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I'm trying to think of another example where a US government entity prevented a private US company (Apple or Google) from distributing software within the US.
Bytedance is not a US company.
Yes but the owners of the OS and app stores are, which is I believe the original commenter’s point. And the text of the bill is not “TikTok you shall pull your app”, it’s “Apple you shall disable the App Store listing”.
Oh, I see. But not just downloads, it also prohibits operation. https://leg.mt.gov/bills/2023/billpdf/SB0419.pdf
But not only do they have an argument on first amendment grounds, given that the company and product are specifically named and targeted, I think this would be considered a bill of a attainder, and explicitly unconstitutional.
It seems more like “These substances are now illegal to sell, possess, or use.” Right or wrong, they made it stick for a very long time.
Data gets a lot closer to "speech" than a substance does. This will be interesting to watch, for sure.
That it will.
The closest I can think of is Napster and LimeWire, but I'm not sure if those died because of government action, or just civil lawsuits.
Then again, as pointed out, TikTok is not from an American company, so that's irrelevant.
But I'm talking about Apple being banned from distributing or, and Apple is a US company.
If you're concerned about stores, we have plenty of regulations around certain types of content. For example, if something infringes copyright, it must be pulled. I think there's something in the law about porn as well. Some states disallow gambling apps.
All of those hit Apple and Google Play, as well as other app stores.
I hear you, but those are classes of apps, not specific apps. And none of those laws would appear to apply to TikTok.
Surely "sends data to a foreign adversarial government" is on the books somewhere.
Perhaps, but Chrome does the same every time you hit a Russian website.
That's an entirely different thing though, and it's like saying the government should block the Play Store because you can use it to download TikTok. The Russian website example is more like the government requiring ISPs to block certain domains, or requiring DNS services to change their nameservers, and we already do that with DMCA takedowns.
Apple hasn't been banned from anything and they have nothing to do with this. What's your point?
So they won't be banned from distributing TikTok in the app store?
PGP back in the day.
It was okay to distribute in the US, wasn't it?