Critics To FTC: Why Do You Hate In-App Purchasing Freedom?

jfruh writes The FTC has moved aggressively recently against companies that make it too easy for people — especially kids — to rack up huge charges on purchases within apps. But at a dicussion panel sponsored by free-market think tank TechFreedom, critics pushed back. Joshua Wright, an FTC commissioner who dissented in a recent settlement with Apple, says a 15-minute open purchase window produced "obvious and intuitive consumer benefits" and that the FTC "simply substituted its own judgment for a private firm's decision as to how to design a product to satisfy as many users as possible."

Comments

Their Job

[BitZtream]

Because its their job to hate people who take advantage of others in matters of trade?

Re:Their Job

[jd]

Very true. A wholly free market is actually quite toxic, as a certain Adam Smith noted. Especially when it's dishonest.

In-app purchases are the return of micropayments, but for virtual goods less valuable than Second Life real estate. It is, of course, entirely fair for companies to sell such products and for customers to buy them, but the control system is poor, virtual goods have an amazingly high failure rate for delivery, and prices are often in the small print.

Re:Their Job

[Bob9113]

>> Because its their job to hate people who take advantage of others in matters of trade?

> Very true. A wholly free market is actually quite toxic, as a certain Adam Smith noted. Especially when it's dishonest.

Yes. Yes, yes, yes! Exactly this.

the FTC "simply substituted its own judgment for a private firm's decision as to how to design a product to satisfy as many users as possible."

Because that is what we pay them to do. And there is a very good reason; because private firms measure customer satisfaction through the lens of maximization of profit (fairly short run profit in the case of apps), and the FTC measures it through imperfect objective analysis of the rational self-interest and informedness of the transaction participants. Gee, here's a surprise: Those two measures don't always agree, and sometimes, when they are far enough out of whack, it actually increases GDP in the long run if you limit the freedom of people to engage in inefficienty transactions.

A really good example of such potentially inefficient transactions is children, who do not understand how much time and effort it costs to acquire money, are in the throes of video game passion and a screen pops up saying, "Win More, Only $3.99! Buy Now!"

Joshua Wright, an FTC commissioner who dissented...

A market filled with efficient transactions increases GDP in the long run relative to a market with less efficient transactions. So, tell me, Joshua Wright; do you hate the economy? Do you want a lower GDP? Do you want our corporations to lose money? Do want our wealthiest stockholders to have to buy slightly smaller Gulfstreams? Answer me, Mr. Wright: Do you hate America?

Re:Their Job

[BasilBrush]

The 15 minute behavior has been documented for over 3 years.

Which doesn't mean that you can expect any non-geek to know it. Heck I'm a geek, and I've owned iOS devices since 2008 and if I ever knew about a 15 minute window I've forgotten.

And the attitude that if a kid does something against it's parents wishes, it's a bad parent is just risible. ALL kids find the opportunities available to them to skirt the rules. Even when they're old enough to know what the rules are. And they can be pretty cunning.

Your judgements show a remarkable lack of knowledge of the real world. Not just of parenting but of what people know of technology.

And for what are you protecting the businesses here, in their efforts to fleece the public? They don't need your help.

The FTC are absolutely there to protect consumers from businesses that seek to exploit expected gaps in consumer knowledge. Even more so when the actor is a child.

Re:Their Job

[BasilBrush]

Turn in your computer. You shouldn't be posting on the internet if that's the best you can do.

Re:Their Job

[demonrob]

as if the kid will notice the psychologist whilst crossing the road concentrating on the all important game screen.

The arcade

[Bender Unit 22]

As the arcades closed I thought that never again people would accept coin-op's.
But the Smurfberries in all their incarnations and the DLC's on PC clearly shows I was wrong. :)

Real world equivalent

[StripedCow]

You go to a theme-park with your children.
If the kids want to have an ice-cream, they just go to the ice-cream stand, order and say the name of their parents (you), so they get the bill when you leave.

Who thinks this is not a brilliant idea?

(Sorry for not posting a car-analogy)

There is a simple solution

[DrXym]

Impose a maximum in-game purchase to the game's rating and impose a maximum spend per account per month. i.e. an E for everyone game may have a max spend of $5. If a user wants to override these settings then they can from the account settings. The power of the default mean the majority won't and thus people will be protected from nasty surprises. Oh and ban more than 1 in game currency that maps onto real world money and require them to show a dollar / euro / pound value against any purchase that uses it.

Aside from protecting users it deters games from being glorified skinner boxes with cow-clicker complexity and micropayments galore and encourages producers to start making actual games again.

Re:There is a simple solution

[Mr. Slippery]

Is this where we set the bar of government interference in our private lives?

Commerce is not your "private life". It is the transfer of "property", something created by government fiat and enforced by government guns. And it in most cases is it the transfer of "property" to or from a corporation, an entity created by government fiat.

If it doesn't directly involve government issued land and resource deeds (the root of all physical property), copyright and patents and trademarks (the root of all so-called "intellectual property"), or corporate charters, and doesn't involve government-enforced contracts, then you can maybe complain about government interference in your "private life".

Untrue statements

[Anonymous Coward]

When companies take advantage of customer addiction tendencies, it's predatory, and causes long-term suffering, for short-term satisfaction.
Since the companies can't regulate themselves, the government must do it for them.

Coke is without coke these days as well, and that is a good thing (coke causes the brain to become psychopathic over time).

