asciiexpress.net legality

[wottle]

I posted a while back about the website ASCII for loading old games or generating new floppy disks. I really liked the idea, but found their mobile web interface to be a bit less than ideal. I actually threw together a native iOS app this evening, and while I need to tweak some of the UX, it's functioning and I feel like it does a nicer job than the website.

Of course, then I started thinking about the Apple App Store review process (I started to worry when I first tried to mock up an app icon of a cassette with the Apple logo on it).

Anyone have any thoughts on whether the contents I'd be serving up are legal? I'd guess that while most of the companies who made the software no longer are actively fighting piracy, it may not be 100% legal, and I don't want to stir up any trouble for the owner's of the site (or myself) by submitting it to Apple.

Thoughts?

(I attached a few screenshots of the app in it's current state)

 

[Purdy]

I don't think you'd cause any trouble for the asciiexpress.net site but there's an approximately 0.00% chance that Apple would approve the app. (Actually, I'm probably overstating the odds a bit.) You *might* be able to get it approved as a generic transfer app that let you play files from wherever *ahem* but the hardcoded link to asciiexpress would cause a red flag.

I would never endorse trying to circumvent the App Store rules so I would never suggest that you might be able to get away with going the Epic route and release a generic app and then enable the asciiexpress.net link after it is approved. It would eventually be discovered and yanked. Similarly, I would not recommend using the 10,000 user limit of TestFlight and just post a URL to a "beta" version and upload a new build every 90 days. That would probably work indefinitely, but again sadly, it is against the App Store rules so I could never recommend it to anyone.

 

[wottle]

Thank you for your non-recommendations!

Yeah, I was thinking of doing the TestFlight route, since I doubt the number of prospective users would be over that limit. I could script the builds and it would be pretty easy. I also considered making a Apple II catalog app, that would just be software and game art, and maybe some extra info. Then follow up with a new version where you could enable cassette mode...

 

[Purdy]

The second option, where you enable the cassette mode later runs a real risk of getting your developer account banned if you get caught. Basically, what happened to Epic. If you have other published apps or are making money off apps, that's a lot of risk, unless you published it under a separate developer account. Again, I would never recommend doing that to circumvent the App Store rules, but it is how Epic kept the Unreal engine from getting yanked when their main dev account was banned because of Fortnight.

If you go the TestFlight route, and got caught, I don't think you would get banned. They would probably pull the app if they ever found out about it, but I don't think it would go beyond that since the app was never published. You could argue that you were testing app functionality while you were researching how it could be made compliant with App Store rules. (changing features, securing rights to software, etc.) At least that's the argument I'd make if I were in that situation.

Option three would be to open source it. People could build and install it on their own. It's the least amount of risk to you but less convenient for users.