Android, Google and free content licenses. Who is to blame and what to do

The story of another ban.

Hello! Have you heard about the bans of apps and developers on Google Play? Here is another such story. Plus, an attempt to collect similar cases in one place and propose some kind of action plan to prevent Google arbitrariness in this area. For it is not good when you are banned for the legal use of free material. And I personally like the idea of CC BY-SA type licenses for content that allow any use, including commercial use. In particular, including because of such a license, we developers have such excellent sites as StackOverflow, where I have even been elected moderator. Unfortunately, companies like Google do not respect the ideas behind such licenses. Here is my story.

It all started quite standard. The application for Android was made back in 2014 and quite normally lived in the then benevolent for independent developers of Google Play. The application was a client to a site with texts. Nothing special, but people liked it (especially the ability to download texts to the device and read without the Internet). The application took texts from the site http://scpfoundation.net/ . In short - a site for joint literary creation within the framework of a common fantasy universe, quite famous in narrow circles. Initially appeared in the USA (original site: http://www.scp-wiki.net ), then the community translated thousands of articles from English into more than 10 languages. For history, it is important that all content on sites (original and translation sites) is distributed under a free Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License , which is written on every page of the site at the very bottom. This also applies to the logo of the site - here it is on Wikipedia, indicating the license: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:SCP_Foundation_(emblem).svg . The license itself allows any use of the material, including for commercial purposes, requiring only attribution and preservation of the original license from derivative materials. This information (source of texts indicating the license) was both in the description of the applications and in the applications themselves.

For several years everything was perfect, work on the application was in full swing. Initially, it was decided to make all the features of the application free and to make the possibility of voluntary donations through subscriptions built into the application. However, as it is not surprising, there was almost no income from this. As a result, it was decided to monetize the most popular features of the application, compensating for the inconvenience of users by opening the source code . And also start to release versions for other languages, not only for Russian. For a while, the application (Russian version) even got into the top 10 in the "News and Magazines" category on Google Play. I could talk about the development process for a long time and, it seems, quite interestingly (at least it would be more interesting to me personally to write about it than what is written in this article), but the purpose of the article is not this story. I only mention that on this project I can say, I learned to program, tried new things, made mistakes and learned a lot. For this article from the development, the following is important: initially it was necessary to parse HTML on the server and from there send it through the API for all sites with translations, and not make a separate application for each language with parsing on the client. But I now know this, and 5 years ago I had little idea of ​​how to write a server. Yes, and did not see much sense in this on the principle - works - do not touch. Now yes, I’m writing the API slowly and plan to leave on iOS and, if it is, return to Google Play.

Then alarm bells went, one by one. First, they started rejecting new applications (the same code, but for another site with translations into another language) for copyright infringement. If I'm not mistaken, new versions began to be rejected for this reason in the summer of 2017. However, each time it was possible to solve it by correspondence with technical support, which even prompted a special form in which you can notify Google of the release of a new application by sending them any files that are needed. In my case, if I remember correctly, it was enough to specify a link to the site and say that there is a license below that permits the use of content. After that, a letter came from Google that everything was OK - lay it out, we have stored your information. Also, deletions (about the difference between deletions and locks - later) of applications began, for example, mentioning the names of other applications in the description. In particular, for the name of one of the games made on the site’s universe, although, in theory, the license should allow it. But okay, I'm not a lawyer, maybe Google is right here, and we just removed what Google didn’t like and continued to live. Then the story of application deletions began due to the lack of a privacy policy and the processing of personal data. Here we were not alone, the phenomenon was massive (it seems that it started in 2018), and there are several generators of such agreements on the network that are quite simple to put on the website and add a link to the application description. Well, there was also a story with Appodeal, where the application was deleted due to some problems in their SDK. Here, I’m probably to blame myself - I used the beta version and Appodeal honestly warned about this problem the day before the removal (I just had to update the SDK to the latest stable version), although I didn’t manage to release the update in a day.

