It's all about the money, the only thing they'll have to change is their developer agreement clause regarding not being allowed to use or link to an alternative payment system and that will only apply to IAP.
They lead off with a couple softballs: "[Submit] the most recent org chart..." "[Submit] a description of each of the products and services listed below [because we can't be bothered to read your website.]
Then it gets more challenging: "[Submit] all information--whether created by the Company of a third party--regarding the US market share of the Company and each of the Company's competitors in any market in which the Company offers or sells the following products or services [followed by a list of 12 Apple products and technologies]."
"[Submit] all financial statements prepared on an annual or quarterly basis ... since 2016 including profit-and-loss reports for each of the Company's products and services listed below [same list of 12 things]. If the Company does not prepare or maintain financial statements ... for the above-listed products or services ... the Company should submit the revenues, cost, and expenses for each product or service listed and use its best efforts to provide a profit-and-loss statement for each product or service." [Apple's competitors and financial analysts will love this.]
Then they request all communications with a bunch of senior executives for the past decade on dozens of topics.
And in the instructions they clarify that the rules don't apply to them:
"In responding to the request be apprised that ... the Committee does not recognize: any purported non-disclosure privileges associated with the common law including, but not limited to, the deliberative-process privilege, the attorney-client privilege, and attorney work product protections; any purported privileges and protections from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act; or any purported contractual privileges, such as non-disclosure agreements."
This one letter will literally cost Apple a few million dollars.
WiFi was designed for use by the public as a digital communications standard. Apple restricts use of the WiFi SDK on iPhones to just its own software. Apple uses its private WiFi SDK to do things like building a valuable online database for location support. App developers cannot write their own apps to do the same thing. All WiFi scanning apps, once a popular segment of the utility app category, were banned for using the private SDK many years ago. This is just one example of why the AppStore is anti-competitive.
They lead off with a couple softballs: "[Submit] the most recent org chart..." "[Submit] a description of each of the products and services listed below [because we can't be bothered to read your website.]
Then it gets more challenging: "[Submit] all information--whether created by the Company of a third party--regarding the US market share of the Company and each of the Company's competitors in any market in which the Company offers or sells the following products or services [followed by a list of 12 Apple products and technologies]."
"[Submit] all financial statements prepared on an annual or quarterly basis ... since 2016 including profit-and-loss reports for each of the Company's products and services listed below [same list of 12 things]. If the Company does not prepare or maintain financial statements ... for the above-listed products or services ... the Company should submit the revenues, cost, and expenses for each product or service listed and use its best efforts to provide a profit-and-loss statement for each product or service." [Apple's competitors and financial analysts will love this.]
Then they request all communications with a bunch of senior executives for the past decade on dozens of topics.
And in the instructions they clarify that the rules don't apply to them:
"In responding to the request be apprised that ... the Committee does not recognize: any purported non-disclosure privileges associated with the common law including, but not limited to, the deliberative-process privilege, the attorney-client privilege, and attorney work product protections; any purported privileges and protections from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act; or any purported contractual privileges, such as non-disclosure agreements."
This one letter will literally cost Apple a few million dollars.
Tell them to go pound sand. Where is it in our laws that requires an entity to generate all of this information?
At a guess, it's part of corporate law.
@randominternetperson's complaint about the Committee being above "the rules" is somewhat harsh - this language needs to be included so that corporations don't hide behind a range of "Can't tell you because..." excuses. Sadly, past abuse of those protections has forced their application to be limited. This letter initially smells like over-reach by the government, but if they didn't ask for all this information (and threaten the companies so that they'll actually receive it) they'd be faced with charges of incompetence once the investigation is completed.
Having said that, that line of "[Submit] all information--whether created by the Company of a third party--regarding the US market share of the Company and each of the Company's competitors in any market in which the Company offers or sells the following products or services [followed by a list of 12 Apple products and technologies]." opens them up to a firehose of potentially irrelevant data, because who can definitively say that "all information... regarding the US market share..." is a finite subset of the Internet?
Comments
It's all about the money, the only thing they'll have to change is their developer agreement clause regarding not being allowed to use or link to an alternative payment system and that will only apply to IAP.
Sherlocking; non-issue.
"Stacking" their apps; non-issue.
@randominternetperson's complaint about the Committee being above "the rules" is somewhat harsh - this language needs to be included so that corporations don't hide behind a range of "Can't tell you because..." excuses. Sadly, past abuse of those protections has forced their application to be limited. This letter initially smells like over-reach by the government, but if they didn't ask for all this information (and threaten the companies so that they'll actually receive it) they'd be faced with charges of incompetence once the investigation is completed.
Having said that, that line of "[Submit] all information--whether created by the Company of a third party--regarding the US market share of the Company and each of the Company's competitors in any market in which the Company offers or sells the following products or services [followed by a list of 12 Apple products and technologies]." opens them up to a firehose of potentially irrelevant data, because who can definitively say that "all information... regarding the US market share..." is a finite subset of the Internet?