Apple Enforces New Check on Apps in China as Beijing Tightens Oversight (reuters.com) 57
Apple has started requiring new apps to show proof of a Chinese government licence before their release on its China App Store, joining local rivals years that had adopted the policy years earlier to meet tightening state regulations. From a report: Apple began last Friday requiring app developers to submit the "internet content provider (ICP) filing" when they publish new apps on its App Store, it said on its website for developers. An ICP filing is a longtime registration system, required for websites to operate legally in China, and most local app stores including those operated by Tencent and Huawei have adopted it since at least 2017.
To get an ICP filing licence, developers need to have a company in China or work with a local publisher, which has been an obstacle for a large number of foreign apps. Apple's loose ICP policy has allowed it to offer far more mobile apps than local app rivals and helped the U.S. tech giant boost its popularity in China, its third-largest market behind the Americas and Europe. The decision by Apple comes after China further tightened its oversight over mobile apps in August by releasing a new rule requiring all app stores and app developers to submit an "app filing" containing business details with the regulators. Chinese regulators last week released names of the first batch of mobile app stores that have completed app filings, but Apple's App Store was not among those on the list.
To get an ICP filing licence, developers need to have a company in China or work with a local publisher, which has been an obstacle for a large number of foreign apps. Apple's loose ICP policy has allowed it to offer far more mobile apps than local app rivals and helped the U.S. tech giant boost its popularity in China, its third-largest market behind the Americas and Europe. The decision by Apple comes after China further tightened its oversight over mobile apps in August by releasing a new rule requiring all app stores and app developers to submit an "app filing" containing business details with the regulators. Chinese regulators last week released names of the first batch of mobile app stores that have completed app filings, but Apple's App Store was not among those on the list.
Part of nationalist turn in China (Score:3)
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Seriously, how much is Pooh Bear paying you to go on forums and do this?
i would kindly encourage you to reflect on what you have just written there.
do you think it does make actual sense? how do you interpret spurting that obvious nonsense while prefixing it with an explicit appeal to "seriousness"?
funny, eh, how our minds work (or don't)? godspeed.
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Re: Part of nationalist turn in China (Score:2, Insightful)
That apple would rather play into fascism than simply abandon the market isn't surprising.
If Apple rolls over that easily in China (Score:3)
what makes you think they really work to respect your privacy and resist the US TLAs' own efforts to undermine it.
Hint: this is a rhetorical question.
Re:If Apple rolls over that easily in China (Score:5, Insightful)
The laws in the US are much more clear and the lines between what the government can make a company do are pretty strong.
Example with Apple was the case a few years ago where the FBI was practically begging Apple for help on how to get an iPhone unlocked and Apple pretty much refusing and the FBI had to get some 3rd party help in the matter.
It's fun for the memes to equivocate the USA and China but really there are some extremely important differences in how each nation operates. I'm not here to defend or say the NSA and such aren't getting into unsavory business but there really is no comparison. We can recognize that and still hold the "America Bad" position.
Re:If Apple rolls over that easily in China (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe but where can I FOIA the CCP for that information? What are my options for changing the structure of the government every 2/4/6 years? Where are teh decades and centuries of case law? Where are the Chinese Snowden's and Manning's blowing the whistle on misdeeds? Where is the still somewhat robust 4th estate in China to dig up these secrets?
Again, this is not to go all "rah rah rah, America is great and without fault" but if you think you as a dissident or citizen or company have more protections against the state in China than the US I personally think you off the rocker a bit.
Re:If Apple rolls over that easily in China (Score:4, Interesting)
Here you go, I am certainly not saying it's going to be successful but the fact this exists is already a difference.
https://www.nsa.gov/Helpful-Li... [nsa.gov]
Here is a FOIA request the EFF received from the NSA about Heartbleed. Did they get everything they wanted, no, but they got their day at court. The fact we get this back and forth in the public space is already a stark contrast.
https://www.eff.org/cases/eff-... [eff.org]
So Trump or Biden again *eyeroll*
You certainly don't have to like the choice but to say the two of them are equivalent, well, again, off your rocker a bit. Both candidates had to survive primary challenges. Where are Xi's primary and electoral challengers?
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Remind us all again who in government was punished for breaking all those laws which are so much clearer? Oh just the whistleblowers instead. Seems legit.
Cart before the horse, can you show me first where those whistleblowers in China that got mass media coverage and were willing to take the risk in the first place?
Flushed down the crapper as soon as Trump stacked the Supreme Court with more corrupt judges.
Yeah and Trump was fairly elected, the people who voted got what they wanted. All you are saying is the system worked, you just don't like the outcome and Trump was ousted the next election.
Just pretend there aren't also secret FISA courts etc.