Here the first problem began with how everything is arranged in Google Play at the expense of application checks. At first I tried to release an update with the new version of the Appodeal SDK. It was rejected for the same reason, although the update was supposed to solve the problem. Upon reflection, I decided it was easier to simply remove the SDK, replacing its functionality (the SDK was used for advertising with rewards) with a similar functionality from AdMob. Do you think it helped? No matter how. Application update was rejected. But I'm a programmer, I'm cunning. I circumvented this Google Play bug simply and gracefully - I posted the update in the form of an alpha version and raised it to a working version. It worked. But don’t think that it made me think about something. And who doesn’t have problems with? Well, a bug, well, I went around it, everything is fine. And it was normal for a while.

There was also such a case: applications are deleted due to violations of the rules regarding advertising. As always, no examples - just a reference to extensive rules for developers. After correspondence with those. support, however, it was possible to find out that Google sees a problem in that links to my other applications on Google Play (just a list of similar applications for other languages) are not marked as ads. In my opinion, this is surprising: I can’t give in my application links to my own applications on the same platform? But okay Google, since you really want to - please. I saw no reason to argue and understand and released an update with the letters "Ad" above each link button. That helped.

And then it started. Everything happened quickly and very out of time. The letter comes "After a recent review, SCP Foundation France On / Offline database fr (en.dante.scpfoundation.fr) has been removed from Google Play." One of the applications (French version) was banned. It was a shock. Especially shocking was the reason - "Violation of Sexually Explicit Content policy". And, of course, nothing was said about exactly what Google found in the application. Probably, if you search a lot, then among the thousands of texts you could find a couple of pictures that were quite frank ... Well, I didn’t lose heart here either - Google probably knows what it’s doing and it’s my fault. I put up with the loss of the application (nevertheless, there were few users there and its loss did not knock us down too much) and began to update for other applications with all images turned off. In parallel, I began to look on the network for information on application bans. And then I began to have suspicions that this was not an accident, I am not alone and everything is very bad. It turned out that the network has many examples of application bans and even accounts.

Then it's time to make a digression and briefly talk about the moderation system on Google Play. There are 2-3 types of sanctions for applications (depending on how you count). Firstly, your application can be removed (status "Removed"). In this case, the application will not be available for search and download on Google Play, but you have access to it in the developer's console and you can release the update with corrections. This is not considered a serious violation and does not affect the status of the account. A subspecies of the first case is rejection of the update. In this case, the application is available for search and installation via Google Play, however, you should make changes to the planned update, as it violates something there in its current form. As well as the first case - this does not affect the status of the account and does not threaten you with anything except spoiling the mood and unnecessary work. And here is the last type of sanctions ... Here everything is bad. This is called "Suspended" and, if you see a letter from Google with this word - get ready for the worst. And the worst here is not the loss of an application that is not just deleted from Google Play, but permanently deleted, with a ban on updating and even viewing descriptions, statistics and reviews in the developer's console. The scary thing here is not that Google offers you to release a new version with a new package and recruit users, reviews, paying an audience and explain to users of the remote version why everything has stopped working for them. Another thing is scary - they hung a label on you and started a timer. Now you are an unreliable developer. And if for an unknown period of time (as far as I know, Google does not give any details about this anywhere, but people say that the strikes “go bad” for six months), you break something else and get 2 more “Suspended” applications - you just automatically and for life will cease to be an independent Android developer. Yes, probably this is said too loudly, but Google clearly prohibits creating a new developer account after the ban of the existing one and, taking into account the market share of Google Play, the ban in this store practically deprives the developer of access to the market.

But back to the main plot. After about 3 weeks after the ban of the application mentioned above, I sat on the next meeting, listened to some report and then 2 letters from Google came. I think you already guessed what they decided to please me with. That's right - 2 more applications were banned. This time 2 main ones - Russian and English versions. The first thought was - "hell, I did not manage to release an update with the pictures turned off", but the reason was different. Here is a quote from the letter: "After review, SCP Foundation EN Database On / Offline, en.dante.scpfoundation.eng, has been suspended and removed from Google Play as a policy strike because it violates the impersonation policy.". Those. Google decided that I impersonate another person and use someone else’s brand without permission. And this is strange. As it turned out, all applications with "SCP Foundation" in the name were immediately removed from the store. In addition to those that I uploaded later, notifying Google of a free content license through the form that I mentioned above. And yes, not only my applications, but also applications of other developers have been deleted. About 10 or more. I didn’t count them and now I don’t have the opportunity to find out how many there were and how many developers were faced with the fact that the years of their work were thrown by Google into the landfill using robots. Judging by the fact that now in Google Play you can not find a single application with "SCP Foundation" in the name - none of them could reach Google and correct the situation.

