bit confused as to where the illegality lay[gr.?]. The definition of squatter hereseems to express two types, those with legal, and illegal. When I switched the search to cybersquatter, I then understood more about where the laws start, (though seems a amendment may be needed) here in the United States, Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act passed in 1999, an amendment to the Trademark Act 1946 also known as the Lanham Act.
Where am I going with this? How does one determine good faith? How do you differentiate between a person who might struggle to get it up (specially if a deadline looms overhead, further if that deadline is tightened) and one who is squatting maliciously, awaiting a time when they can resell the slot to someone else who has developed the application, put in the sweat, time, thought, tears, hours, etc...
To end with a wee bit of entertainment amidst all this legal jumbo-gumbo, figured I might throw a little head-nod to J.R. Bob "Dobbs" (not MS's failed project). Slacking is an artform, a religion, one that many take quite seriously. So much so they used it in the naming of a Linux distro. Slacker? Or Ill-memes willful disconsolation?
Blackmail is such an ugly word.
I'm not talking about blackmail.
No, but I'm about to blackmail you, so I thought I'd bring it up.
These app store squatters probably aimed to get on the ground floor of cyber squatting like it used to be done with domain names, though they just didn't count on app devs not being able to actually contact them to negotiate. Like a kidnapping without any ransom note.
Solves everything.
... "style" and more importantly doesn't make Apple any additional revenue, I do not expect them to sign off on such a solution. Rather I expect them to impose some sort of filtering or fee based solution instead.
If I write iApp and you write iApp, my official name will be iApp.mydomain.com and yours will be iApp.yourdomain.com
You could even let apps default to root domain so you could install the twitter.com or cnn.com apps.
In terms of people/companies trying to use same basic name, it would allow it, but if a copyright or trademark is held then that could be used to prevent copycat or fakes from the market place. Plus since it is domain based it allows people to know who actually owns the domain and thus application should there be a problem.
Now because this is relatively simple and straight forward, easily solves the problem, but lacks
Now since Google Android is open and evolving faster then iPhone, it may be a better fit for them.
RANT
I believe we will see the iPhone relegated to a small fringe market share of mobile device after it's initial success. With it loosing out to the more open and hardware agnostic Android OS, similar to the sliver OS X holds after losing to Windows for the exact same reasons. Just like how Windows had more Apps, so to will Android. With Android I can do crazy things like program it on Mac, Windows or Linux PC. With Android I can do crazy things like write tether apps, release or install apps outside of market, and allow them run in background or as service. I can even write emulators, run-time environments, etc. By end of year their will be an Android device for all major carriers as it is carrier agnostic, hardware agnostic, IDE agnostic, base computer agnostic, etc.
/RANT
Respect the Constitution
Paying $100 a year, you can publish any number of apps, but you can only have X (say 5 or 10) apps that have only name and no submission. At $10-20 per squat, you prevent just plain squatting, especially (as has already been argued) considering that there is no financial incentive to do so.
You are unique, just like everyone else.
So, apple doesn't bother to test the applications uploaded to their site? How do they plan to checks for maleware? Let a problem happen then react to it?
They'd really only have to test to ensure an app worked like it said it does and it doesn't harm the system. Granted that may be a lot of extra effort, but it cancels out problems like this very easily and prevents people from writing harmful programs. While it may be a low blow, reserving a name with a 'hello world' program is legal as long as your program just displays 'hello world'.
"Our goal each year should be to increase the number of goals we set for ourselves!"
and the system has exploits (like everything does)... then exploits happen for money.
we need a new approach to human interaction, culture, and purpose.
Money really *is* the root of most/all evils in this world, yet everything is based around it. And we wonder why nothing changes...
Cybersquatting (also known as domain squatting), according to the United States federal law known as the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, is registering, trafficking in, or using a domain name with bad faith intent to profit from the goodwill of a trademark belonging to someone else. The cybersquatter then offers to sell the domain to the person or company who owns a trademark contained within the name at an inflated price. (Wikipedia)
Since according to the TFA there can beno profit motive to the act of registering multiple app names it s not really squatting. It may be annoying. It may need to be fixed. But it's not squatting.
---As my daddy used to tell me: "You gotta be smart before you can be a smartass."
Even Better solution than checking binaries, is have performance dictate your existence. If you dont have 50 or 100 in the first 1-3 months of existence, you have been deemed unworthy by the unwashed masses and your App name goes back into the pool. There should be no guarantee that your piece of crap app will forever own the name iAmAwesome just because you were the first to get it. You as the developer lose nothing but the name. Let's stop rewarding quickness and start rewarding quality. Squatters die and good Apps live, its the Law of the Jungle at its finest!
Nobody makes me bleed my own blood...
Don't anthropomorphize computers: they hate that.
I have to say, that I myself am squatting some names, but they are modifications or shortened/abbreviated versions of our existing titles. Eg: We have a "MyGame Pro", and I don't want someone else to steal "MyGame". And for a few titles we are squatting the pro version (Eg. We have "MyOtherGame" released and squatting "MyOtherGame Pro").
I agree the squatting is ridiculous, but if Apple were to delete all the squats it would be devastating to some of us if someone came and stole one of our game names. I do not think deleting is a good idea, but I do think it should give you the contact info of the person if you try to submit an app with a name that is in use. So at least we can try to resolve the conflict. Possibly make a time-limit policy and/or a cost for "squatting". Maybe no cost for modifications of your app names though (Eg. App Pro)
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Wrong, the correct solution is for Apple to relinquish their vice-like control with the Apple Store and open up the iPhone/iTouch for people to do want they want with their expensive hardware. The 'squatters' are merely showing an example of how Apple's sole-source mentality isn't perfect, and how the red-taped complications around the Store is a farce. (oh, and thanks a freakin' lot Apple, for first charging $10 for the iTouch firmware update in June, then another $5 in September. Stop making people pay for YOUR bug fixes!)
> If it wasn't possible for them to contact you or you to contact them to negotiate, domain squatting wouldn't be 1/100th the problem it is now. If it were that simple, you'd be running the show, then, right?
If dev A is running a string of apps with a pattern to the name that is crucial to their marketing, but they are uploading/staging and thereby securing each name one by one, dev B can throw a hurdle into that plan by simply staging an app of their own with the next name or two or three etc. in the series.
The goal there is to monkey-wrench the release efforts of dev A, and dev B can do that easily without ever caring whether they are ever contacted. All dev b needs to do is sit on their hands.
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