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Epic celebrates "the end of the Apple Tax" after court win in iOS payments case

(arstechnica.com)
432 points nobody9999 | 3 comments | 12 Dec 25 16:04 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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concinds ◴[12 Dec 25 17:23 UTC] No.46246274[source]▶
It feels like courts are not doing a good job promoting "competition".

- Apple shouldn't be able to charge for external payments, come on.

- Force prominent disclosure of refund policies. Epic Games doesn't allow them for IAP. Apple does. Epic knows exactly how predatory that is, betting some kids will find ways to spend thousands and the parents will be helpless. Ideally you'd have a law mandating refunds, but without that, there should be mandatory disclosure on the IAP screen, at least for microtransaction games. You can't have fair "competition" when you have an information asymmetry, and if these rulings don't mandate that, you'll open the floodgate for these gaming companies to screw over parents.

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1. arrosenberg ◴[12 Dec 25 17:30 UTC] No.46246370[source]▶
Antitrust laws were written in the early 1900s and updated through the 1950s. Credit cards weren't available until 1966 and didn't become widely used until the 1990s. Digital platforms weren't a thing until the late 90s/early 2000s and the Apple app store didn't exist until 2008.

The courts can only enforce the laws on the books. Congress needs to update the laws, but they won't because they are hopelessly corrupt :(

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2. lesuorac ◴[12 Dec 25 17:38 UTC] No.46246461[source]▶
A lot of laws don't need updating.

Courts don't allow you to submit false evidence yet somehow they need to update their produces to handle AI generated false submissions?

The issue is enforcement. Plain and simple. The anti-trust on the books are fine; no more amount of written laws will make regulators regulate.

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3. arrosenberg ◴[12 Dec 25 18:20 UTC] No.46246964[source]▶
Lina Khan did try and regulate. She had some successes, but the major cases w/r/t concentration of power against Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Meta and Apple have all moved slowly and (so far) failed to result in break ups.