Naturally, in this case, I immediately appealed to both applications. He wrote that applications use content under a free license, gave them links to a site where it is clearly written about this. However, in response, they wrote me the following:

For example, your app is currently creating an unclear affiliation with SCP Foundation ( http://www.scp-wiki.net/ ).

If you are authorized by the site creator / content owner to redistribute the content in this manner, please reply this mail with verifiable documentation of content with the following examples: distribution agreement, authorization contract, or website domain ownership (PDF file).

Kindly note that you may ask the content owner to reply for this email from a verifiable domain (@ scpwiki.org) indicating your rights to use their brand asset and content.

Those. they want me to provide them with documents confirming my right to use the content and brand (as I understand it - the name + icon). Moreover, they need documents in the form of an answer to this letter from the mail server of the site. In addition, for the Russian and English versions, they had in mind 2 different domains, one of which is a mirror of the second. Although the Russian version of these sites did not take anything at all. And they are not at all concerned about the availability of a free license for content that permits its use, judging by the absence of any reaction to my mentions thereof, although this was enough for other applications, judging by the fact that other applications were not deleted (I recall - for I sent them a link indicating the license before putting it into the store). OK Google, I tried to fulfill this your requirement. I went to scp-wiki.net (he, like other translation sites, works on the Wikidot engine) and wrote to local administrators who deal with issues related to the content license through the site’s personal messaging system. In the help of the site it was written that they would respond within 24 hours. The first admin did not answer me, I wrote to the next, then another, then another ... The answer was deathly silence. But I was not discouraged (although the first panic attacks began to visit me, I still hoped for a solution to the problem within a week or two) and, wondering how many user subscriptions were canceled during this time, I climbed into the network to look for how I could create a document that site admins could send to google. It turned out something like that . At the same time I made a newsletter through FCM to users with a description of the situation, for which I built a simple page on the knee on the site .

Here we have to step back and talk about the recent scandal in the SCP Foundation community regarding content licenses, copyrights, threats, disclosures and more. Whether this is due to application blocking I do not know. I’ll just give you a number of facts - make your own conclusions. It was like this:

1. A citizen registered a trademark (hereinafter TK) in the name and logo of "SCP Foundation"
2. Using the document, he began to delete videos from YouTube, VK groups selling attributes, demand deductions from sales.
3. The victims turned to the admins of the Russian site.
4. Admins issued a long text with the position of the site (Russian and English) regarding the situation, rights to content under a free license and more. It seems like they started legal measures in this regard.

I myself am personally familiar with the citizen, and for some time we collaborated with him, mutually advertising his artbooks and our application. However, at one point we had some misunderstanding about the details of the agreement, which resulted in a rather unpleasant conversation, which, fortunately, was possible to settle at that time. However, during the conversation there were direct threats to remove applications from the Google store in connection with the use of TK.

This case was in December 2018. And the blocking of all applications with "SCP Foundation" in the title occurred at the end of March. After 2 weeks, my developer account was blocked. Apparently, due to the fact that by this time I had not received a response from the admins of the English site and had 3 strikes on my account. A day later, the owner of TK presented his own analogue of our application. It would seem that everything is developing and the reason for the blockage is clear ... However, in a personal conversation with the holder of the TK, he refuted my assumptions about his involvement and announced his intention to withdraw the TK. Google also did not confirm this assumption, ignoring my technical support questions about the presence of any claims of copyright holders regarding the name and logo of the applications, insisting on communication with the original site. Is there a connection here - decide for yourself. UPD: After the beginning of writing the article, the situation with TK was developed. The owner of the TK began using it to block communities in VK and remove board games from sale . The administration of the Russian site has released a post describing the situation and a message that the documents for the application to the court are almost ready. They were also supported by the original site, having started collecting donations for legal expenses. As a result, the site admins wrote a statement to the FAS . It is also worth mentioning the position of VK technical support - they completely ignore any indication of a license and ban the community.

