What if Popcorn Time made the user click a button 100 times before granting full access? Is that enough effort? Or if a link was proposed 2 clicks away from the homepage of a major browser? Is that too little effort? Where do we draw the line? I guess we don't, since the DMCA's scope is so large.
If the primary purpose of the app were still infringement but you had to click a button 100 times to use the app, the primary purpose of the app would still be infringement.
It does has a bearing on the ability to migrate to an alternative if it turns out to become awful, because someone will probably write an export script in that case.
It's one of the big advantages of FOSS: no vendor lock-in.
No I wouldn't. I've hoped too many times that this kind of monopolist-but-beneficial scheme would work for the best, only to be consistently disappointed that the company behind it will use it only for its own interests when it's in a bad situation. And then everyone wonders "why did we let this happen?" Yeah...
All it takes is replacing the actual phone dialer app (which AFAIK can only be done in AOSP-based distributions) to make it work transparently.
You'd also have to add a phone number broadcasting service to make it work with phone numbers though, but I can see the potential. I'm much more skeptical about range, battery or security concerns.
> You'd also have to add a phone number broadcasting service to make it work with phone numbers though, but I can see the potential. I'm much more skeptical about range, battery or security concerns
Have the app sync to a registry online when connectivity is available, and keep the key-value table locally (phone->deviceID).
Let's face it: besides its high price and average specs, Blackphone is a normal phone with a proprietary AOSP-based ROM. That's it. No hardware mic/wireless switch whatsoever, no open hardware, no open baseband, not even open software! This is appallingly bad, and if they make bank, it means very bad things for all of us.
You shouldn't have to already be a monopoly to have your acts qualified as anti-trust. Just like the law should punish you for trying to scam people even though your scam didn't work.
Otherwise, everyone would at least try to scam everyone else and would at least try to become a monopoly, since it costs nothing unless you win. And if you do win, the fine won't reach the amount you put in the bank (at least in the case of monopolies, e.g Microsoft).
Speaking broadly, that's not true. Monopolies are not intrinsically illegal. Antitrust law is specifically about business practices, and the notion that monopolies have to be more restricted because they can use their domination of one market to affect related markets. What got Microsoft into trouble wasn't having 90% of the operating system market, it was the allegation that they were using that monopoly to take over the nascent browser market, force OEMs to accept terms that prevented alternative OSes from competing on level ground, and so on.
I suspect Amazon is on their way to running afoul of such laws, or would be if the current business climate wasn't comparatively hostile to the notion of this kind of regulation. I don't think, however, that Zocalo is going to be a piece that attracts much attention; it's going to be the way Amazon seems to increasingly deal with their suppliers in Walmart-esque fashion. (Walmart was notorious for going beyond merely asking for "large customer" discounts and heading into "we will tell you what wholesale price we're going to pay, and you will either make it work or you'll lose the 60-70% of your business we represent.")
While your description of antitrust law is both commonly held and comparatively reasonable, it is unfortunately not always accurate in the United States. For a particularly egregious case, see US v. Alcoa, where the aluminum company was judged to be in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act simply for having a high market share, despite there being no accusation of any specific anti-competitive business practices.
