Apple Revokes EU Distribution Rights for Torrent Client, Developer Left in the Dark * TorrentFreak

torrentfreak.com Apple Revokes EU Distribution Rights for Torrent Client, Developer Left in the Dark * TorrentFreak

Apple has inexplicably revoked the EU distribution rights for the iTorrent app, and left its developer in the dark without answers.

While alternative app stores operate independently and are required by EU law, Apple is still in a position to exert some control. This became apparent a few weeks ago, when iTorrent users suddenly ran into trouble when installing the app.

Thought this was an interesting story, since it's pretty analagous to the recent Android situation, with third party app stores being enabled to some extent, but the company retaining ultimate censorship power.

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Are third party iOS app stores available on the US?
- No. But we can sideload. Two apps for free, have to be authorized every 7 days. (It’s actually three, but the app that does this for you takes a slot, so that and two others.)
  You can also get a developer license for $99/year that lets you do unlimited with a much longer authorization window.
  
  Is it worth it? All things considered? Genuinely asking.
  
  Nothing in Apple's ecosystem is worth it.
  
  What qualifies for you as “worth it?”
  
  i think you should be asking yourself that?
  
  It was just a snarky comment. Apple does a lot of things well. I just find their anticompetitive practices deplorable.
  
  You know what I find deplorable? Spyware as a feature. Like Android.
  Also, Google bypasses ad blockers. Say you have an iPhone, or an unrooted Android phone. You're blocking ads? You're using DNS to do it. The Google app, and Google apps in general, ignore the system DNS settings and use Google's own DNS. There are some good reasons they do it, but the chief upshot for Google is, they get to inject ads into a device whose owner explicitly tries to block them. Since ads can also carry malware/ransomware, Google is intentionally opening a security hole in a device you may not be able to 100% secure, but could be fairly secure. Relatively secure. For a smartphone.
  I actually got ransomware on a popular Android blog through an ad they served. I'd just wiped my phone — this was the last Android phone I'd owned. So I mean, I'd wiped the internal ROM. Repartitioned it, installed a recovery (TWRP, naturally), and then flashed a custom OS. Back then, you couldn't get stock Android on a national carrier in the US. So, I was flashing a European CFW customised with the CDMA radios that the US was using at the time (we're all GSM now like the rest of the world, I think the last CDMA towers, which were 3G, have been shut down but I'm not sure — Sprint and US Cellular were CDMA and they're both part of T-Mobile, and Verizon was the big one and they're all on the GSM tech now). Anyway, I hadn't installed AdAway yet, I was just reading tech blogs, when my screen went red, said illegal content was detected on my device, pay "the FBI" so many thousand dollars in Bitcoin to unlock my device. I laughed, wiped the internal ROM again and started over... installing AdAway before going out to the open web. Lesson learned. But that's the kind of thing Google intentionally opens its users up to by tunneling around the ad blocker. (I don't name the tech blog because I contacted them and they were very helpful in identifying the source of the ransomware attacks and getting that advertiser de-listed. So there is no reason to "name and shame." But it can happen to anyone, and without even going to "shady" sites.)
  
  Oh, I hate a lot about Android/Google too. One particular pet peeve of mine is that WebAPKs are still exclusive to Chrome (and, on Samsung devices only, Samsung Internet) despite the FAQ promising that "We are working on it. We are committed to making this available to all browsers on Android and we will have more details soon." (Last updated 2017-05-21)
  There is no good option in smartphones, you have to choose the lesser evil. For me that's Android. I can appreciate that for some people it would be iOS. What drives me up a wall is that people defend these awful practices.
  
  Google’s new motto appears to be, “Just be Evil.”
  
  I would be ok with the anticompetitiveness if I could just install my own ram in my own computer, or replace a hard drive, or fiddle with and not break iPhone cable that are thickness of tissue paper, and equally as durable. Also, I wouldn’t be ok with the anticompetitiveness. Also the enshittification of their software drives me up the wall regularly. I made a Lemmy community just to have a platform to removed about it. But to me, even with all that (and more) they are still the least terrible option. We very much need to make stock buybacks illegal again.
  
  If you already shelled out the shekels for an Apple device, you certainly don't care about paying superfluous money so this shouldn't be an issue.
  
  I don’t do it. The 7 day thing really isn’t worth it and they aren’t any iOS apps to sideload I care about.
  Delta is the coolest emulator due to cloud sync and it’s in the App Store.
  
  I consider it worth it for an ad free utub sideload as well as a manga app I found through AltStore. The utub on its own was worth it.
  
  Which utub app?
  
  There is YouTube++ or YTlitePlus. They haven’t been updated in a while but do work as long as return downvote for shorts is disabled.
  
  Probably uYou+
  
  Stores like AltStore and SideStore automatically re-auth apps so it's less of a hassle than you might think. I literally only use it for Tails, the e621 app.
  
  does it really have that limitation? I sideloaded a tweaked copy of spotify like 2 years ago and haven't had to do anything to maintain it since.
  
  Yes. If you're a free developer (you have to register as a developer to even do this), you have to re-authorise the app every 7 days or it gets "revoked" which means the app will not launch.
  You also have to install a certificate that certifies the app(s) to you. This is generally safe, but you should be careful with trust certificates. You're basically taking full responsibility for the code that's being executed on your device. If you haven't audited the source code (or if someone you trust hasn't), it might be a risk.
  If you used a signing service, someone has bought a bunch of paid developer licenses and they've given you the certificate for one of them. Once Apple discovers this, they'll revoke that developer license which revokes your apps. The signing service will then issue you a new certificate. Revokes aren't super common, or so they say (I've never used a signing service).
  
  They recently (two days ago) did a massive revoke on the paid certificates. All known sellers got hit with the massive revoke and it is at the moment a bit of a mess.
  Rumor goes that Apple also hit actual developers with the revoke hit. So curious how that goes.
  
  Interesting. I don't really remember what I did to put it on my phone, but it does appear separately in the app library under my name instead of the 'entertainment' category. I haven't wanted to do anything with it since it still works.
  
  i'm pretty sure you also need to have a mac device since it requires xcode (or did last time i researched it; i don't have ios anymore)

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