But back to Google. As I understood at a certain moment, I had only one way to get my account and applications back - contact the admins of the original site and ask them to send an email with a ready-made document. It would seem - what could be easier? But I initially had great doubt about this option. Judging by what I knew about the site and its administration system, they simply might not have their own mail server. Or the desire to help me. , — . . , , , . , 4 (!) , , . Google . , . .

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We ask ourselves a question - can the situation be corrected? I think not. And that’s why I think so. Google is a commercial company and their goal is to make money. There is nothing wrong with that, of course. But from this it follows that the company will strive to reduce costs and increase profits. And try to avoid lawsuits. As a result, it is easier and cheaper for them to ban applications and developers automatically than to hire a huge number of specialists who will personally understand the nuances and view applications. Moreover, most likely, the bulk of the revenue from Google Play comes from a very small percentage of developers and applications. I have not seen detailed statistics on this topic, but I think it is unlikely that the situation here is very different from the situation with another Google service - YouTube. According to this study from Pex, only 0.64% of videos get more than 100,000 views. And these videos generate 81.6% of all platform views. And, because videos with a small number of views do not meet the criteria for including monetization, YouTube can remove 99% of all videos, almost without losing profit and significantly reducing infrastructure costs for storing them. Moreover, at the time of writing, YouTube’s rules are planning on December 10, 2019 to include an item where a user can be banned if he does not make a profit. "YouTube may terminate your access or access through your Google account to all or part of the Service if it considers that providing you access to the Service no longer makes commercial sense.". I’m sure that the same situation is in Google Play - you can ban 99% of developers and applications and even increase profits in this way.

And don’t think YouTube has a better tech support situation. Everything is the same there - automatic bans, unsubscribing bots, inability to talk to a person. Unless, of course, you are one of those who bring significant profit to the service.

What to do?

Is there any way to rectify the situation? I am not sure if this is possible. If only because it’s more profitable for Google to leave the situation as it is than to spend colossal amounts on its solution. It seems that we, the developers who have suffered from Google bots, can only write such articles again and again, hoping that someone on Google will read and manually restore the application / account. I think it’s not worth counting on the fact that the developers will unite and come forward as a united front for changing the situation. People are so arranged that they think about such problems only when they themselves are faced with this. I judge for myself - since I started developing for Android, I have come across articles about ban, but of course I never thought that this would happen to me either - I’m not a spammer, I don’t write viruses and in general any Google whim is always ready to fulfill . And I just did not think that I would lose everything due to the fact that I would not be able to change 1 word in the name of the application so that the Google bot would not ban it. Moreover, the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License license, as I understand it, allows this. At least I successfully posted 2 of my 10 apps to the Amazon store, and they had no questions about this.

Here is a list of what, in my opinion, should be done by any developer to minimize the damage from blocking applications / account (yes, not to avoid damage, but to reduce it, because no one will warn you that you have a Google algorithm found some kind of problem):