And yet we got investigation by people like Durham and others that publicized the proceedings that happened in these areas. Where is the same in China?
You're delusional if you think those people have any protections in either country.
And ye
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You're pivoting. The fact we got the whistleblowers at all, out in the public, with a free press that was able to publish all those findings without fear of reciprocity is already a miles wide difference between the two states.
Is Gitmo shut down? No but Obama reduced the prisoner count from 250 to 41, then Trump signed an order to keep it open. Biden has pledged to close it but while that hasn't happened he also released another 10 detainees. And again, we got very public press reporting on the misdeeds
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And the next Trump could decide to expand it, or open 10 more like Starbucks franchises.
True, that's up to us as citizens to make the right call.
You keep pretending America is somehow different. But it's really not.
That makes it very different! It's the most important difference!
Anyone who says otherwise is a Chinese propagandist
It was an example question but there is a lot of non-government reporting done on the topic, it's easy to find. The US does not in fact have actual state run media. Does China?
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That's a neat way to answer my question without answering anything I asked.
China just does it out in the open. You know where you stand.
Not an answer, give me some examples. I'll give you an American one, two IRS agents were in front of congress recently as whistleblowers about what they saw as misconduct by their agency, they're not in jail and they still have jobs.
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The laws in the US are much more clear and the lines between what the government can make a company do are pretty strong.
Haha! That was pretty funny.
Still, let's assume you were serious for a second: what if the law is unacceptable? You do realize Apple complies with the law in China, right? So you really believe the law in the US is written with we-the-people's interest in mind?
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So you really believe the law in the US is written with we-the-people's interest in mind?
That's a different question, what I am saying is American citizens have the ability to change the makeup of the government and thus the laws. Look at the differences we got in 4 years with the FCC and FTC with who gets to pick who leads the organizations. The makeup of these things could look very very different again in 18 months.
To go back to my example, do you think if China wants Apple to crack open an iPhone for them are they going to take Apple to court or go through all the rigmarole written out he
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what I am saying is American citizens have the ability to change the makeup of the government and thus the laws
And what I am saying is that they don't. They only have the illusion of being able to change things through elections.
Only rich people get voted in to important offices (with a POTUS election running into billions), and once voted in, they do the bidding of the corporations that bankrolled their campaigns. Not their constituents.
That's how the TLAs in the US routinely conduct unconstitutional surveillance of the citizenry, with the active help of Big Tech (who, remember, holds the politicos' balls in their
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remember all the unconstitutional things the American government does in secret.
How do we know about those secret things hmmmm? Could it be our established laws, independent 4th estate, protections for whistleblowers and the democratic choices we get to make about that?
in China you at least know up front
No, I don't, because I am not a Chinese citizen, the Chinese government has 0 accountability to me.
Your entire argument boils down to "nuh uh, American also bad" and I'm sorry, gonna need more than that. When is the next Chinese Congressional and Presidential elections?
Re: If Apple rolls over that easily in China (Score:2)
"The laws in the US are much more clear and the lines between what the government can make a company do are pretty strong."
PRISM is still unconstitutional, and apple is still part of it.
Therefore, BULLSHIT.
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The fact an NSA program exists (does it still exist?) does not make the laws of China and the US equivalent.
There were at least 4 lawsuits about PRISM the government had to respond to in court. Did China have to do the same over the Great Firewall or any of their other programs? Genuinely curious if we are comparing them.
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You are sidestepping my point (China is an undemocratic, single party rule state where the citizenry has much less control over the makeup of their government and their laws) and I think purposefully since it cuts against your point.
Yes China can make it's own laws, that's the entire concept of being a sovereign nation, news at 11.
China is upfront about what they do.
You saying that does not make it so and the whole point is we especially in the West and especially it's own citizens don't actually know that. You are making the assumption you
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Apple goes as far as the local laws allow it. It will not fight laws for its user's privacy. Hence they just do whatever is (relatively) cheap, but not more. Sadly, that makes them a lot better than most others.
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Sadly, that makes them a lot better than most others.
for example who? not to nitpick, just to make sure i understand what you mean.
actually, scratch that, what do you mean? it's obvious that any corp will try to compromise with any laws in effect in the region they do business in. it's just the logical thing to do from a business perspective, and specifically from a business perspective that compromise is expected to also maximize gains. i don't see what's special here besides the obvious click-baity notoriety of not one but both actors (*), what is factually
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I mean companies that hand over data when they do not have to, for example ones that hand over data on simple requests when they could have insisted on a court order. This is mostly the US context, in China it may be "handing over data when some small functionary asks for it, instead of insisting it is an important functionary asking for it". In short, being far too willing to go along with things. And that, Apple is not.