Because The Children

[Anonymous Coward]

Socialism is democratic worker control of the means of production, you troglodyte. That's all it is. There is less security under socialism than capitalism, because nobody is allowed to rely on invested capital. This minor controversy has absolutely nothing to do with socialism.

All that's going on here is a few rich guys whining that they want ways of taking money from people using a technological loophole - the ease with which a child can use mom's credit card - rather than directly as a result of a contract formed between two adults providing informed consent. If anything, the capitalist position would run contrary to TechFreedom's argument because capitalism strives for informed, rational agents, necessarily treating children as a special case. To be clear, children usually cannot form contracts, but nobody owns children, therefore they cannot be entirely responsible for their actions.This reflects their status as developing humans.

So get off your high horse and stop worrying that the sky is falling. Every dull member of every new generation speaks like the "golden days" have come to an end because xyz minor thing that they don't really understand means the end of the world.

Re:Because The Children

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, hey, why not? Not sure where to put that apostrophe, slap it on at the end!!

Freedom Hater?

[Bing Tsher E]

Why is this phrased from the extreme viewpoint of one of the sides in the issue? The phrase "Why Do You Hate In-App Purchasing Freedom?" could be rewritten "Why Do You Hate Me Exercising My Freedom To Steal Your Kid's Cellphone By Trading It For a Cheap Toy He Wants?"

I'm sorry. The issue concerns In App Purchases that are engineered to allow gullible kids to rack up charges on their parent's phone.

Re:Because The Children

[rmdingler]

It seemed safer than leaving it out, what with the growing strength of the punctuation lobby.

Re:Socialism? ... riiiiiiight

[Bing Tsher E]

A 15 minute refund period would be delicious. It would completely destroy the IAP marketplace. I'd be able to again buy high quality games for $5-15 and not be faced with game designers who focus on nickel-and-dime ripping me off. They'd actually have to work on making the game fun enough for me to be willing to pay for the non-trial version. Wolfenstein 3D and later Doom did this well with shareware trial versions. Similarly a whole bunch of games from that era: Jill of the Jungle, Commander Keen, etc.

"Disable In App Purchases" should be a checkbox in the settings for the App Market and it should simply render invisible any games that incorporate In App Purchases, just the way games for the Tablet don't appear in the Google Play market when I open the Google Play app on my cellphone.

Re:Because The Children

[MightyMartian]

Socialism isn't a system, it's a class of systems. It encompasses everything from social democratic state on Scandinavia to Marxist-Leninist states.

Obvious and Intuitive

[PopeRatzo]

What the fuck are these so-called "benefits" of a "15 minute open purchase window" that are so obvious and intuitive?

Forget about "the children". Who is so badly damaged as a person that they feel that it's currently just too hard to buy stuff online?

You know, I'm starting to think those kooks over at Adbusters might be on to something. We are one fucked-up society, and it looks like the marketing/industrial complex is in large part to blame.

Re:Obvious and Intuitive

[gnasher719]

What the fuck are these so-called "benefits" of a "15 minute open purchase window" that are so obvious and intuitive?

Forget about "the children". Who is so badly damaged as a person that they feel that it's currently just too hard to buy stuff online?

Let's see... I want to spend £10 on some music. So I go to the iTunes Store. Find a song that I like, click on buy, and I'm asked to enter the password for my AppleId. The song downloads. I go on looking for other stuff to buy. Find another song, click on "Buy", and I have to type in my password again. Bugger. I go on looking for more songs. Click on "Buy", and again I have to type in my password. Fuck that.

Maybe it's hard to understand, but the same feature that allows _your_ bloody kids to spend _your_ hard earned money allows _me_ to happily spend _my_ hard earned money on things I like.

Re:How about...

[gnasher719]

... labeling all games with IAPs as rentals and displaying the average cost of being able to keep playing... per hour or something like that?

But most are not rentals. For example, "Candy Crush" with levels 1 to 35 is free. Candy Crush with levels 1 to 50 costs £0.69. Candy Crush with levels 1 to 64 costs £1.38. And so on. There's no rental. Once you paid it's yours. For £1.38 you get a game with 65 levels, which you can download on all your devices and play as long as you like.

Re:Because The Children

[HiThere]

You clearly don't understand the meaning of EITHER socialism or communism. Communism predates Karl Marx. And Stalinism isn't even Marx-Lenninism. (Note the hyphenated designation, as that which Lenin preached and practiced wasn't what Marx preached.) Also neither is Maoism, which also is only one variety of communism. (Stalinism isn't ANY kind of communism. It's just standard totalitarian dictatorship with an unusually brutal and despotic dictator. Only Idi Amin could claim to practice the same kind of government, though Pot Pol had certain similarities.)

Calling yourself something doesn't mean that the label rightfully applies to you. The North Korean government calls itself a "People's Republic", but it doesn't match the conventional meaning of Republic. (Do note, however, that Republics are normally controlled by an Oligarchy of some sort. It's not the "feel good" term that USians are generally taught it is. Not if you really understand what it means and how it operates. And the constitution guarantees that the states will have a Republican [Things of the Public] form of government, not a Demmocratic [i.e., power derives from the people] kind of government. And in both these cases I grossly simplified the meanings of the terms. In fact I'd need to research a bit to determine precisely what each meant, though basically in a Republic power derives from ownership of things, and in a Democracy power derives from being a "person", for some meaning of person. [E.g., slaves were originally considered to be only 2/3 of a person in the US.] Please note that this doesn't mean that the power belongs to the people, but rather that the government allocates power on the basis of people.)