• Do not rely on the fact that having laid out and developed the application on Google Play, you can exist there for a long time and safely, living on income from advertising and sales. Sooner or later you may be banned.
• Do not use ads from AdMob or use it in conjunction with other SDKs that will not stop showing ads when you are banned. You should be able to switch the source of advertising from the server.
• Also, you should initially plan to launch not only on Google Play. In any case, you need to do this if you plan to launch in China, for example.
• If you offer in-app purchases in your application, then you need to do this so that you can use the same code for different stores. You can see an imperfect example in the sources of my application - different assemblies for different SDKs of built-in payments: https://github.com/mohaxspb/ScpFoundationCore/blob/develop/core/src/main/java/ru/kuchanov/scpcore/monetization/util /InappPurchaseUtil.kt
• You need to create a site for your application so that you can direct the user to another store on it when Google bans you. There you will have to give very long and complicated instructions on how to install the application, as Google in every way interferes with other stores on Android. Just estimate how many problems you had to solve to just install the application not from Google Play in the instructions here: https://scpfoundation.app/ . The Google Play application directly prohibits installation from outside of it, which simply kills all competition.
• You need to integrate a ban warning system into the application. For example, through push notifications. This was done for me, but not perfectly, as a result, after a ban, users with an Android version of more than 7 did not receive notifications. Keep track of the relevance of this code. And pray that Google doesn’t start banning projects in Firebase along with developer accounts, because alternative methods of sending push notifications were actually squeezed out of the market after Google banned background processes in Android version 8 and above without showing a constant notification, allowing it’s only for their applications through which their Firebase push notifications work.
• In no case do not lay out applications on which you are not going to make money. This mainly applies to beginners - you run the risk of getting banned even for an unpublished application project. Do not take chances.
• Do not assume that using content under a free license will protect you. Google may still require you to confirm the rights to use the content. And you have no one to receive this confirmation from.
• If you are an EU citizen, you can hope that lawmakers put things in order in the market. There is a draft law requiring the site to provide comprehensive information at the bathhouse

Also to this list, I would add my thoughts on how to improve the situation by creating competition. At one time, Google was obliged to provide a search engine choice the first time an Android device was launched. It would be logical to oblige Google to also offer a choice and application store. So competition could appear and, perhaps, Google would begin to provide those. phone support (as is done in Russia, where Google has a strong competitor in the person of Yandex) and would stop banning automatically, leaving the bots only the opportunity to advise moderators. Many problems could be solved by changing the ban practice without warning to the ban after the warning, so that the developer had the opportunity to fix something. Sometimes it’s enough to change one word in the name to remain in good standing with the Google Play moderation system.

I do not really believe that I alone can do anything to improve the situation, but I will not forgive myself if I do not even formally try. At least by writing this article. Still, albeit without much hope, I sent an appeal to the FAS (Federal Antimonopoly Service of Russia) of the following content (please note - I am not a lawyer or a writer - I am a programmer and the first time I have business with the state, so the statement is probably not in form and it’s generally naive, but it seems that, apart from the state, no one will protect Google developers):

If you are also not comfortable with the current situation - please do the same - I'm sure a lot will be better if there is healthy competition between stores in the Android application market.

Contacting Google.

Well, in the end, I would like to make an attempt to reach Google (suddenly someone from the company reads this article) and ask them to do at least one of the following:

• To restore all applications of all developers (including mine, with the packages ru.dante.scpfoundation and ru.dante.scpfoundation.eng ) that had the SCP Foundation in the name, because they were deleted in March 2019 (approximately 25-26) the use of the name and logo does not violate the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ ), and the administration of the site http://www.scp-wiki.net/ (aka http://scpwiki.org/ , from which the redirect went and was idle at the time of writing) there is no mail server for sending an email with permission to use what is already allowed. License information is listed on all pages of this site, as well as all other affiliate sites with translations into other languages. The license is indicated in the basement of the site. Here is my appeal number for both applications: 3-7609000025842
• Restore all developer accounts that, like my account, were blocked as a result of application blocking, which has SCP Foundation in its name, because this is not a violation.
• Allow developers to change the names of applications if Google believes that they are violating something, instead of banning applications and accounts immediately and without warning.
• Stop automatic application bans, give at least a couple of days the opportunity to make the simplest changes to fix violations, if any (in my case, just remove one word from the name).
• Add the ability to indicate rights to the content, name and logo of applications when they are published, instead of subsequent checks using an unknown algorithm. Consider rights granted by free licenses, including, for example, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License
• Provide better technical support. If for this the developer will need to make monthly / annual payments instead of $ 25 for creating an account - this is a small price for peace of mind and reliability.

I will be very happy if Google restores my applications and account, as for more than 5 years a lot of work has been invested in them. I hope at least someone hears me. I hope that one day Google will be able to set up a moderation system in such a way that developers will not at some point discover that some program has kicked them out of the market for an absurd mistake.